Voat Shuts Down

SubGenius 5 years ago |

The community platform I'm building was linked in a Voat thread about alternatives to move to, which led to a bit of traffic a few days ago. A number of people (20+) signed up but haven't posted any voat-like content yet.

I suppose the focus on tech/code and lack of political content dissuaded them completely. Good!

api 5 years ago | |

Just add a BLM solidarity banner to your web site. Very good Nazi repellent. Someone should make one that only shows if certain sites are the referer.

nikau 5 years ago |

Sad news - only because the people there will move out of their lazaretto onto other sites.

Barrin92 5 years ago | |

this is likely good news. When reddit closed down hate subreddits people migrated to other subreddits and researchers studied their behavior. Turned out that individual users reduced their hateful behavior once they entered into more mixed communities.

I don't think there is much evidence for this 'Lich King' thesis that keeps coming up on HN. Destroying these platforms has likely positive effects.

I'm surprised people even find this intuitive. When you want to deprogram extremists in the real world you take them out of their radical communities, you don't put them into a nazi village or send them off to ISIS.

nikau 5 years ago | | |

I'd prefer them to have full hateful behaviour in their own playpen rather than reduced hateful behaviour where I hang out.

__turbobrew__ 5 years ago | | |

That is fine until there are implications in the real world. Extremist echo chambers can convince someone to commit a physical atrocity such as a shooting or bombing.

The real question is whether or not the shooter who frequents 8chan/2chan/voat/etc would have committed the shooting if they didn’t frequent extremist sites?

mlN90 5 years ago | | |

I understand what you are saying but it cannot fall on existing communities to accept people who doesn't align with the communities goal.

And to your real question: its nothing different than saying movies and video games inspires a CRAZY PERSON to do harm. I can read 'Mein Kampf' without building gas chambers, and I'm sure you can too.

celticninja 5 years ago | | |

That works for you short term, the other works for the majority over the longer-term.

api 5 years ago | | |

4chan /pol, the original cesspool for this stuff, was created as a “containment board” to try to get the Nazi edgelord shit off other boards on the site. It didn’t work. Instead it grew there until it about took over the whole site.

A separate site like Voat may be a bit different though. That is more of a closed ghetto for it.

Thorentis 5 years ago | | |

"Hateful" is subjective. Where you hang out simply has a different definition of hateful to where they hang out.

kdtsh 5 years ago | | |

Utter nonsense. The community of Voat, as well as other far right/alt-right online communities, are hateful and wrong. If a group is intolerant of an unchangeable characteristic of another group (esp. race, socio-religious background, etc.), then it is hateful group to be opposed by free society.

nikau 5 years ago | | |

Indeed - there is some leeway for dark humour and whatnot, but voat was just pure vitriolic racism

tomjen3 5 years ago | | |

There are a lot of places that are intolerant of men, would you suggest they be banned too?

athriren 5 years ago | | |

i mean, there are surely differences in what people consider hateful, but in the case of voat there were open calls to “complete” the shoah, so i am not sure this is the community on which to stake your claim.

api 5 years ago | | |

So if I punch you, that’s just another way of patting you on the back?

It’s really ironic that given how much they bash it, the far right seem to be the ones who have taken postmodern nihilism the most seriously.

StanislavPetrov 5 years ago |

Sad but hardly surprising in 2020 how "news" sites inject provably false, political ideology into straightforward news stories.

>Parler is not necessarily extremist but skews heavily partisan, drawing mostly conservative and right-wing users based on false claims that other social media sites "censor" conservative views for political reasons

There's no dispute that social media cites censor conservatives for their political views (as well as independents, liberals and anyone else who sings a tune that doesn't align with their chosen political narrative). Whether its the NY Post or the World Socialist Website, political censorship on social media (and elsewhere) is ubiquitous. Its a shame so few outlets are capable of reporting straight news without injecting their chosen political narrative (false or otherwise).

holbrad 5 years ago |

Shame.

bigcorp-slave 5 years ago |

Attempted coup appearing to have failed, treason enablers vanish into the woodwork.

Shocking.