Voat.co – open source Reddit-type website with free speech as it's #1 priority | Hacker News Reader

Voat.co – open source Reddit-type website with free speech as it's #1 priority

voat.co

21 pointssergiotapia26 comments

Yesterday a pretty big thread was made about how Reddit's upper management was infiltrated, see here: http://www.np.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/2v7kx3/guy_ex...

A lot of Reddit users (including myself) have migrated to Voat. The main benefits of this website is that it's:

1. Hosted in switzerland. 2. Not owned by a major corporation. 3. Has protections in place to avoid scumbag losers trying to moderate more than 10 'subreddits' (called subverses) at a time.

It's built using C# and MVC 5. Source code: https://github.com/voat/voat - If you can spare some time, contribute what you can. Voat is in it's early stages and you can massively improve it.

This does not appear to be a solution to the problem of manipulation by a dedicated group of confederates. In fact, "voat" seems to be a bit worse off, as users with no history are being granted ownership over its version of subreddits.

Doing much better at a large scale (i.e. beyond what a few known high quality moderators can tackle) is a Hard Problem™. An important and timely one, to boot, considering governments' efforts to erode privacy and enforce real-name identity.

From that post:

"""A # of users involved in this cabal are depressed, aren't "cool", are LGBT (more difficult to be included socially if you are a member of this group in real life), are social outcasts,"""

And it's basically 100% a cishet presumably-white dude pretending to be a victim in the same way that you see people talking about Mexicans moving in to the US and "taking over" or ISIS being an "existential threat".

Do you think that people are actively trying to 'infiltrate' subreddits, or is it possible that reddit's audience is simply changing and the new users / admins are changing the rules?

There are moderators that moderate over 200 subreddits. I'm not willing to call that infiltration (moderation is a hard job to do and it happens that few people are interested in it, which means finding someone reliable is hard, which means users tend to accumulate moderation positions), but they can't be doing a good job at it at least. This is a particularly charged thread with an example: https://np.reddit.com/r/redditrequest/comments/2v717g/reques...

I'm not sure how voat intends to solve this since users can just create new accounts to bypass the 10 subreddit limit.

I absolutely think they are infiltrating subreddits, it's been proven without a doubt. Just one example, how can one person actively moderate more than 5 subreddits?

I used to be a mod for /r/smite but quit after 2 weeks because it was just too much work. And /r/smite isn't even that big! :)

>2. Not owned by a major corporation

Back in the days the same was true for reddit as well. Honestly, I would like a permanent solution, some kind of reddit based on p2p architecture.

This was posted on hacker news a while back that fits your description; http://getaether.net/

Not being sarcastic, but this sounds a bit like usenet. Would love to see that come back.

I left usenet in the early 2000s when alt.* was basically wrecked because of people like weev and the GNAA, not to mention all the spam.

There are communities I miss, but lots about it I don't.

I hear ya, but until that day comes the best we can hope for is to island hop and learn from our previous mistakes.

This is "free speech" as in "I can silence/harrass whatever marginalised group I want" right?

Just checking.

I'd imagine it was more "I can silence and harass whomever I like, and expect to be silenced and harassed in return".

Kinda the basic principle behind FOS as I understand it.

The choice is moderation or no moderation. No moderation means you can harass and be harassed, moderation means you can be silenced. Pick one.

You're aware that harassment is silencing, right? That's its purpose: to make the other person go away.

In short, I'll pick the one that isn't a cesspit. If you feel differently, try moving to a country like Somalia with no functioning moderation system of any kind and see if you prefer it.

When a moderator deletes your post that's silencing, and it strikes me as a more powerful form of harassment than anything that would cause me to self censor.

Probably potential regular subscribers to this: http://imgur.com/gallery/Vb7tu

Looks like most of the top stories at the moment are meta-discussions about reddit vs voat, as well as a thread about how much they hate Islam.

New boss same as the old, I guess.

It seems they still have a voting system in place, that prohibits any thoughtful discussion. Usually works on HN since most topics are not controversial. How is the moderation on that site different from Reddit where mods are proclaimed Gods and picks who gets to say what?

It would be interesting to see a social graph of the moderators of reddit (who are mods, what subreddits do they mod, how many subreddits do they mod, which users moderate multiple subreddits together, etc.)

Nice!

I've setup /v/laravel and /v/selfhosted if you're interested.

Wow, and now this submission was taken off the front page. tin-foil hat

Why should HN be all that interested in discussing an internet shit-fit happening on another site? There's always an internet shit-fit somewhere.

I could get a bit of mileage out of discussing how this will completely fail because internet communities are generally driven by the shape of their moderation technologies, so copying the same technologies generally guarantees the same result, but other than that and the obligatory angry disagreements, that's about all the conversation there is here.

Anyways, despite the fact I commented here, I've flagged it too.

HN may be interested for the following reasons.

1. The linked website is a fork of a popular link aggregation website that has numerous tech subcommunities.

2. There were lots of previous submissions and discussions on HN about reddit controversies, including controversies related to the subject of free speech.

3. Sam Altman is a leading investor in the latest Reddit round.

I offer no opinion on the subject of the submission as my knowledge about that is basically zero.

Maybe such 'controversies' would hold a lot more credibility if they were actual controversies instead of the paranoid conspiracy theories of fedora-hatted misogynists?

Just a thought.

HN has always been much worse than Reddit in regards to admin censorship, moderator bias, and non-transparency. It's not a conspiracy, it's principles. HN doesn't deserve to have any new social site on its front page. (Flagged? Moderated? You'll never know.)

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