this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2023
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It's like when Voat started. It was spawned out of Reddit's hammer coming down. Admittedly, some decent communities popped up over there, and I stuck around for a bit, but it was also the dumping ground for all the degenerate behavior Reddit was cracking down on. I ultimately ended up on Reddit again after the decent communities lost steam and the only stuff that seemed active were the things I didn't agree with or wasn't interested in, legally or otherwise.
Voat was a school project that blew up in popularity and became infamous after the Nazis decided to use it as an easy platform to fester. It was not created as a response to anything reddit may have been doing at the time. It was just another link aggregator with comments that had user overlap with reddit.
If that is all true, the logic behind advertising it on Reddit at that time, and sticking to the position of "free speech absolutism" is kinda questionable. Maybe don't plug your social media site when all the reprobates from r/C***town are looking for a new home. For your own good.
Another site was founded by a former Reddit admin over at tildes.net, but he was very explicit about what he was trying to do (2019 announcement - tldr: ban assholes, shun low-effort posts). It never had the problems Voat did.
There is a big problem with all these tech bros where they think an algorithm or a piece of software are what makes a community. They have no concept of society. No thoughts about what diasporas or social milieus they are trying to assemble. No thoughts at all about what the purpose of the thing is in the first place. They are very bad at this shit. I can't count how many times I've seen someone be like "What if we did something like Reddit, but on the blockchain?" without even asking, who is this for? What problem does it solve?
I didn't realize it had been around to that. I guess "its sudden rise in popularity" might have been a better phrasing then.