With all the reddit users coming over lately, I wanted to share something. This is what happened to Voat.

submitted by Alduin from self.propaganda

sorted by:
top
newinsightfulfun
you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]magnora7[A] 95 insightful - 8 fun95 insightful - 7 fun96 insightful - 8 fun -  (5 children)

Yup, I was there when voat was called whoaverse, I watched it all happen and you're absolutely right!

This is why user participation is important. This is why the pyramid of debate is important. This is why everyone who truly cares about saidit needs to voice their opinions and vote when they see something insightful or fun.

We have lots of defenses against what happened to voat, but primary among them is community.

The second thing we have going for us is no downvote. So the dedicated minority group cannot re-shape the site at large to their own desires nearly as easily. It got much worse as well after voat added restrictions where if you've been downvoted you cannot downvote others. It sped up the echo-chamber feedback-loop effect and let these extremists take over the mainstream culture of voat much more quickly. Now a dissenting voice of reason stands out like a sore thumb, and is downvoted to hell.

Saidit doesn't have these locking-out features because we don't have downvotes, and we're careful to avoid "improvements" to the algorithm that actually just speed up the feedback loop that creates an echo-chamber culture. Furthermore one group cannot brigade another, because there is no downvote, and also they must abide by the pyramid of debate or be banned from saidit. So the only remaining way to "brigade" is to argue one's point rationally.

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, the admins actually care. This site used to be called antiextremes.com, specifically referencing avoiding the extremes of reddit (censorship) and voat (far-right). It's literally our declared mission to avoid becoming voat, even right in our original name.

The reason reddit went bad is because the admins turned a blind eye (or perhaps were paid to) while brigading and astroturfing groups took it over, subreddit by subreddit.

Voat however failed because the admins just let whoever take it over, as you pointed out. They had no ideological backbone, no pyramid of debate, no nothing. Just an empty space for anyone who has enough free time to go absolutely nuts and create their own echo chamber. And that's exactly what happened.

But at saidit, we will actually will learn from their failures and try our best to avoid them.

Fourthly, saidit has open modlogs available in any sub under the list of mods, it says "moderation log". Anyone can click it and see everything every mod has ever done. Voat and reddit hide this information for mods only. This transparency adds a LOT of accountability. No more secret user deletions and secret mod coups.

Fifthly, we're run by donations. Not advertiser revenue or big secret investors. This means we have zero incentive to get rid of certain messages to please our advertisers and investors, because we have none other than community donations. We do not plan to ever change this funding model because saidit is run for the community, not for profit.

So you can see our approach is multifaceted, and we think we have a very good chance at avoiding the fate that befell voat. It won't be easy, but I believe we can do it.

[–]zyxzevn 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

I have some idea for in depth discussions, related to your "pyramid of debate". I think it may be a good idea.

Have a look at MIT Deliberation.
It is made to prevent forum manipulation and focus on discussions. You may improve it a lot with the pyramid idea.
Here is a link
It explains how different ideas can live together without being in conflict with each other. It is like a meta-organisation above the discussion.

It also shows a different problem: The main topic already assumes a certain position in the discussion. It assumes that there is a "catastrophic global heating". (Because it is MIT). This problem might be avoided by allowing your own meta-topics and place these same discussions in a different context.

I have also seen that these meta-topics are actually used to reduce discussions or mark them as "fully discussed", while in fact they are not. So I have added my own meta-structure, by starting every discussion with a meta-topic.

A meta-topic starts by stating its sources and initial idea. More sources can be added. So a discussion about an event can have like 15 different news-sources. That way people do not need to start a new meta-topic when there is some new minor news.

I would also add logical fallacies and logical biases as standard flag and reply option in the discussion.

In the MIT example, the discussion starts with a huge bias in the climate discussion. As I see it, there is in reality no large consensus. Many NASA scientists disagree with the findings, based on satellite observations.

To solve this problem, a meta-topic should always come with certain assertions/assumptions. Which can be discussed separately.

Also there should be trust-values of reporting on certain topics by certain agencies. I don't trust anything that is not directly observed. And I don't trust the CIA or military complex at all. I often assume that the opposite is happening. This means I may use them as an anti-source.

So in the meta-topics we can discuss observations, reports and mark how much we trust them. Even come with counter reports or observations. Only that makes a topic worthwhile, without even having a discussion.

On deeper levels the assumption is already be made that these reports are correct, so any discussion or complaints of these assumptions can be removed. That way the discussion can stay on focus.

Sadly the MIT version does not deal with trust-values, but I don't think they are easy to add. These values are different per user. Like my CNN trust value 5%,

On admin level you could create mainstream news channels as default. Each user will have personal trust values for these channels. But these can also differ per report, as sometimes bad sources give good reports.

The trust-values can also be used as a tar-pit for users. As it allows them to de-rank a lot of the meta-topics that they are not interested in supporting. And things that they trust will be more on top.

It can also be used as honey-pot by the admin to detect manipulations by companies or agencies. People that value CNN above 80% can be marked as non-trustworthy, but if these values are public the community can find these people very quickly.

Still manipulation is very strong at certain levels if you look at how the CIA or I$raeli online manipulation is organized. Often they pretend to be on one side, and derange the discussions by inserting emotionally loaded topics or replies.
For example, a scientific discussion on micro-thermite is often deranged with no-planers or nuclear or energy-weapons..

But the meta-topic also describes the limits of the discussion. So these distractions can be removed directly out of the discussion. They are meta off-topic. And they move to the meta-topic garbage can, allowing people to reuse their texts to create their own meta-topic or even to discuss the moderation. All separately.

If this works at all, still needs to be tested ;-)

[–]magnora7 8 insightful - 2 fun8 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 2 fun -  (3 children)

That's interesting and might be very useful. But at the same time seems very rigid and unforgiving. I think the end result might just be similar to votes on reddit, where the groupthink essentially determines the consensus, because those are the people marking the logical fallacies and so on.

I like your framing of the concept of meta-topics, but I have to wonder if every thread isn't already a meta-topic, if you know what I mean.

Setting the limits of a conversation sounds interesting, but reminds me much of the Overton window, where intense debate is allowed within the window, but things outside the window are effectively taboo and aren't "allowed" to be discussed, and in this way the narrative is kept confined to the status quo.

Interesting thoughts, thanks for sharing.

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

The Overton boxing ring.

The Overton humanitarian efforts.

The Overton safe spaces.

No fighting in here gentlemen, this is the war room!

[–]Vigte 3 insightful - 3 fun3 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 3 fun -  (1 child)

The Overton Pillow Fight Slumber Party.

[–]JasonCarswell 3 insightful - 3 fun3 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

The Overton Michael Jackson tickle fight.