Hello and welcome to Voat!
Don't be a shy! Start making comments in here to earn your needed minimum 10CCP and then start a post to introduce yourself to other Voaters!
Please explore Voat to find subverses that interest you. If you don't find what you are looking for, perhaps you should create it! In addition, if you find a subverse that seems abandoned, you can request to adopt it. If you do create a new sub or adopt one, you can announce it. Once you have a subverse, you may want to add a custom theme for it.
You can disable custom CSS in your account management options to just see the default interface if you choose. Voat also has a Night Mode as yet another option and many users seem to prefer it! In here as well you will be able to add your email for password recovery (Voat will never use or sell this information).
Your Voat experience can be whatever you want to make it, so make the most of it!
Sub Rule: This sub is for making your introduction post as a new user and for welcoming new users in the comments; posts asking for or offering free upvotes is bad form, Off-Topic to the sub, and subject to deletion
Sub Guideline: Wheaton's Law; if someone is rude, ignore or let them know with your vote, mods don't police "politeness"
Contribution Points
You have two kinds of contribution points: Submission Contribution Points (SCP) and Comment Contribution Points (CCP).
- CCP is what allows you to vote on posts/comments and everyone starts with 10 free upvotes per day; the more CCP you get, the more you can vote.
- SCP doesn't do much for now but there are plans for down the road, and you get one free upvote with every post.
Votes are associated with your IP address: you cannot vote on the same post/comment using alternate accounts; only the first vote will be counted.
Resources
FEATURED: A Guide for New Users
User Agreement, Privacy Policy, FAQs, and About
A Catalog of Voat Subverses (no longer maintained but still helpful)
The Founder: Atko's Did You Know? (old post with good memories)
/v/AVE Amateur Voat Enhancements (works but not maintained right now)
~PRO TIP 1: A great way to quickly gain CCP is to hang out here and greet other newcomers when they post. You are also helping them, so everyone wins!
~PRO TIP 2: You don't have to keep that password you created during the registration process--click the cog wheel by your name and change it!
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[–] rationalinquisition [S] ago
That does seem to be the case so far. But I have concerns as to whether or not that will be sustainable indefinitely. There will always be people willing to create sites like Voat that are anti-censorship; however, there is also a big government push to get more control over the internet, both legislatively and through more subversive means. We could see a future in which no internet hosting company was willing to host something that was anti-censorship (like we saw in today's announcement with a single company).
There may be some hope in decentralizing social media through a new platform that isn't web-based I suppose, but I don't really know enough about it to give an informed opinion about that.
[–] Tisias 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
This is a valid point. And the more free speech cites get pushed underground the more the average citizen will think of them as part of the "dark web" of pirates, drug dealers, pedos, etc. WHO IS THIS 4CHAN? The guilt-by-association will increase as free speechers get pushed to the margins.
The internet was fun. It was our wild west. We'll be telling our kids about the days when you could say anything you wanted online and chat with people around the world. We'll them about the days before you had to worry about getting fired for making the wrong Twitter or Facebook post.
Technology is always a race. New military technologies, for example, have a fleeting period in which they're exclusive to one nation or region. So too it goes for the democratizing aspects of information technology and the Big Brother capacities it allows. In the end, I suspect that tech will do more to empower our masters than the common folk because power tends to absorb and attract (e.g., a handful of people could decide to unleash a nuclear holocaust), but for now we have to run the race.
[–] rationalinquisition [S] ago
I wouldn't write off hope entirely. Power has historically been cyclical. That was the key point of Karl Marx' writings. Even if communism itself was a bad attempt to remedy the situation, the observation itself was valid. At this point our society is at it's apex, but if it follows the established trend it won't be too much longer (from a historical standpoint anyway) before the existing establishment is thrown out and the people doing the throwing take power. Then you get another period of greater freedom before the whole thing repeats itself as that freedom eventually gets whittled away again.