Ruqqus purges Dissent, no longer a safe haven.

submitted by YJaewedwqewqClerical Fascist from self.debatealtright

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[–][deleted] 7 insightful - 5 fun7 insightful - 4 fun8 insightful - 5 fun -  (13 children)

The meltdown continues: https://ruqqus.com/+Ruqqus/post/da3w/pivot-phase-1

[–]cqtzApolitical Normie 7 insightful - 2 fun7 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 2 fun -  (7 children)

I'm mostly disappointed that they weren't being honest about their intentions until making the announcement. (And even then, the announcement has a lot of "corpo-PR speak" as some users have pointed out.) They should've made the announcement before making the rule change, not after banning ~40 guilds under the pretense of getting rid of "illegal speech".

At least they've finally made it clear that they aren't focusing on free speech anymore. I'd prefer a censored platform that doesn't pretend to be free speech to a platform that markets itself as "free speech" but censors whatever it wants.

[–][deleted] 8 insightful - 3 fun8 insightful - 2 fun9 insightful - 3 fun -  (4 children)

The Ruqqus team has done everything wrong every step of the way. I'm not surprised a bit that they did this part backwards. I think they even flip flopped and unbanned MGTOW.

Yes their intentions are perfectly clear, and they've thrown in the towel. I've been expecting it ever since they freaked out and added new rule and policy changes the day voat.co went down.

The silver lining to me is seeing people move to https://votal.net/ because it's decentralized and the best path forward for all of this "contentious" speech.

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

Yes, there were signs all along the way. Even back in April 2020, they banned users (jasonkhanlar and some others) for doxxing when they posted the name on Bardfinn's reddit profile. Over the next year, they banned multiple users for unclear rules. They had a lack of communication with the userbase and preferred to post on the Discord. I guess it was clear they cared a lot less about free speech than they claimed to.

The silver lining to me is seeing people move to https://votal.net/ because it's decentralized and the best path forward for all of this "contentious" speech.

I agree. I'm not too familiar with how Lemmy works, but it looks like Votal isn't linked to any other instances yet. Maybe it will in the future.

I've also seen users moving to discussions.app.

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

and the best path forward for all of this "contentious" speech.

I'm no familiar with votal. I would be skeptical that any single thing is the best path forward. I always advocated nobody become too invested in any single platform. Back in the early days of the internet, I was active on 10+ forums. When I started using Digg and Ruqqus, it was really lazy of me, because I could find a little bit of everything on one site.

Now, I'm more back to using about 6 discussion sites at a time, and that number is growing.

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

Any worth mentioning?

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

I don't know of any amazing Reddit-like-but-free-speech sites. Obviously, we're on saidit.net.

Most of the sites I'm active on are more niche interests, like AR15.com.

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

I actually don't mind platforms which remove speech, so long as they're consistent with their policies.

For example, I wouldn't be offended if Patriots.win removed pro-Biden content. Nobody's being deceived or expecting the site to operate differently. The problem is Ruqqus was FAR from honest, and did one of the biggest and fastest flip-flops I've ever seen.

I mean even if you have a normie world-view, I get a mostly-free-speech website banning Nazis due to their history of genocide (though I'd suggest also ban the commies for the same thing). However, the MGTOW ban comes across as if they were taken over by some SJW types. Some of the guilds on the list I know had no advocacy of violence, or the guild itself wasn't racist. For example, BlackLiesMatter was about critiquing BLM, a marxist organization. Yes, racists would show up, as they tended to do EVERYWHERE on Ruqqus, but the guild itself wasn't racist. And I never saw anyone advocating violence, with the exception of people wanting to defend themselves from riots ... and the people in those riots were of every race.

As mentioned in my other comments, I never removed posts for racism from any of my guilds, because I thought it was counter to Ruqqus's stated free speech goals. Even though my preference would have been to remove that kind of content. Most of the overt racists on Ruqqus would just show up, drop a bunch of n-bombs and blame Jews, and contribute nothing meaningful to the conversation.

[–]VulptexVoluntaryist 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

They revealed the truth to discord mods in private channels and only came clean when one of them leaked it.

[–]HibikiBlackCaudillo 6 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

It's kind of scary but since there's less alternatives as time goes on, the more we will be targeted.

[–][deleted] 9 insightful - 4 fun9 insightful - 3 fun10 insightful - 4 fun -  (0 children)

It's wake up time. Time to fight for internet freedom or lose it forever.

[–]Jesus 6 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

I'm telling you, saidit is like the only place I have not been censored. Every other place is a fedop or Zionist owned. Now I'm fearing saidit could be another honeypot, though I doubt it. I think at the very least, since it has a small userbase, it is just being targeted with shills.

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

That's high praise, thanks jesus. The only other reddit type site I've had any faith in myself is old and new Voat.

I can only speak for myself, the only active admin, I'm not sharing any user data or doing any politically motivated censorship/rule enforcement.

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

The meltdown is actually worse than the bad policies, and almost as bad as the arbitrary bans.

I might have been okay if it, if they were more honest. For example, "We decided we wanted to ban Nazis, because we were sick of supporting Nazis and seeing their filth on a daily basis, and watching them drive down the quality of the site. We're just a bunch of programmers." And then after announcing that, banning people and guilds .... for the exact reason stated.

At least they would still have their integrity, and be able to pursue that weirdo vision of just being software, and not a website.

Of course some of the guild-bans are absolutely absurd. Reversing MGTOW is meaningless, because the damage was done. Were they violent or not?

Also, why ban guilds? Most guilds are relatively unmoderated, due to limits on number of guilds you can GM, and non-existent mod-tools, and the stated philosophy around free speech. I almost never moderated content out of any of my guilds, even if it really annoyed the shit out of me, because I wanted to remain consistent with the overt free speech goals of the site. If users are posting garbage, ban those users. Or at least give the guilds time to enforce the new policies.