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?
Welcome,
We're mostly outcasts from both sites that decided to build a similar style site for ourselves. We're not big on advertising because it tends to bring people who want to "test the fence" to see what they can get away with. We pay the bills ourselves so we don't need ads or trackers. We'll squash stuff if you get shitty to other users or spam bad sites full of ads or dangerous stuff. All of our code is open and that site is connected to your account here, so you can ask for features or report bugs and then track the progress. We have some better docs comingsoon, probably, maybe one day..
The chat box on the homepage connects to our dev channel. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions :)