
Imzy wants to be a kinder, gentler version of Reddit - ohjeez
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-07/it-s-like-reddit-without-the-trolls
======
veddox
I am staggered by the amount of people here who object to Imzy's "Be
Nice"-policy on the basis that it limits free speech. To me that seems to be a
rather flawed argumentation:

a) The First Amendment of the US Constitution, which guarantees free speech,
explicitly does so in a political context ("Congress shall make no law [...]
abridging the freedom of speech"). Imzy is not the US Congress, they don't
have jurisdiction over anything but their own little niche of the Internet
(which absolutely _nobody_ is forcing you to visit if you don't want to) - so
why are you upset when they ask you, within the bounds of their community, to
be nice?

b) Why does free speech mean that we get to insult and demean each other, even
going so far as to sending death threats? I think the German constitution (the
_Grundgesetz_ ) has a point when it says in Article 5, §2 that the right of
free speech is limited, amongst others, by every person's right of dignity
("Recht der persönlichen Ehre" \- a hard to translate concept).

c) On Reddit and like sites we see behaviour that we would never tolerate if
we saw it in real life. Why do we not only tolerate it online, but suddenly
elevate such antisocial behaviour of the extremest kind to a mystical status
of "expression of free speech"? There is a reason we are taught "manners" as
children: without a minimum of politeness, societies cannot function.
Politeness and courtesy have to do with respecting another's person even if
you don't share his (or her) opinions, with tolerating people who are
different from you. And is that not the very epitome of freedom?

Free speech is perhaps the most fundamental right of any democracy that must
be protected at all costs. It is vital for the continuation of a free nation.
However, Imzy is not a nation. It is a little website on the Internet. And it
doesn't ban dissenting opinion (the real reason why we need free speech) - it
merely asks you to remain polite while stating your's. So what is your problem
with it?

~~~
overgard
Well, lets say you know someone who is a legit flat earther. You're not going
to change their mind, because such a belief is unreasonable, but if you
attempt to reason with them you elevate their social status and accidentally
lend credence to them. This is the Fox News "fair and balanced" model -- if
you give equal time to both viewpoints, even if one viewpoint is nuts, people
will assume that there's a rational debate being had.

HN, for all its good parts, tends to be humorless. I would argue that humor
can work as an immune system to bad ideas. When someone says something really
stupid, often the best response really is mockery. You wont convince the
person you're making fun of, but it can settle a debate pretty fast. Humor
doesn't have to be mean to be funny, but sometimes it is. "Be Nice" policies
tends to lead to communities that lack this useful sociological immune system,
and it can drive out the smart people, to the point where you have a lot of
"nice" people arguing some very dumb points.

~~~
victorhooi
What would you do in real-life? Would you make a mockery of them? Or would you
simply ignore them?

I find a lot of people (on both sides) will do things online behind the shield
of anonymity they wouldn't otherwise in real life.

I find this behaviour cowardly.

Would you confront these people in real life, and mock them to their faces? I
suspect a lot of people who do it online wouldn't in real life (if for no
other reason than they'd get punched in the face).

I'm not saying we can't argue with people, or be direct - however, there are
lines you don't cross (and I feel Reddit often crosses those lines). You can
be upfront, and honest about your beliefs without being a jerk.

~~~
overgard
> What would you do in real-life? Would you make a mockery of them? Or would
> you simply ignore them?

I guess it depends on the context right? I remember in college there used to
be these religious fanatics that would loudly berate strangers in the plaza;
whenever someone would walk up and try to "debate" them, it would just make
things worse, but sometimes someone would just say something really funny and
the mood of the whole crowd would change and the extremely aggressive
obnoxious fanatic would end up packing it in early or going for a new tactic.
(Maybe not immediately, but it did seem to have an impact overall)

My point isn't like, go pick on people, that would suck, I'm just saying that
humor is a really useful tool sometimes. Self-serious "be nice" policies can
remove those tools and give some unreasonable people a nice cloud of cover to
haunt places.

Maybe a different metaphor is better. A good community is like a garden.
Nobody likes pesticide, but sometimes if you have a pest problem... It's all a
judgement call right. "Be nice" policies only work if you can assume the other
people you're interacting with are reasonable, and that's not really always
true.

~~~
MichaelMoser123
It all makes sense, however i don't like metaphors that compare people with
opinions to pests (insects don't have opinions afaik), a metaphor like this is
dehumanizing your opponents - it is a very bad metaphor.

