Yeah, and even if you ignore the front page and go straight to subverses you're interested in, sadly the comment quality has really, really gone down, and you do notice the 2 or 3 majority groups dominating the conversation (at the moment I'd say they're probably coontown, fatpeoplehate, and reddit-hate in general, but I've been spending less and less time there, so I could be wrong).

There are also more puns, and more opinions that make you think "you must be 15 and trying to be edgy... or at least, god, I hope you are..."

I've noticed more downvotes for things that don't really take away from the conversation, but are just opinions that someone disagreed with.

For example, I feel like here I could tell you "ooli, I actually love coontown, those are not fallacies, they're enlightened observations" and we would probably never agree on that, but we could exchange views in a fairly civil way. Over there far more reasonable opinions are already starting to get bombed into a crater if they disagree with the general consensus. It's basically turning into a more reddit-like place, which is fine, except for the fact the people flocking to that place claim to be escaping reddit for being filled with basically what they're pushing on voat. It may be coontown and not SRS (or general SJW behavior), but they're still starting to silence dissenters rather than either debating them, or taking a live-and-let-live approach.

That's really a shame because here you won't find me advocating in favor of coontown in particular, but if I do have a personal opinion on anything that disagrees with a more widely accepted general opinion I will probably bring it up, and the beautiful thing about being able to do that is that I'd probably do it less to convert people to my side, and more to try to see why that opinion is not accepted, and to try to understand if it is me who is wrong. If maybe I haven't considered all sides.

I appreciate that about this place. I feel like comments are more thought out and, probably because of that, they're more likely to generate meaningful, constructive debate rather than personal attacks to deflect from having to think too hard about the merits of the argument you're putting forth.

I will say this though, I may not like the changes that voat has been going through, but they do make me appreciate hubski a lot more.

This is a really great place, and I'm grateful to all of you for making it that way.