It's crazy how he went from the most popular reddit alternative to the least popular. It really shows how much luck is involved. Either a big group decides to migrate or it doesn't. For Voat that happened multiple times because it became known as the place to migrate to.
In the Whoaverse and early Voat days Voat had more diversity of opinion than even Reddit, reminding people of old Reddit, which is what people actually want. But then asshole culture won as the most dominate sub-culture and then only culture.
I basically want to create old Voat and old Reddit here. It's hard though since the internet fractured to create a site with more than one mindset, even if you are trying.
Critically, like anything, is how to deal with corruption, however you may define it. In this case it's the STABs (shills, trolls, and bots) that will clog the plumbing until nothing but shit is everywhere. Free speech means freedom to communicate, not freedom to make noise - another subjective distinction. Also, there's the idea of tolerance of intolerance until it's intolerable. Sealions may abide the rules, fill up the space, and harassingly drive out real community. Even a few hard rules and many grey guidelines with clear examples become odious. Anon and A.I. registrations too. There's no end to the list of problems. Some, all, or none of these will happen - and we should fortify and get prepared. But how?
But then asshole culture won as the most dominate sub-culture and then only culture.
There was also a change of ownership, quoting from Wiki:
Founded in April 2014 as WhoaVerse, the website was a hobby project of Atif Colo (known on Voat as @Atko), then a college student. He was later joined by Justin Chastain (known as @PuttItOut on Voat). The website has been labelled as an alternative to Reddit with a focus on freedom of expression. In December 2014, WhoaVerse changed its name to Voat for ease of use.
Although Voat was based in Switzerland, Voat became incorporated in the United States in August 2015. Colo explained in a post announcing the incorporation that this was because "Switzerland seemed like a great option in the beginning, but when it comes to freedom of speech, the main idea behind Voat, U.S. law by far beats every other candidate country we’ve researched." Following a large influx of users from Reddit in July 2015, Voat's operators were approached by investors interested in funding the project, though they said they "hadn't had the time to talk" about the offers.
In January 2017, Colo resigned as CEO of Voat, citing a lack of time available to devote to the site. Colo was replaced as CEO by Chastain.
Not quite. The asshole culture took over before before Atko handed over management. Putt had been working with Atko. Atko left because of the asshole culture and wanted to get away from it. Both were equally fully hands off with moderation. I was there for it. And IMO that wasn't the flaw. The flaw is they were both culturally hands off. I plan to do the opposite. I'm present. And if someone is an asshole I will openly call them out on it.
This particularly is useful with user drama. See the asshole sub-culture thrives on user-drama. It's their entertainment. That's all fine and well for them but isn't the culture I'm going to cultivate. So I have a policy of calling them a homo. Because user-drama is gay, and exchanging passion with other men on the internet is very homo. This works on them because they basically attack other users in an attempt to look cool to other assholes. But when the site owner calls you a homo for it they make negative ground. It's all about shaping gradients around a decision point in terms of how they see value. You have to make sure they make negative ground with what they want if they do the thing that ruins a site.
That doesn't always require a rule. You can just call them a homo. Which works on their wavelength.
I also had an account there from early Whoaverse days, but left around Jan 2017 (when Voat was blocked in my country), so missed PuttItOut period. And forgot details of how exactly Atko left it seems.
Log in
Apparently Atko (who created the original Voat which was called Whoaverse at first) also created this reddit alternative recently:
https://flingup.com/
(via https://old.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/10ihml7/deleted_by_user/j5edkw2/)
It's crazy how he went from the most popular reddit alternative to the least popular. It really shows how much luck is involved. Either a big group decides to migrate or it doesn't. For Voat that happened multiple times because it became known as the place to migrate to.
In the Whoaverse and early Voat days Voat had more diversity of opinion than even Reddit, reminding people of old Reddit, which is what people actually want. But then asshole culture won as the most dominate sub-culture and then only culture.
I basically want to create old Voat and old Reddit here. It's hard though since the internet fractured to create a site with more than one mindset, even if you are trying.
Critically, like anything, is how to deal with corruption, however you may define it. In this case it's the STABs (shills, trolls, and bots) that will clog the plumbing until nothing but shit is everywhere. Free speech means freedom to communicate, not freedom to make noise - another subjective distinction. Also, there's the idea of tolerance of intolerance until it's intolerable. Sealions may abide the rules, fill up the space, and harassingly drive out real community. Even a few hard rules and many grey guidelines with clear examples become odious. Anon and A.I. registrations too. There's no end to the list of problems. Some, all, or none of these will happen - and we should fortify and get prepared. But how?
There was also a change of ownership, quoting from Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voat#Company_and_funding
Possibly @PuttItOut was for more "hands off" moderation, and that's how that "culture" won.
Not quite. The asshole culture took over before before Atko handed over management. Putt had been working with Atko. Atko left because of the asshole culture and wanted to get away from it. Both were equally fully hands off with moderation. I was there for it. And IMO that wasn't the flaw. The flaw is they were both culturally hands off. I plan to do the opposite. I'm present. And if someone is an asshole I will openly call them out on it.
This particularly is useful with user drama. See the asshole sub-culture thrives on user-drama. It's their entertainment. That's all fine and well for them but isn't the culture I'm going to cultivate. So I have a policy of calling them a homo. Because user-drama is gay, and exchanging passion with other men on the internet is very homo. This works on them because they basically attack other users in an attempt to look cool to other assholes. But when the site owner calls you a homo for it they make negative ground. It's all about shaping gradients around a decision point in terms of how they see value. You have to make sure they make negative ground with what they want if they do the thing that ruins a site.
That doesn't always require a rule. You can just call them a homo. Which works on their wavelength.
I also had an account there from early Whoaverse days, but left around Jan 2017 (when Voat was blocked in my country), so missed PuttItOut period. And forgot details of how exactly Atko left it seems.