I just rolled out a new, rather controversial feature which should help get some of the shitposters which voat attracted over the past few weeks under control.
How this works
- If a user has -50 CCP or less, they will only be able to post 5 comments per day until their CCP improves.
- If a user has -50 CCP or less, they will only be able to submit 1 discussion or 1 link per day until their CCP improves.
Why do we need this?
There are voat users with CCP at around -300 and these guys submit 20+ links per hour. While voat userbase is relatively small, allowing shitposters to run free and post copypasta crap day in and day out, may have negative effect on legit users.
This feature may be seen as as a tool to limit free speech (voat moto is "have your say" after all), but free speech doesn't mean that everyone should be allowed to post endless copypasta crap all over voat in matters of minutes and thus impact the free speech of other users as shitposting copypasta crap will push down submissions of other users from /v/all/new and as such, if left uncontrolled, have a negative effect on freedom of speech of other users.
I don't care about the kind of content is being posted, as long as the content being posted is legal and not being spammed all over voat. If you want to get your message across, why not try doing it in a thought-out manner, discussing the topic, letting other users chime in and taking it from there, rather than just shouting your message across random subverses?
Now what?
I will keep this feature operational as a test-run to see how it works in practice.
Please feel free to discuss this and tell me how you feel about this.
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creep ago
You're right. The more I think about it, the more I dislike the idea of popular vote throttling individual voices. It's a dangerous thing on a platform priding itself for its lack of censorship.
There has to be a better way to throttle abusive behaviour (posting 500 spammy, obnoxious reposts a day). There has to be a better way for people to deal with content they don't like other than voting someone be silenced.
An ignore button that can gag private messages, public posts, or both. A personal word filter that will collapse or completely hide posts or usernames based on user-defined criteria. If someone wants to censor content, let them censor and control their own private feed only. It becomes personal responsibility.
Edit: Oh, and give that ignore list limits to avoid mass-censorship blacklists like SJWs wield on Twitter, such as throttling the number of people you can ignore per day to something small, but reasonable (5 people). I don't like the idea of hard-capping how many people in total can be ignored as that forces people to potentially unblock someone they don't want to just to make room for someone else.
Ahabandthewhitegrail ago
Why the daily limit on new ignores? I honestly don't understand the point of that.
creep ago
Are you familiar with the Twitter blocklists that anti-GGers use to blacklist and silence critics (and their followers)? Those lists have tens of thousands of accounts, many of which simply follow someone that criticized a feminist but are now silenced on a large scale.
Blocking shouldn't be a feature that can be turned into a weapon for mass censorship.
How would you propose avoiding this scenario while still allowing people to block as many people as they need?
Maybe 5 users in a single day is too restrictive, it was just an example.
How many users do you imagine you will need to block in a single day? Ten? 100,000?
Throttling the rate a user's ignore list can grow is better than putting a hard cap on the number of people they can block. If you're only allowed to block a total of 100 people, you're going to have to make a choice at 101 to unblock someone you don't want to hear, so capping the list size is a bad idea.
Ahabandthewhitegrail ago
I'm not saying I can block on behalf of others. I just want to be able to block people I feel are irrelevant, abusive, or unable to provide meaningful discourse.
If that is all but three people on Voat, why shouldn't I be allowed to self censor like that?
Why shouldn't I be allowed to block one hundred thousand people in a day?
creep ago
If it took you 30 seconds to block a single person, and you spent 16 hours of a day blocking people back to back without any breaks, you would only be able to block 1920 people, assuming you were that fast.
That's why those who subscribe to the Twitter mass-censorship blocklists rely upon computers to automate the process.
Without a throttle in place, abuse like that becomes possible. I could create a list that 100,000 people subscribe to, and input your name in it, and regardless of whether you've ever interacted with those people, you are now gagged from ever reaching them.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with blocking people yourself. But these people are not doing that, they are having an external source control and implement the blocking, without ever knowing who is being gagged.
A throttle would discourage people from abusing such an ignore system. Do you really want that sort of wide-scale censorship coming to Voat?
There's no situation I can imagine that would have you running into even 100 people that you absolutely want to ignore in a single day on Reddit, nevermind here with its minute population.
Now how about being able to ignore 100,000 people with a single click. That's what a throttle stops.
Ahabandthewhitegrail ago
Maybe what you say makes sense, except, why do you assume you have the RIGHT to reach those who deliberately tried to ignore you? You are equating self selected censorship, even mass censorship, with enforced censorship.
If I only want to hear from three people, what reason can you give to override that? Why should I HAVE to hear from you if I don't want to?
creep ago
I assume no such right.
In the Twitter scenario, the individual wouldn't be doing anything but handing over control of their ignore list to a third party. That third party picks and chooses who gets to speak, away from the individual's personal scrutiny.
Imagine if large swaths of Voat are off-limits to you because you were arbitrarily added to a centralized gag list which is distributed to tens of thousands of subscribers that you have never interacted with. New accounts are encouraged to sign up to the gag list for their safety. Adding 100,000 people to their list is as easy as one click and no more than a few minutes to take effect.
Your crime? You'll never know and you can't appeal it. Is that an environment you want to encourage?
Personally managing your block list: Good.
Turning over management of your block list to a third party: Bad.
Ahabandthewhitegrail ago
Why? If I have to choose to participate in a block list, WHY shouldn't I be allowed to?
Why should you be allowed to appeal my personal censoring of your speech, for that matter?