Restrictions Will Be Changing (announcements)

submitted ago by PuttItOut

I have made a decision to alter and/or remove various restrictions on Voat. I’ve thought a lot about this and it’s something both @Atko and I believe needs to be reevaluated.

Voat has always had a problem with spam. @Amalek would spam posts and hijack the new queue making it unusable. MH101 and then later @SaneGoatiSwear would hijack comment pages making them unusable. The rules Voat uses were put in place in to combat this behavior. They are old rules, mostly remaining unchanged from the initial versions of this site. Most, if not all, of the rules were in direct response to spam attacks. It was never Voat’s intention to limit non-spam accounts, but this is what has happened as an indirect result of these rules.

Voat will not keep in place a system that permanently limits a segment of users from debating and conversing. This isn’t Free Speech as I see it or as I want it.

Voat will shortly be going live with a new code base, and I want to have a new system designed and ready for when this happens, so I am posting this announcement to get feedback from the community.

The main areas of concern:

  1. Commenting restrictions on negative CCP accounts that aren't spamming their comments
  2. Limiting any account that spam comments

TL;DR

We need to allow unpopular opinions while preventing comment spam.

How do we do it?

All options are on the table

https://voat.co/v/announcements/1330806

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KingoftheMolePeople ago

Remove restrictions from Negative accts. Put in place a Spam button. Once an account has X number of Spam button reports, acct restrictions go into effect. To prevent abuse, if the restrictions are refuted("I am not spamming"), upon investigation, anyone found to be abusing the Spam button faces consequences, from restrictions themselves to a full on site ban.

PuttItOut ago

We should discuss this option in detail.

KosherHiveKicker ago

Put in place a Spam button. Once an account has X number of Spam button reports, acct restrictions go into effect

Such an option could easily be exploited by people known to have multiple alt / burner accounts, which could be used to easily hit "the X number of Spam button reports"

glennvtx ago

We could institute a time limit, that adjusted, to determine how often an account could use the spam button.

glennvtx ago

Consequences for multi / alt accounts being gamed could be a much more lengthy period between the spam button "unlocking".