------
BEEdwards
Lot's "but this isn't free speech" in here, but that's exactly the point, free
speech has been tried and it leads to shit holes like reddit and voat. Places
you might visit, but wouldn't recommend or even admit to using in a mixed
group.

People talk about free speech like it's some goal, but in reality all people
seem to do with it is make fun of fat people and post stolen naked pictures of
celebrities.

When confronted with the fact that this isn't acceptable behavior, even if you
specifically don't ban them, they will threaten you with death and ddos your
site.

"Voat has been under constant DDoS [distributed denial of service] attacks
almost since Day One. At one point, our servers were shut down by our ISP
without notice. We even received death threats."

Instead of lowering the bar and getting surprised when people fling shit, Imzy
is trying the opposite.

Will it work, no idea, but free speech as much talk as it gets doesn't work
out as well as some people like to pretend it does.

~~~
frou_dh
> People talk about free speech like it's some goal, but in reality all people
> seem to do with it is make fun of fat people and post stolen naked pictures
> of celebrities.

All people do in reality ... if for some reason you choose to disregard the
huge number of fairly autonomous communities on Reddit?

If I used that ultra-broad brush for HN, I'd say that all commenters here seem
to do is post links to xkcd 927 and the wiki page for ad-hom.

~~~
derefr
The problem with Reddit (the company) is that it chooses to _represent_ its
service as a single community, and thus allows all of its communities to be
tarred by the same brush.

If Reddit was more like, say, StackExchange, or Wordpress.com, or Discourse—a
_hosting site_ for "communities" which happened to use the "Reddit
engine"—then it wouldn't have nearly the PR problem it has now. Nobody blames
Wordpress.com for the content of somebody's blog hosted there.

~~~
andrewflnr
I think reddit accurately represents the fact that _both_ factors are present,
lots of specific communities and also a larger reddit-wide community. At least
I was never confused about that.

~~~
derefr
Right, it's clear enough "from the inside" as an experienced user. But from
the _outside_ , people (e.g. journalists) just talk about "Reddit" as one
place. Reddit Corp issues administrative policies for the site as if in
complete ignorance of this public perception.

There is a reason WordPress has the .com/.org split, and it's not just that
large customers demand to self-host. That could have resulted in something
more like GitHub Enterprise, but instead you see a well-supported FOSS
offering. Why? Because this split allows _WordPress.com_ to maintain a very
strict TOS that disallows many types of content, while still allowing other
people who don't want to adhere to those policies to "run on WordPress" easily
by using the WordPress.org software either directly or through third-party
hosts.

If Reddit was smart, the "Reddit engine" would be a well-supported, easy to
install FOSS offering like WordPress.org, and there would be a healthy
ecosystem of third-party hosts running that software. Voat would just be "Yet
Another Reddit-as-Service Provider", instead of a competitor and political
statement.

As it is, the Reddit engine is an effectively-unsupported blob of code that
needs tons of other heavy dependencies to get it running. The only site I know
running a copy of the Reddit engine is LessWrong—and they've heavily forked it
for their own purposes.

------
jdavis703
I signed up on their website, went through the onboarding flow and joined a
couple of communities. Without them knowing anything about my political
leanings they suggested a bunch of anti-Trump communities. I guess they're not
trying to solve the "filter bubble" issue, but rather becoming the Reddit for
liberals? I mean it's their business for them to run as they like, but I hope
somebody can take us past the Breitbart vs Huffington Post dichotomy.

~~~
zzzeek
It sounds like a fair amount of statements directly made by Trump on the
campaign trail (mocking a disabled person, telling people to check out the
"sex tape" of a former Miss universe he didn't like, many other statements)
would themselves not be allowed on this site, so it's not surprising it would
be naturally anti-Trump. I highly doubt it would have any such attitudes
towards people like Jeb Bush or Rand Paul who are decidedly not liberal.

------
liotier
I don't understand how commenters generalize about Reddit: the is no Reddit,
only subreddits - each of which is moderated in a different way. I moderate
/r/Africa we deal with speech mercilessly. /r/askScience or /r/askHistorians
have even stricter policies. On the other hand, there are subreddits which are
most definitely hateful... But I never go there. In the middle, I'm still
subscribed to /r/Europe which is a battleground... I won't give it up and I do
not see how any amount of moderation could make it better: politics are all
about conflicting ideas !

