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:
- Commenting restrictions on negative CCP accounts that aren't spamming their comments
- 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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10246343? ago
Will Amalek, SGIS, and his/their alts still be banned?
The way I see it, if negative CCP no longer rate limits accounts, the only thing keeping subverses clear will be moderator action. We've seen what overactive mods did to Reddit.
Even in this thread one of his alts (-448, and he's earned a net negative of CCP in the thousands) is celebrating the cessation of limitations. Consider too that people who wish to detract from a free speech forum are most likely going to have time and resources that casual users will not; they can operate dozens of accounts (as we've seen in Amalek's case), either because they're multiple individuals or because he's a spergelord who goes through manic episodes.
If one earns a punishment, is that really an undeserved limitation?
PuttItOut ago
I don't want to ban anyone. I'd rather have a universal system in place that governs all users equally.
Voat will continue banning spamming accounts and spammed domains.
teatime ago
The only way to do that is to exclude human bias from the process. I see nothing wrong with a system that checks for specific keywords, CAPS, bold, large font, frequency of posts, and frequency of comments that determines if someone is spamming.
People make too many irrational decisions but machines don't care who you are or what your sob story is. A fair system doesn't include people.