I have two problems with the latest massive Reddit exodus to Voat: it's massive and it's coming from Reddit. On a more serious note, in the last couple of days the number of accounts on Voat has doubled, meaning that the number of actual active users has gone up by an even higher factor since the newcomers are more likely to participate on the site than the forgotten old accounts (like my alt, for example), effectively overtaking Voat. At this moment, I have seen numerous complaints about rules set in place regarding voting limits, complaints regarding different mods on subverses with the same names as their counterpart subreddits, demands for those mods to give over the reigns of power, hogging of every possible username that might be even remotely interesting, and an influx of stupid puns that now get upvoted through the roof. I can live with all of that though. What I can't really live with is the FPH community. Let me explain. I think that they should never have been banned on Reddit. That decision was stupid, and it is likely to cost the Reddit admins money in the long term. However, I was content with them being a smaller fringe group that would spew hate towards overweight people in their own little corner. What I am not alright with is that Voat has now become the "FPH website" or a rallying point for them to regroup. Think of it this way. If I live in a nice neighborhood, I can cope with a racist old man living on the corner who sometimes mutters to himself about how "niggers have ruined America", provided he is actually peaceful and the rest of community just views him as a harmless old nutter. If, on the other hand, half of the neighborhood is chanting "kill all blacks", I will get the hell out of there even though I am Caucasian. Similarly, I don't think I will be staying at Voat for much longer. I had great hopes for it when I first signed up, but at this point it is filled with hate posts and meta posts about Reddit. I have donated to it in the last, but I believe that the money is better to go to places like Hubski, or actual charities. Or even a cup of coffee for me, but not to a place that has become what it is right now.
I've hung out in Voat for quite a while, right before the site transitioned out of its Whoaverse brand. It was pretty chill at first, before wave after wave of reddit migration slowly made sections of the site more toxic with unfounded vitriol. It's happened with /r/conspiracy, and it's just happened with /r/FPH. But like reddit, I'll just simply control the subverses I'm subscribed to. And if the toxicity is bad enough to permeate the entire site, I have several alternative avenues. Still I wish good luck to Atko. He's gonna have a heck of a time handling the toxins that reddit leaked out.
Indeed. I feel sorry for anyone who owns a site where people with vile and hateful viewpoints suddenly start to congregate. Were something like that be happening to me, and I'm glad it's not, I'd scrap the whole thing and wash my hands of it.Still I wish good luck to Atko. He's gonna have a heck of a time handling the toxins that reddit leaked out.
It may work out brilliantly to his benefit. If the majority of the migrating users are younger, they could form a pretty decent core group of users as they mature, particularly as much of what they are doing, dehumanizing though it may be, still requires a bit of creativity. A maturing and creative crowd could cause a lot of people to wake up one morning and find Voat.co with lots of amazing and original content. Or it will go to hell. Who knows...
I agree with you that I think voat is definitely just going to adopt the same shitty qualities of reddit, maybe even in a higher concentration. From a brief time looking at it and what you've said about the people there, it seems like most people switching just want the exact same thing as reddit, just without the censorship. They like the low-effort content, one line jokes, and such, so it makes sense to me why voat would quickly adopt the same attributes. However I think there is another group of people that most people are overlooking. I think there are those who have been dissatisfied with that type of low-effort environment on reddit and have taken this as the time to branch out. This is personally what I did. I've been wishing reddit was better in so many ways for so long, that once this all came along, suddenly there were entire threads dedicated to finding "reddit replacements". So that's why I'm here. I didn't really like the censorship, I didn't think FPH should have been banned either (though I understand why it was), but my main goal in leaving was to find a better platform than reddit (or at least, better discussion), not to just find another site with the same characteristics.