What a ride that was. I wonder if it was part of the Q plan?
You're viewing a single comment thread. View all comments, or full comment thread.
Comments (76)
sorted by:
I managed to read your post before it was deleted by moderators. It looks like you hit on the n-word a little hard. So what you're saying is that VOAT was a great place to share profanity and racism in the name of free speech. I'll take a pass on that.
One of the biggest ways our overlords have tricked us was to make some of us believe that free speech is for the purpose of profanity. No -- our forefathers were willing to Die For Your Right to criticize government and not be executed for doing it. Speaking solely for the purpose of being offensive is not worth dying for.
There were 3 main Q boards on VOAT. QRV was the wild west. Some liked that because, well, I guess you've seen a bit of it. There was some good research and spill over from 4 Chan / 8 Kun into QRV. But you had to wade through the muck to find the good stuff. There were 2 Great Awakening boards that were every bit as much Q as QRV. I would argue more so because devolving into name calling and racism wasn't tolerated, and I thought there was much more Q info being found, or brought in from 4 Chan /8 Kun, and it inspired people to find and drop in related material from other sources. People could make questionable comments if it was part of the discussion, and they might get called out on it, or it might get overlooked. So people were "free" to speak their mind. And some of the same would complain when they got shut down, but stirring up shit for the sake of stirring up shit did not go over. Typically, the worst offenders tended to migrate back to QRV. And QRV attracted a lot of shills.
I don't talk that way in my daily life, and don't online either, but we absolutely should be able to.
Doesn't mean people need to LIKE it.
That's the deal with free speech. Nobody needs to accept your speech, you just need to be able to say it. I'm guessing the deleted post in question had the N-F word. If you walk up to someone in person and call them that, expect a punch in the face, but not a jail cell. There's absolutely no reason anyone needs to put up with that shit... BUT... you are allowed to say it if you choose to.
It's kind of like flag burning. I totally support the right to burn the American flag.
If I catch you burning the American flag I'm taking it away from you and probably kicking your ass though. I think it's a disgusting thing to do.
If you can do it without being thrown in prison though, it means we have a free country.
If people can throw around NFs and ((()))'s all over the place, you know this is a safe place to share info that won't get deleted because it hurt someone's feelings.
This place is definitely a nicer day to day atmosphere, but the moderation does worry me.
Then it's not a highbrow type of free speech, it's a lowbrow type of free speech. The problem with that is that while the lowbrows are enjoying shooting off their mouths and seeing how far they can get away with it, the highbrows won't bother to share any high effort posts in such an environment. I don't blame them. Most of their readership would be lowbrows interested in shock speech, not true camaraderie and patriotism.
That said, I do support that there should be places on the internet where one can insult anyone in any way they want, pick a fight at every possible opportunity, post the most disgusting images ever, drive people away with offensive behavior, and just be the biggest assholes they can be.
To some people, this is absolute heaven.
Where is this heavenly place? And does someone sacrifice and fund it free of charge for those demanding absolutely no moderation ever?
It's probably much more satisfying in a juvenile way to find a more highbrow type group and sneak in the lowbrow profanity and racism because it's not expected and has shock value. And it makes it a fun game to see how far one can go before the moderators have to act.
I think Bob was simply making the point that free speech means you are going to see, hear, read some things you won't like. In most cases, that tells you a lot about the person speaking.
The unfortunate side effect of free speech is all the people who show up to disrupt the site, disrupt the movement, and derail good conversations. But they were identified and removed. Some of them were CIA moles, some basement dwellers, some political operatives, and some liberals who feel it's their job to destroy everything worthwhile. You could sometimes tell if you paid attention to how they interacted and what they said (the little tells). But the funny thing was, as iron sharpens iron, often the people we disagreed with brought out the best in us, and we all learned a lot.
I guess a lot turns on the purpose of the forum in question, and whether the moderators have the backbone to enforce the rules.
As an example, does the common man have the right to barge into a Congressional session and interrupt with some of the most vile speech he can come up with, shouting into the microphone simply because he wants to be offensive and interrupt important work? Does he have a free-speech right to do that? Do the cameras have to stay on him to maintain that nationwide feed? Are the congressmen required to pay attention to him as he acts like an idiot? Can he avoid jail for interrupting and assaulting Congress, because he has muh free speech?
Now how about a busker attempting to make a living on a street corner. The guy is talented and can sing and play the guitar really well. But somebody wants to exercise their free speech. So they get nose-to-nose with him and incessantly shout the most offensive stuff they can concoct while drowning out his performance. Is that free speech? Does he have a right to interrupt a good performance, and offend the crowd that wasn't there to hear him?
I'll shut up now, fren. I'm just having fun with it and shooting off my mouth.
No, a privately owned website can moderate as they see fit, for sure.
We're mostly here because what we want to talk about has been censored elsewhere, so I think there are some strong reasons to keep it as open as possible.
Ideally for me, we'd have a site just like this, AND Voat.