Saidit's 'free speech' is under attack from the new admin, who is of course a tranny. Check the moderation logs and see individual user posts to see what is being removed and ask yourself "is this level of censorship in line with saidit's rules, or are they serving a personal agenda'.

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[–]copenseethe 19 insightful - 4 fun19 insightful - 3 fun20 insightful - 4 fun -  (24 children)

Being able to debate with people of radically opposing viewpoints without getting banned is the reason that I am here instead of reddit (where I am perma-banned). Please do not change this site to one that ousts people for their political stance.

[–]magnora7 17 insightful - 6 fun17 insightful - 5 fun18 insightful - 6 fun -  (23 children)

We don't plan to, but at the same time we have to protect ourselves against trolls being far-extremists with dozens of accounts with the intent of hijacking the site's culture to drive the normal users away, which is something that happens regularly to most forums. It's what happened to voat and poal and many other websites, and then they have to clean it up and crack down, or they eventually shut down because all that's left of their userbase is trolls and bots. Saidit maintains a middle-of-the-road approach, and that's not changing.

[–]christnmusicreleases 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (20 children)

I think the case of both voat and poal, the shills were an intended feature by the site designers, and not a bug. Of course the real users were mostly just redpilled normies, and weren't interested in the racist/extremist posts, but did enjoy the free speech and the good posts made by normal users. I think very few users there were/are actual nazis/far-right extremists. How many people do you see walking around with KKK hats these days? (it was was a Democrat thing in the past, anyways) Hence why I posted there for a while, I just ignored the racist trolls and instigators or called them out for what they did. We need to distinguish the two groups - the shills/trolls/bots and the normies, and not smear the good with the bad.

[–]magnora7 7 insightful - 2 fun7 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 2 fun -  (19 children)

the shills were an intended feature by the site designers, and not a bug.

I used to believe this, but after running this site, I don't think so anymore. These people just show up. Whether they're shills or genuine, they just show up regardless of what I want. And if you don't take action, they just take over the site. That's just what happens. What happened to voat and poal them is a result of inactive moderation, not any action on their part. If I hadn't removed those types of people, saidit would look the exact same way

[–]Trajan 6 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 2 fun -  (5 children)

Agreed. From seeing many sites (forums and wikis) degrade under extremists or trolls, I see benevolent dictatorship as the only way to keep a site running. Broad rules should be there, but it's night-on impossible to write specific rules that don't end in rules lawyering and subsequent unhappiness when somebody gets banned without apparently violating the letter of the law. When identifying problems, it's often the case that you'll know it when you see it.

A benevolent dictator, with mods aligned on the spirit of the site, works pretty well.

[–]magnora7 6 insightful - 3 fun6 insightful - 2 fun7 insightful - 3 fun -  (4 children)

Yeah I kind of agree. I had the idea of making a new forum site like magnora7.com or something and the only rule is "don't piss me off". I wonder how well it would work. I would certainly be able to remove trolls more easily because I could spot them instantly and act instantly, instead of having to worry about the written letter of the law.

I wouldn't do this on saidit obviously, but as another experiment on a new website it might be interesting to try. I think the quality would be higher, tbh. I wouldn't ever have to second-guess myself, and wouldn't have to worry about public perception for every action I take, which eats up a lot of my time and energy. It sure would be a lot easier to run. Maybe I'll try it as an experiment some day. It'd be cool to empower a bunch of other people to be able to do the same. Like hook a bunch of random people up with their own saidits, so we could have 50 different benevolent dictatorships, and maybe only 10 of them end up being good. That might be a cool way to expand the diversity of social media websites, without me having to do much additional work

[–]Trajan 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (3 children)

Yeah, a risky proposition to retrofit that in to Saidit. As you said, it's probably not something that works first time even with the best of intentions. Most sites fail anyway, It needs a good core of users who get what the site is about, and a willingness to come down hard when needed to prevent the site from going down the wrong path. Comparable to the difference between 'Don't be a dick' and the infamous codes of conduct with their long lists of possible transgressions. 'Don't piss me off' works for relatively small sites and if the person with the ban hammer isn't some kind of angry moron.

Quick question for you. A lot of people seem to view Saidit as a free speech platform, and that's not the understanding I get from the about content. Any thoughts on why this perception exists? Maybe the site was pitched differently at an earlier time or does it seem like free speech is a founding principle because it looks that way in comparison to Reddit?

Edit: a question.

[–]magnora7 5 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

'Don't piss me off' works for relatively small sites and if the person with the ban hammer isn't some kind of angry moron.

Yeah exactly. Malevolent dictatorships are the worst style of governance.

Quick question for you. A lot of people seem to view Saidit as a free speech platform, and that's not the understanding I get from the about content. Any thoughts on why this perception exists? Maybe the site was pitched differently at an earlier time or does it seem like free speech is a founding principle because it looks that way in comparison to Reddit?