~~~
stefantalpalaru
> the is no Reddit, only subreddits - each of which is moderated in a
> different way

I was banned for 2 days on the whole platform for following a link to Voat,
another link back to Reddit and downvoting a guy who was copy/pasting the same
comment all over the thread. (Reddit is surprisingly link-sharing adverse for
a site based on link sharing)

Reddit exists through the abuses and policies of its administrators. It's not
a generic forum platform and I don't think it ever was.

~~~
diyorgasms
Voat is where the groups who were kicked off of reddit (pizzagate, jailbait, c
--ntown and the rest of the "chimpire", fph) go to organize brigades off-site.
It doesn't surprise me in the least that reddit bans people participating in
off-site brigading activity, especially from Voat.

------
60654
I've been using imzy since very early on, and I have to say, I really like the
idea of it. The basic premise is basically: "do whatever but play nice". And
if you don't play nice you get modded and eventually kicked out.

I can get behind that TBH.

Also, to be sure, they do have some growing pains to go through. There are too
many empty communities at this point (they should've started with fewer high-
traffic ones). And the website perf isn't as fast as Reddit or HN. But I'm
sure that will get worked out over time...

~~~
webwanderings
I didn't see this as their basic premise. Their basic premise seems to hinge
on the idea of "tipping people's niceness". If I am nice and helpful, then I
should expect to earn a penny. And I should do the same to others.

That's actually very similar to the plot of Black Mirror's Nosedive episode.

I tried to hang on there but I didn't find much motivation to "earn anything".
I am not even sure why I should reward anyone there.

~~~
NotAMoose
>Their basic premise seems to hinge on the idea of "tipping people's
niceness".

This isn't actually true. Some news article decided that was our basic premise
because it made a good clickbait headline. Our tipping system is the beginning
of a larger business model that we hope to implement in the future.

[https://medium.com/imzyhq/why-imzy-doesnt-have-ads-and-
what-...](https://medium.com/imzyhq/why-imzy-doesnt-have-ads-and-what-we-re-
doing-instead-ff3f1cb8c3c4#.998jlpam4)

We don't want to have advertisements on the site, and the tipping system is
part of our strategy to avoid that.

~~~
webwanderings
Isn't the business model the real premise? Without which, you won't be able to
self-sustain, which then renders any other supposed premise, useless.

~~~
rtpg
I think for more community-run sites, the business model is not the real
premise.

No one would say that the real premise of Wikipedia is collecting donations.

~~~
webwanderings
But Wikipedia proves that the real premise is not sustainable if they don't
collect donations.

So whether one defines the hierarchy of premises or not, the fact of the
matter is that the intention matters. The intention of Imzy seems to be that
they want to stand against Reddit, and their stand out qualification is for
people to be nice via reward-system. Now here I am not going to go into the
argument of whether reward systems should be used for adults...but it is one
of their premise for sure.

~~~
NotAMoose
I'm saying that literally no where do we say that people should "tip each
other for being nice", nor do we have some sort of reward system based on
that. That is entirely a thing invented by clickbait headlines.

From the medium article I linked:

>Most of you know you can tip posts, comments, and communities on Imzy. It was
important to us that we include our payments platform in some way from day
one, and this was the simplest way to do it. You can give any community, post,
or comment a reward for great content that you really appreciate. But that is
just the tiniest little seed of what’s to come.

That is what got misconstrued into "tipping people for being nice."

To use something you might be familiar with, reddit has reddit gold. It gives
some minor perks, and you can gift it to other people. Reddit calls this
"gilding". People gild some pretty ridiculous and even awful content all the
time. The idea that we would institute a tipping system (which in some ways
could be seen as analogous to gilding, except with real money) and just
magically everyone would use it for "being nice" simply doesn't make sense,
and would have been a pretty odd idea on our part.

A lot of times folks want to tip content creators and others. We wanted to
give them a way to do this. We have a bunch of other stuff planned for the
payment system in the future, as outlined in that Medium piece.

Hopefully this clarifies some.

~~~
webwanderings
So I am not really a regular Reddit user, nor do I even participate there (I
subscribe my selected content there via RSS).

When I joined Imzy, the very first thing I was told, was to use this reward
system. But you are saying that it is just a tinniest part of the whole. To
me, it seems contradictory because otherwise a tinniest part wouldn't stand
out up front.

