When it first popped up I made an account and took a look. I liked the 'free speech' and 'all are welcome' sales pitch. But at the time it was mostly vacant, and I didn't really like the layout.
I've gone back a couple times to have a quick look, and it's getting ugly. Maybe I'm not setting up my account or preferences or something, but when I logged in and clicked on 'categories' then 'philosophy' and got a page full of images with memes and other empty content. When I clicked on 'science' I got a page filled with discussions about gender or climate change, and nothing else.
Did I accidentally put gab into voat-mode?
Also, it just doesn't have a community feel. More like being in the midst of a mob. There's no compartmentalization, it's all one big group rather than a union of smaller groups.
I don't get it.
What's the appeal, or what am I doing wrong?
That...all sounds great. My first hour or so has been nice.
Let's say I stay around a while, find I really enjoy the place, and then want to give back -- what are the options there? ($$ is probably easiest I imagine, but I'm also a programmer -- mostly scientific/statistical computing with Python/R/C/C++, almost ... many almost 20yrs experience, time flies. That said time is much harder to donate, as I'm sure you know.)