Without getting into specifics or airing grievances (which has turned into a long, meaningless circle jerk where the guilty are pretending to be innocent victims) there are some really basic things you can do to help protect Voat, yourself and, if you want to go to the extra effort, protect the children.

Does it feel like Voat is caught in this cycle?

https://i.imgur.com/HrQ5z4P.png

That is because it is.

https://i.imgur.com/Azxh5Vb.png

Protect Voat

First of all, put things into perspective; Voat is a waste of time to deal with relative to other platforms because of the drama. For every minute you spend on Voat trying to raise awareness of anything, you get about 1/10th the exposure for the effort. For example, I get hundreds of thousands of impressions on Twitter per month for not very in depth stuff and lucky to get 500 views on Voat for something more hard hitting. Also, because of drama, your very good information will get decried as shillery and downvote brigaded by any number of cliques so it really serves as a searchable repository as opposed to “exposure” about any given topic. In fact, moderators of “truth” and “research” oriented subs, after two years, have yet to try to implement any kind of system to get good research out into the world.

There is really only one way to deal with trolling cliques and that is simply to “not feed the trolls.” Anyone feeding the trolls is either a complete idiot and, therefore, not credible or is doing it on purpose and is, therefore, not credible. Otherwise, you will insert yourself into a socio-psycho feedback loop which actually isn’t that big of a deal unless you insist on staying in it and never leaving which, again, makes you an idiot or a shill-like creature.

Protect Yourself

Second of all, it is up to each user to protect their own personal information by using idiot proof extensions like Decentraleyes and UBlock Origin. This also includes avoiding sharing things like pictures, employment, location, gender, age, race, etc.

https:// chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/decentraleyes/ldpochfccmkkmhdbclfhpagapcfdljkj?hl=en-US

https:// chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm?hl=en

But, even if you screw up, what are people really going to do?

The most common negative fallout of doxxing is getting fired for having your political views revealed or behavior that you thought was “cool” while anonymous.

When it comes to naked pictures the most obvious response of trolls is to find your social media and share it with all of your friends. This is easier, now, due to facial recognition. When run through facial recognition, some recent well known pictures score in the high 90th percentiles of a possibly fake user who was “doxxed.” Facial recognition will get better and anyone who still has pictures up are getting easier and easier to find. Yandex, Bing, Amazon and other services are stupid easy to use.

Identity theft is another common result of doxxing; like the UC Berkeley professor whose own credit card was maxed out ordering bike locks.

So, unless you are an idiot or are trying to stir up drama, you will not voluntarily share your pictures, your employment or your name.

This is far worse than most people think because all of your emails, internet histories, cloud storage, vital statistics, text dictionary of audio captured by your devices… this is all being bought, sold and traded by companies, governments and black hats on a routine basis. Anyone with a decent sized hard drive can torrent this data and search through usernames to find passwords, then connect those names and passwords to other accounts, which can then be used to find pictures which can then be run through facial recognition. There is no privacy. It is gone. One piece of information is all it takes to find everything else about you.

Protect the Children

When it comes to good research, there are many other sites you should share to. I’m not going to bother naming them because we all know what they are, but cultivating a reciprocal following on multiple platforms makes you more immune to Voat drama but also brings people to Voat.

Before getting serious about sharing research, you should familiarize yourself with the rules of evidence in the US. Pay special attention to exemptions from hearsay and how people authenticate evidence. This will help you know what to push in your research. (Code words and symbols are informative, but they aren’t evidence.) It is important to know a little bit about subpoenas and interrogatories, as well, because if you can imagine yourself as a prosecutor or paralegal, you will know how to write your posts and articles directed at helping a prosecutor acquire authenticated evidence.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/fre

When you have found something actionable, you can file as a “Discretionary Reporter” with nearly any law enforcement agency or child protection agency. Now, you may or may not get results, but the paper trail will mount and, eventually, create a tipping point and force an investigation which may or may not result in arrests, but, again, will mount with other investigations and force a tipping point. The local rules for discretionary reporters are the same throughout the whole country, practically.

A discretionary reporter is any individual, not mandated by law, who reports suspected child abuse or neglect.

Who May Report (PC 11166 (g))

“Any other person who has knowledge of or observes a child whom he or she knows or reasonably suspects has been a victim of child abuse or neglect may report the known or suspected instance of child abuse or neglect to an agency specified in Section 11165.9. For purposes of this section, “any other person” includes a mandated reporter who acts in his or her private capacity and not in his or her professional capacity or within the scope of his or her employment.”

May report anonymously (PC 11167 (f))

“Persons who may report child abuse pursuant to subdivision (g) of Section 11166 are not required to give their names.” (Discretionary reporters are encouraged, however, to give their names. If the name is given to the reporting agencies, it is to be confidential (PC 11167 (d)), except to those listed in this subdivision.) Immunity from law suits (PC 11172 (a))

“…any other person reporting a known or suspected instance of child abuse or suspected instance of child abuse or neglect shall not incur civil or criminal liability as a result of any report unless it can be proven that a false report was made…”

A Child Abuse Report Must be taken by Police or County Welfare Department (PC 11165.9)

“…Agencies that are required to receive reports of suspected child abuse or neglect may not refuse to accept a report of suspected child abuse or neglect from a mandated reporter or another person unless otherwise authorized pursuant to this section, and shall maintain a record of all reports received.”

Of course, your report is going to get laughed at if you present a Q proof with a bunch of pictures, names and red lines. You need to submit something that points to real evidence that can be authenticated for it to be of use to investigators.

Most jurisdictions have their own “Declaration” forms to sign under penalty of perjury. Here is one from California: https://www.courts.ca.gov/documents/mc030.pdf But writing it on a legal pleading format works just as well. When you use a legal declaration, it carries more weight.

Email addresses for all media outlets are widely available. You can mass mail your research to news outlets to help gain traction, especially if you specify that you have already given this information to authorities. Here is a small sample of what I’ve already shared to Voat:

[email protected],cnn.com [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected];makcjj [email protected] [email protected];30372 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

tl;dr: Do not feed the trolls. Do not share personal information. Focus on bringing exposure to the important topics rather than Voat drama.*

Thanks for reading,

• WoS