I am not necessarily against this system (tiny or otherwise), but Imzy clearly
seems to have an issue establishing its narrative properly. I recently read or
heard somewhere, that it is psychologically proven, that if you tell someone
what to do, they won't like it (or they'd do the opposite). You give people
unconditional choice, and they won't go home regretting, even if they'd do
what you want them to do anyway.

~~~
NotAMoose
>I recently read or heard somewhere, that it is psychologically proven, that
if you tell someone what to do, they won't like it (or they'd do the
opposite).

Have you found stop signs working that way? There was a crash at a stop sign
near my house tonight. Perhaps the people were just psychologically driven to
ignore the stop sign because of science.

I don't really understand what you're talking about with "unconditional
choice." Yes, you have a choice to run a stop sign. That choice has the
consequence of potentially killing you or other people. Yes, you will get your
drivers license taken away if you are constantly driving around yelling "screw
the man!" and running every stopsign you see because of some strange notion of
"unconditional choice" to run stopsigns.

No you can't start a racist hate mob on our platform. That should go without
saying, but for some reason that is considered "novel" to some folks on the
internet.

Regarding the tipping system, we're not forcing anyone to use it. Only a small
amount of our users use it, and that is totally fine.

------
mabbo
The only internet community that I've ever seen achieve a set of rules that
are followed by the community has been somethingawful.com. And while there's
lots of criticism you can lay on them, they've maintained a culture and
community for nearly two decades.

They did this by making accounts to comment cost money, a one-time $10 fee. If
you troll, you get banned and you need to pay $10 again to get your account
back. It's a simple and brilliant solution- those who are good members of the
community pay the least and those who make the community worse pay the most.

~~~
AlexB138
Most of the early Somethingawful community is long gone, broken into splinter
sites that look more like SA did in its early days. It's now populated with
people who are ok with the heavy handed mods enforcing their views through
bans. It's also a mostly irrelevant site now, when compared to how fundamental
it was to early internet culture.

------
veddox
The Internet has such an enormous potential in terms of fostering cross-
boundary communication, the free exchange of ideas and knowledge, and all the
rest of it. It makes me sad to see once again that the greatest thing
preventing it from really fulfilling that potential is that we can't stop
adults from behaving like kindergarteners. Why is it so difficult to get
people to abide by the basic rules of human decency and civility?

~~~
snowpanda
And yet, whether you realize it or not, you learned things from people that
are "behaving like kindergartners". It might even be as basic as seeing
examples of how not to behave.

Censorship is not the answer.

~~~
veddox
I learnt how not to behave because my parents taught me that everybody
deserves at least a minimum of respect. How is it censorship to ask people to
behave themselves?

------
vivekd
I know some subreddits have "be kind and respectful" built into their rules,
but this is often gamed by some redditors who will make carefully worded
passive aggressive statements at ideological opponents and then quickly call
for banning them when they react. There are also moderation issues with
volunteer moderators sometimes using different standards of "kind and gentle"
based on whether they agreed with the views of given posters. It seems hard to
maintain standards like "kind and gentle" in any objective manner.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
I think you've hit on the core issue here. Whilst I abhor some of the hatred
and viciousness posted online, and think it's absurd to try to turn it into a
free speech issue, I can understand the benefit of no censorship: drawing the
line, consistently, is very, very difficult - maybe impossible. But even
reddit draws a line (US law?), so there's no getting away from it.

Does anyone here advocate 'free speech' so strongly that they wouldn't mind
someone posting their personal details or naked photos online? I'm sure _some_
people are so thick-skinned that they could handle that, but I certainly
couldn't.

~~~
intortus
Non-consensual sexualization (like upskirts, revenge porn, kiddie porn) gets
rationalized as free speech by assholes for whom it is personally self-serving
to do so.

Free speech is about being able to have and communicate about ideas that may
be against the status quo. It's not about harming people. It's a clear
boundary that has been held up both judicially and culturally time and time
again.

------
danols
Am I limiting free speech if I kick out some racist, hate spewing bully from
my house because I don't want to listen to their nonsense? No. It is just
common sense and how the 'real' world works. Why should the online world be
any different? If there are a few destructive people affecting the experience
of the majority lets just kick them out and not deal with them anymore.
Problem solved. They don't have the right to ruin the experience of the
majority in the name of free speech.

