Can someone explain Gab.ai?

[–] PMYA 4 points (+4|-0)

A lot of the people here started using Voat around the time the Reddit sub blackout happened. Once they scaled up to make room for new users, Voat was actually pretty great for a while. A combination of "normal" Redditors going back to Reddit, the hate sub banning fiasco shifting a ton of users to Voat and the 2016 US election kind of ruined it though.

It's small here and pretty slow in terms of content but it's nice to have a place that is dramaless. Were you one of the users who browsed the gundeals, darknetmartkets etc. subs that recently got banned? Personally I was more pissed off about the fake celebrity porn being banned because that is literally the only reason I still looked at Reddit.

[–] caliban 3 points (+3|-0)

I mostly browsed some of the other firearms-related subreddits (not the more politically-oriented ones), the science / stats subreddits, and of course whatever randomness was on the front page -- gotta have my regular 'hold my beer' gifs!

I'm personally someone very much "in the middle" politically -- I grew up in a very 'conservative' area, but have lived and worked in a much more 'liberal' area now. I find that when I go back home I'm 'the liberal' and when I'm at work I'm the 'the conservative'. I know lots of friends/family back home who couldn't imagine voting Clinton the last election, and friends from work / grown up life who couldn't imagine voting for Trump the last election.

I find all my politics can pretty easily be summed up largely by "allow consenting adults to do what they want if they aren't directly hurting someone else." I do a lot of scientific computing/stats for work, so in my free time I often dig a lot into the stats behind controversial political things, and very often find that public discussion on this is ... very low quality, and instead often driven by whatever statements of statistics can generate the most outrage from own side.

For a while reddit felt like a place where I could get reasonable conversation from strangers on controversial topics. I've really, really enjoyed it.

In large part, it feels like it still is a place where reasonable people can talk reasonably about controversial topics -- but of course that can't happen at all if Reddit the company shuts down an entire subreddit. No discussion, no debate, just throw the switch (and announce it from a throwaway account).

I feel like I see the writing on the wall -- today (or yesterday? earlier this week?) Reddit essentially self-selected to take on the mantle of the ATF (self-regularting the sale of alcohol, tobacco, and firearms).

I don't think it will be much more time before they start becoming much more active, directly banning politically controversial topics.

That's really too bad. A lot of my views have been shaped (and moderated!) by seeing both sides of an issue and talking it out on subreddits. Now more than ever we need forums where we can talk about controversial topics with people who don't agree with us, in a productive manner. Seems like that is moving towards ending on Reddit. It's not there yet, but definitely going that way.

That was my prompt to really start looking around. I'll still stay involved in Reddit but want to start building communities elsewhere.

I browsed gundeals occasionally but not much of the other subreddits that were caught up in the ban -- although at least some of that might have changed if I'd found them earlier. Scotchswap sounded great! I *mostly* browsed some of the other firearms-related subreddits (not the more politically-oriented ones), the science / stats subreddits, and of course whatever randomness was on the front page -- gotta have my regular 'hold my beer' gifs! I'm personally someone very much "in the middle" politically -- I grew up in a very 'conservative' area, but have lived and worked in a much more 'liberal' area now. I find that when I go back home I'm 'the liberal' and when I'm at work I'm the 'the conservative'. I know lots of friends/family back home who couldn't imagine voting Clinton the last election, and friends from work / grown up life who couldn't imagine voting for Trump the last election. I find all my politics can pretty easily be summed up largely by "allow consenting adults to do what they want if they aren't directly hurting someone else." I do a **lot** of scientific computing/stats for work, so in my free time I often dig a lot into the stats behind controversial political things, and very often find that public discussion on this is ... very low quality, and instead often driven by whatever statements of statistics can generate the most outrage from own side. For a while reddit felt like a place where I *could* get reasonable conversation from strangers on controversial topics. I've really, really enjoyed it. In large part, it feels like it still *is* a place where reasonable people can talk reasonably about controversial topics -- but of course that can't happen at all if Reddit the company shuts down an entire subreddit. No discussion, no debate, just throw the switch (and announce it from a throwaway account). I feel like I see the writing on the wall -- today (or yesterday? earlier this week?) Reddit essentially self-selected to take on the mantle of the ATF (self-regularting the sale of alcohol, tobacco, and firearms). I don't think it will be much more time before they start becoming much more active, directly banning politically controversial topics. That's really too bad. A lot of my views have been shaped (and moderated!) by seeing both sides of an issue and talking it out on subreddits. Now more than ever we need forums where we can talk about controversial topics with people who don't agree with us, in a productive manner. Seems like that is moving towards ending on Reddit. It's not there yet, but definitely going that way. That was my prompt to really start looking around. I'll still stay involved in Reddit but want to start building communities elsewhere.

[–] PMYA 1 points (+1|-0)

Edited

I find all my politics can pretty easily be summed up largely by "allow consenting adults to do what they want if they aren't directly hurting someone else."

I think this is largely the outlook most, if not everyone, has here. There are disagreements from time to time but everyone is fairly civil.

The US election really put me off discussing politics on the internet. I don't live in the US, but found myself constantly having to talk about US politics regardless of the context, or having people try to apply the situation in the US to talk about my own country without recognising that there are large differences. It was particularly frustrating because I am actually interested in US politics. At least some of the hysteria has died down now and we can look back on things with a lot more context.

In the case of Reddit, it really does seem like they're just trying to make a complete shift into a social media platform whilst retaining enough of their users for it to be profitable. User profile feeds and follows, getting rid of CSS on subs, banning anything controversial to advertisers, creating their own image and video hosts to keep people on the site as much as possible and just generally doing shit that makes zero sense. People can not possibly think they are so incompetent that they haven't noticed how unpopular some of the decisions they've made over the past 3 years or so have been, there is clearly an agenda in place.

Can someone explain Gab.ai?

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/s/AskPhuks