this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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Asklemmy
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Voat was by and for the weird racists from the start.
Was it? I don't ask that to be a jackass. I remember being on there briefly before the racist and jailbait bans on Reddit and it didn't come across as terribly racist to me at the beginning. But it sure as hell got really racist, creepy, and fat-hatey really damn quick.
There's a possibility I just missed it. I'm pretty oblivious unless something is right in my face.
To the best of my memory, it started out as a less moderated more free speech space. But that kind of place online tends to attract racists, bigots, and haters because most places online are very free except for those kinds of speech.
Like the hacker 4chan
Voat was founded to be free speech maximalist relative to Reddit. Basically the only subreddits Reddit ever banned that weren't bigots or pedophiles were r/shoplifting because corpos don't like being stolen from and r/chapotraphouse to present an appearance of impartiality when banning r/thedonald.
When someone online bemoans a lack of free speech, you have to ask, "free speech to say what?" in much the same tone as you might ask, "states' rights to do what?"
I'll never forget my first trip to Voat, literally Nazi shit on the front page with a shitton of votes.
Never went back.
Happy it's gone.
I think it was a good plan-b for about a week; but yeah, it went to absolute shite in such record time.