Voat is the Symptom but not the Problem. Horseshoe Theory

I have no rebuttal to this, but I feel the common man is being forced to hold one extreme or the other and that’s no good. In a vacuum, most people you meet in person would end up claiming values that place them near the middle. That’s my experience, anyway.

Very well said.

I used Voat for a long time and had some great connections on there. But I haven't had a good experience there in over a year. Being PC is not for me but what the majority of Voat has become is something I'm not.

Good explanation. To me, the character of Voat itself has changed slowly but surely over time. I used to be able to easily ignore what I didn't like and cull out what I did. It's gotten to the point though that that's getting almost impossible. I'm a right wing type guy myself, but not an overly radical one ... plus the immaturity level has also gone up exponentially there. So now I'm figuring I'll lurk and see if they ever get an Atko type figure back that keeps the place worth bothering.

Well said, saverem. It definitely is a big problem that Reddit, Google, Twitter, and Facebook resorted to caving to advertisers instead of defending freedom of speech. And thus, those who are the most frustrated with Reddit, Facebook, Google, and Twitter will often be the first ones to arrive at a new alternative that promises freedom of speech. There's nothing inherently wrong with it. Gab, a microblogging and free speech alternative to Twitter, currently has mostly conservative and "alt-right" users because they often are purged from Twitter. However, if the owners of the new platform decides to ban anyone who disagrees with their majority of users (or even the owners of the new platform), they become just as equally terrible as their competitor. And therefore, both sides would feel like concentration camps for different political extremes.

As much as I like Gab as a platform, I think too much of it is focused on politics currently. And because of that, most people who are looking at it from the outside will see it simply as some platform with a specific political label based on the majority of its users. It's unfortunate, but I sincerely do have hope that it will diversify over time.

I hope Phuks becomes a place where we can have civil political discourse, without getting into calling each other "Nazis" or "libtards," while also focusing on getting along with one another on different things besides our social and political views. And I feel like so far, Phuks has the right setup. A lot of the people here currently are very laid back and I've easily been able to talk about various topics here besides politics.

This all makes sense.

I'm going to agree and disagree.

It seems true to me that, if the mainstream censors all the speech related to one end of the political spectrum, those on that end are going to congregate in the few places that still allow their speech. Since they'll be funneled into overwhelming numbers in those few platforms, they will essentially have radicalization camps. Places like /pol/ and Voat have served that function.

However, I think Horseshoe Theory is a pretty flawed idea. Both the Left and the Right are extremely complicated relationships among sets of ideas and perspectives (in their totality, of course there will be the simple-minded on both sides). Horseshoe Theory basically simplifies them down to one small subset of perspectives on which they share some common ground, and says, "See? They're the same!" It's much like saying that religious fundamentalists and militant atheists are basically the same, since they both like to talk about God(s), but most other people don't really talk about it that much.

There are a myriad of fundamental differences between the extreme Left and Right at this moment - including their ideas on equality and hierarchy, on human biodiversity, on merit, on ideal polities, on the relationship between out-groups and in-groups, on family structure, etc etc etc. Horseshoe Theory misses so much of those fundamental differences by oversimplifying the whole situation. Even where they agree - mainly on the basic acceptance of authoritarianism and identity politics - their perspectives are vastly different and highly nuanced in incompatible ways.

I think they are a lot more different than they are alike.

You ever think that all those voices about hate were just the same people pretending to appear as many?

4chan has always been and will always be about influence. Think about it all those nerdy kids and shy girls that could be a completely different person and do so without consequence......now they can see if they have influence on the real world.

That is what the internet has become. An introverts paradise really.

99% of the element within online is completely different when you actually meet them. I know because I have over and over again. Back in my Reddit days when I was into buying, selling, and trading Lego I met with a great deal of Reddit users.

Almost all of them admitted they had alt accounts to hide their identity from the Lego crowd. I never understood how they could be ashamed of their true self or would pretend it doesn't exist.

I always kept one user name (until they were shadow banned for wrong think). Even on Voat. If I don't like a specific group of people I admitted it. If I did then I admitted that as well. No reason to hide from it as that is just who I am and if you didn't like it then so be it.

Partly why I don't speak to any of them anymore. They said I was too obvious about it online and in public.

So what......least I am honest about it.

Precisely why I made this account. I'm definitely on the right, but when your worried posting about your new laptop (because of Win10) will get you labeled a shill, things are extreme. Because of the circumstances that brought us to vote, I understand the hardline politics and discussion , but those aren't the only things I'm interested in. For the past 6 months at least, it seems every topic on Voat just goes back to politics.

FTR I hate windows but barely know shit about linux and do not have the time to teach my wife, who the laptop was for. Realizing the hesitation I had wanting to start a discussion, knowing it would turn political fast, made me rethink where I spend my time.

you are close, but people on voat have a core of people who like liberty/libertarian ideas. Many of us started on Digg, were chased out by the authoritarians (way before the mass migration, i think the 2008 eleciton cycle, so 2007), and found reddit.

So back then reddit was very libertarian. Even if you were left or right you could agree that the freedom to choose to do something (that didn't hurt anyone else) was the proper path (fine with gay marriage, guns, drugs, anti-corruption, pro-transparency). That is why you could have people like aaron working along side the right-wingers. remember that snowden, manning, assange, etc. are typically left leaning, but are sometimes hated by the left simply because it hurts their position by shedding light on their misdeeds, they would have all fit in fine with early reddit, early digg, and phuks; they most likely would be turned off by voat, but i think that they would use it as a platform regardless of the mean words said there, simply because it is very libertarian (NAP).

I'll leave you with a harvard prof talking about how the alt-right isn't really a bunch of racist meanies, they are simply people who are upset that everyone is lied to. Remember Kucinich (the most left leaning politician I can think of) has to do interviews on fox now, they don't go so far as to call him alt-right, but they do put him in the alt-right camp.