Basically because we exist as "not reddit" there is an implication we're built around free speech. And we are much freer than reddit. But we also realized before we started that we couldn't just let it go 100% free speech with no boundaries or else we wind up with voat and a hijacked site culture and we didn't want that, so we put some modest limits to keep it free speech but prevent it from becoming voat. We've never once advertised ourselves as a "free speech forum" even though that's what we are in a lot of ways.

[–]Trajan 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

That makes sense. Thanks. On a side point, I know you Patreon running. Any chance of setting up on Subscribestar also? A lot of us can't use Patreon out of principle, and I'm not getting around cryptocurrency anytime soon.

[–]magnora7 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Perhaps we may look in to that, thanks for the recommendation. Cryptocurrency is by far our preferred donation method, as patreon can be annoying about some stuff.

[–]christnmusicreleases 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (12 children)

The same shill groups are found on Ruqqus, but the way the site was coded, they are easily filtered out. They still exist but any user who doesn't want to see them can filter them out with a quick filter setting accessible one click from the front page.

I think that is the better way to handle troll groups.

Poal and Voat are broken by design so you can't block that content, you can't escape it, and it was there since I first visited those sites, which was a long time ago.

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

Anywhere you have freedom, you will have perversion of that freedom as an excuse to commit unthinkable abuse. Then freedom gets restricted or the space becomes an utter cesspool.

[–]christnmusicreleases 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

The solution is not totalitarianism. The solution is good mechanisms in place coupled with restrained moderation. Power is meant to be more of a deterrent for abuse, rather than a steel boot stomping against the human skull for eternity.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Agreed!!

[–]Feldheld 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Nonsense. In the 1990s we had the usenet which was practically unmoderated. Yes, it had the usual infestation by antisemites, leftist hate junkies, and nutty spammers but it was no problem since it also had a well functioning ignore filter. It was a little work to keep the filter up to date but it was well worth it. Only in its best years reddit came close to the quality of open debate the usenet offered.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Oh, I remember that. But that was back when everybody on the 'Net followed Netiquette, which is long dead and buried. So you see, there was not total "freedom" in that good manners were more or less required, removing the "freedom" of being a total asshole.

[–]Feldheld 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Yes, there was total freedom since this netiquette was not enforced by moderation. Worst thing that could happen to violators was being trashed by other users or being put in a lot of ignore filters.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Wait a minute... Enforcement by the group means freedom, but enforcement by a few chosen rulers is encroachment on that freedom?

If you would compare it to say, homosexuality: gays used to be almost completely cut off by society and shunned by most. By your metric would that be "freedom" or not? Now that the government stepped in and said it's OK to be gay, do they have freedom? There are some places gays get kicked out.

[–]magnora7 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

How are they easily filtered out on ruqqus? Do they just filter out stuff with enough downvotes? Which means if the trolls have the majority vote they can downvote real content off the site, basically? Which is exactly how voat failed?

[–]christnmusicreleases 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

Hide from /all is a context menu option on the guilds. Block user is a context menu option on users.

Trolls don't have the majority vote, Ruqqus has a healthy userbase. If they're obvious trolls (breaking site rules) they get banned, otherwise, they get downvoted to oblivion. Ruqqus is currently more than twice as popular as Saidit according to Alexa stats, and has a much more active userbase.

In addition to this, they have content settings for blocking/allowing NSFW, NSFL, offensive speech, 1000 slots for user custom filters by keyword, and guild categories (although I don't know how the last one works in the equation).

One possible solution for Saidit, if you are concerned about power users, rather than limiting the time when users can post with a rate limit (8 posts per day), you could limit the number of posts on the front page per user allowed at one time. Just cycle them out by user. Maybe make that the default view, and have a more comprehensive view for all that includes all posts by all users for those who want to see absolutely everything regardless of source. This would encourage increased user participation but it would still allow a more diverse front page. And you wouldn't get complaints about user throttling, but you'd still have your utopia.

Otherwise just implement sub/keyword filters and let the users choose what they want to see (my preference and probably, the same for those who value free speech over control). User preferences is much a better approach than hard limitations IMHO.

[–]Node 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The opposite of power users seems to be an issue too. Brand new accounts post advertisements to random businesses all over the world on a regular basis.

If new accounts had to earn their rights to post, and to increase their commenting and voting abilities, it would cut down on the new account spam quite a bit.

[–]Node 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

At least on poal, you can block the users posting the most retarded spam, which cleans up your front page a lot.

[–]bobbobbybob[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

far-extremists with dozens of accounts with the intent of hijacking the site's culture to drive the normal users away

yet, you can't see that theameliamay is just that.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

... that you know of.