I have made a decision to alter and/or remove various restrictions on Voat. I’ve thought a lot about this and it’s something both @Atko and I believe needs to be reevaluated.
Voat has always had a problem with spam. @Amalek would spam posts and hijack the new queue making it unusable. MH101 and then later @SaneGoatiSwear would hijack comment pages making them unusable. The rules Voat uses were put in place in to combat this behavior. They are old rules, mostly remaining unchanged from the initial versions of this site. Most, if not all, of the rules were in direct response to spam attacks. It was never Voat’s intention to limit non-spam accounts, but this is what has happened as an indirect result of these rules.
Voat will not keep in place a system that permanently limits a segment of users from debating and conversing. This isn’t Free Speech as I see it or as I want it.
Voat will shortly be going live with a new code base, and I want to have a new system designed and ready for when this happens, so I am posting this announcement to get feedback from the community.
The main areas of concern:
- Commenting restrictions on negative CCP accounts that aren't spamming their comments
- Limiting any account that spam comments
TL;DR
We need to allow unpopular opinions while preventing comment spam.
How do we do it?
All options are on the table
https://voat.co/v/announcements/1330806
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Rainy-Day-Dream ago
can you give the users more control of the site? like being able to voat out power mods?
10246482? ago
Pure democracy is easily subverted by factions. We should trust only the admins with the ability to decide whether or not a mod is acting against the interests of his community.
10247645? ago
This. I support Voat as a site for FREE speech, not hive-minded echo chamber speech from a single specific ideology that currently makes up the majority of the userbase due to Reddit refugees.
teatime ago
This is exactly why I'm against any element of human interaction with this spam blocking. I'd rather deal with a little spam than a whole lot of crazy factions pushing people out.
Tsilent_Tsunami ago
Suppose the positive vote result mandated admin investigation and action on the issue instead of a user generated ban outright.
Rainy-Day-Dream ago
then make it a republic and place restrictions on who can vote in the system
10246652? ago
Only land-owners, perhaps? Accounts can be bought or transferred, or, more plausibly, SJWs/ShareBlue/other infiltrators (who certainly exist, look at 4chan and Reddit) could just lay low and then fuck things up.
Rainy-Day-Dream ago
it's a good use for SCP finally, and no system is perfect but let putt work on it and see what he comes up with before you concern post so much. Can you say the current system is protected against such subversions? look at what happened to v/niggers and v/chicago when someone infiltrated the top mod spot