This is 100% theory, and there is zero chance of anyone ever proving evidence supporting this thought. If that bothers you, please move on, I'm not here to convince you of anything. I'm here to talk theory, not advance that theory to fact.
After reddit spilled over into voat, there has been an obvious shift in both websites. Reddit got strangely tolerant of free thinking (which I assume is the puppets trying to save their own game) and voat got really big on posting videos with zero evidence supporting the claim mad in the title.
It seems pretty clear to me that there is a psy-op going on to make voat look like a haven for extremism, and appear as if supporting evidence is optional in our definition of a "quality post." We can not let this happen, or we as a website will quickly be as credible to the outside world as buzzfeed style blogspam is.
When I first came to this site from reddit, I loved how reluctant people were to use downvotes. Now I realize this could be a problem at the opposite extreme from reddit. I had originally planned to keep my account at 0 total downvotes, but I have shifted this opinion after observing the drivel that is being posted. I will admit it is perfectly plausible that the crappy submissions are just vote-farming, but the functional effect is the same, whether it is sock-puppets or 14 year old kids bored in class.
So, a few questions for those of you that have been here longer than a month:
1 Outside of this sub, would you guys say there has been a spike in shit-tier conspiracy submissions? (/v/videos seems to be a hotspot for this)
2 Do you feel that theories without direct evidence (like this one ironically enough) are harmful to our credibility? Is an unsupported theory more or less dangerous if it regards real world events as opposed to psychological and meta-topics?
3 If you feel this is the case, what should be done to preserve our reputation?
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Sciency ago
I've had the same thought myself, but I've hit a wall with this topic. Wasn't it reddit's original plan to use banning against ad-bots? How long did it take before that back fired on the users? It simply seems like absolute freedom opens doors for shills trolls and bots, where as censorship has its own obvious drawbacks.
Is there a middle ground, or is that wishful thinking?
Perhaps a true karma system would work. Say you can't upvoat more than a certain ratio of your downvoats, and vice versa. (but this opens the door for submittion-end attacks that leave the user short of "anti-votes.")
Or, maybe if they put a hard limit on the up and downvoats, per hour that an active account exists. (but I suppose that would favor bot accounts)
I'm really just thinking out loud here, but I feel like we need to address this before we all end up in between uncensored communication outlets again.