Reddit and Voat

Ladies and gentlemen. Many months, or was it years…, ago I created an account on a website called Reddit. It was fun. Great pictures, quick access to news from around the world, political and scientific discussions. It's not exaggeration when I say I loved it there. So what happened. Why there is some mysterious Voat in the title? Why I'm using past tense? Let me tell you a story of censorship and freedom.

Around 9 months ago someone brought to my attention that content is being deleted by administrators if it's not politically correct. Right-wing, anti-government, anti-TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership with which many people have problem as it has the potential to drastically limit freedom of U.S. citizens) posts were seemingly deleted every day. Screenshots of those posts and comments being removed seemed to prove that something is clearly going on behind the curtains.

Ms. Ellen Pao have been a CEO at the time and it seemed as if her ultimate goal was to make Reddit a gold mine. Plans were made to bring in more advertisements, and to make Reddit a friendlier place. What that means? Several subreddits were closed at the time, and even if you can agree with closing and banning clearly hateful subs, it clearly contradicts administrators saying that Reddits were supposed to be a place for everyone and that no one should ever be censored…

Later on a person behind AMA – Ask Me Anything – has been fired without any explanation and without any message to the mods. To further explain → AMA administrator coordinated multiple volunteers – moderators. AMA has been one of the most recognized Reddit features, or subforums (on Reddit called subreddits), where movie stars, politicians, and other famous people have been answering questions for years already. By firing the administrator without any notice to the moderators, Reddit compromised trust of people participating in the program as well as those who were working on its rise.

As a response AMA subreddit closed down and moderators informed they will not open up until they figure out how to proceed with the normal schedule and how to piece everything together. At the same time more and more moderators from other subreddits started voicing their own issues with the administrators… there were a lot of those issues. Receiving no serious response moderators closed down several subreddits during “Blackout 2015” which actually received some coverage in the media.

Reddit was accused of not implementing needed changes, not caring about users and moderators, caring only about the revenue of the site, putting on Reddit more and more advertisements, closing politically incorrect subreddits, removing comments not agreeing with Reddit's actions… “Blackout 2015” ended and everyone went back to their normal tasks, but in subreddit called “Blackout 2015” people were actively looking for an alternative.

This alternative turned out to be a small website very similar in layout to Reddit –> Voat. Made by two students from Switzerland with a clear vision – no censorship. As they said they never wanted Voat to become something cool, it was at first just a school project. There was a massive move from “Blackout 2015” to Voat 8 months ago, and there still is this move as Reddit still censors comments and posts.

No one censors anything on Voat. No one deletes your posts (as long as they are lawful, meaning you don't post child pornography etc.). It's by people, for people… with a goat as its mascot. And no, this post is not meant as a propaganda to get you to quit Reddit or to come to Voat. It is meant only to show why I don't like Reddit anymore, and why I switched websites.