Voten seems like it's trying to implement a more democratic system, but who will be pushed into switching over to that?
Probably no one. But you also need to keep in mind that most HN readers probably have a very skewed perception of what Reddit is. E.g. basically my entire 11+ year experience with Reddit is reading and commenting on subreddits that aggregate articles about various topics. But the vast majority of subreddits either allow only self-posts, or else only allow links to one or two whitelisted domains like imgur or youtube. Sometimes this is the stated policy, but many times that's just the de facto state of the subreddit.
I only point this out because it's easy to think that Reddit is mostly about finding and discussing content, which it used to be, when today it's much more about community building.
edit: Registered. Is this a joke? 262px from the start of one submission to the next. Reddit: 98px. So I guess it actually is a social bookmarking site where people can post memes. But certainly no Reddit competitor. Maybe a pinterest competitor.
Over the years I've been surprised at the "stickiness" of user habits. They can have every reason to switch to another site and still refuse to do so, preferring the old habit. Communities do occasionally move, but it's hard to make it happen.
The other issue is that reddit is an inlet, a way for communities to get traffic and find each other. This is partially because of the inadequacy of search engines like Google, which have been thoroughly gamed for the last decade or so, such that they almost always prefer crappy, highly-commercialized results that have been "SEO-optimized" v. organic, real-person-generated content.
A reddit competitor would need to address a) user stickiness, and unwillingness to give up old habits; and b) supply a stable quantity of new users to keep the community active and alive.
Do bear in mind that reddit itself generally has a reputation as a "dark corner of the internet" in the public mind. There is probably room for something more widely accessible if it can somehow control the user intake and avoid an "anything goes" atmosphere.
As for shadowbanning, reddit is taking steps to get rid of that altogether [0], or at least they recognize that it's a bad system for actual users.
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3sbrro/accou...
Absurd hyperbole. I mean, all someone has to do is just look at the front-page to see that this is false.
> it seems like they shadow ban everyone except for bots
Also absurd hyperbole.
You claim to have been banned because an admin or an algorithm incorrectly identified you as vote spamming, but I honestly don't believe it based on the rest of the content in your post.
The short of it, like many similar platforms from the past, is that Reddit is highly customizable if the user chooses that route (not to mention Reddit Enhancement Suite).
The fact is "raw" Reddit is nothing to write home about and the previous front page worked around that with default subs.
I have no idea how it makes sense from a user conversion perspective, since new visitors essentially see the crappiest sides of Reddit before they even make an account to then go and learn how to filter it. I know personally if the first time I visited Reddit I saw what I usually see on the front page these days I probably would stay accountless
Undermoderated websites gradually radicalize as the heat and rage drives away moderates. 4chan is the extreme example of this, but Reddit's culture slowly lumbers in the same direction.
No, but most people who seek a reddit alternative don't list its design as a grievance. The site will be made by its community, and it's a safe bet to make that Voten's community will not be very different from Voat's.
Scott Alexander put it very well, in describing the right-leaning Reddit clone voat.co, and its influx of new users after Reddit purged some subs:
"The moral of the story is: if you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to found your own little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen, your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches. It will be a terrible place to live even if witch-hunts are genuinely wrong."
(from http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/04/getting-high-on-your-ow...)
I wonder if the removal of CSS from the subreddits will give other message boards a chance to splinter off some of the community.
Still, something like CSS removal, spezgiving, or Pao happening again could easily trigger a migration. Voat didn't take off simply because it couldn't handle the load when those events occurred.
Also, I have a theory that the "no more css" and "okay some css" was a carefully crafted maneuver, rather than a real backtrack.