~~~
intortus
Free speech just for white men isn't free speech at all. When you don't kick
out the racist bully, they turn your space into one that is exclusionary
toward minorities. Do you shut up some idiots who have nothing but purely
harmful things to say, or all people of color?

~~~
wyager
> Free speech just for white men isn't free speech at all.

What you're describing here doesn't exist on any mainstream websites. On the
other hand, there are plenty of women-only or PoC-only subreddits, for
example. So while what you're saying is true, I'm not really sure why it's
relevant.

> exclusionary

You're creating a false equivalence between two different concepts of
"exclusion"; one is actual enforced exclusion (like banning people whose
opinions you don't like) and the other is when someone gets their feelings
hurt because they don't like what's being said on a website.

> Do you shut up some idiots who have nothing but purely harmful things to
> say, or all people of color?

You're doing it again. "Shut up" means, in one case, banning people, and in
the other case, when they (hypothetically) choose to leave of their own accord
because they don't like the community.

~~~
intortus
There are a number of subreddits for women or people of color that have been
very articulate about precisely this problem. They are assaulted on an ongoing
basis in a way that most communities full of white men never have to worry
about. That is an affront to free speech.

It's not about feelings. People don't tend to swim upstream when searching for
community. Why should they? If a platform demonstrates over and over that it
lacks both the will and means to protect marginalized communities from
personal and private abuse, then its demographics will remain significantly
white and male, and they will set the tone for what is normal and permissible
rather than the people who are at risk.

Choosing to favor no one is not a choice that's available to us, because it's
effectively choosing the most exclusionary voice.

~~~
nekohacker
TwoXChromosomes deals with this a lot.

------
intortus
Hate speech, bullying, none of that shit needs to be protected speech. It's
not as delicate or complicated as people who generally aren't on the receiving
end of it try to make it out to be.

~~~
vivekd
You're right, in many cases, hate speech and bullying are obvious and can be
easily spotted. But there are always grey areas and disagreements where
eradicating hate speech and bullying can also end up getting rid of speech
with valid political dimensions.

One sort of obvious case where important speech was classified as harmful is
facebook's recent spat with the prime minister of Norwary over them censoring
the famous photo of "Napalm girl," a young, naked Vietnamese girl running
naked in the streets from a Napalm attack.

~~~
intortus
The presence of grey areas does not invalidate the entire concept of "fuck
off, nazis."

------
jnordwick
>Zork created an Imzy community about debunking falsehoods, mostly political
ones. It’s got 3,000 members and no trolls.

This just seems like a way of saying "people who agree agree with me." In any
controversial topic determing who is a troll at the margins of discussion is
very difficult.

~~~
nommm-nommm
Yeah, its impossible.

Say I post "black people are subhuman." I could be trolling (intentionally
provoking emotional responses for the lulz) or that could be my _actual honest
to goodness opinion_. You just don't know. There's also no polite way to
express that opinion and that's the same for many, many opinions.

------
Keyframe
Somehow I think an open community can't be nice if it's anonymous. Not that
all communities have to be anonymous (far from that), but if you want self-
restraint then you need to revoke anonymity. I don't see how else that would
work. At least a semi-anonymous system. For example one where a seed pool of
people are chosen to be a part of the community and have them invite and be
responsible for a certain number of child/invites. If one of the invites and
their invites screws up, whole branch suffers or something.

~~~
McGlockenshire
> Somehow I think an open community can't be nice if it's anonymous

Facebook comments have demonstrated that having your real name attached to
your internet comments does exactly nothing to stop people from saying awful
things. It's a moderate deterrent at best.

------
lucker
It's interesting what a difference there is in people's perspectives. To me,
Reddit seems excruciatingly polite and well-mannered, often to the point of
dishonesty. This is probably because I've been to 4chan and similar places.

~~~
SuperPaintMan
As a frequent channer I find Reddit a hugbox of insulating opinions and gaming
the karma system (To the point where commentary can be as trite as shitty dad-
tier jokes). The benefit of 4chan and company is that once the identity is
stripped away (and a filter for callous remarks created) a user is actually
free to speak their mind.

Sometimes this develops into meaningful posts, othertimes it ends up as a mess
of shitposting. But the freedom is there and it is wonderful.

------
tuxt
Just one question: If a muslim says gay people should not be allowed to be
married or a teacher or whatever, is this allowed?

~~~
zhemao
What does being Muslim have to do with it? People of any religion are free to
express their opinion on gay marriage. Now if they said all gay people should
be stoned, that would be another thing.

> You are still welcome to express your opinions, even if they are offensive
> to some users. We want honest and open discussion to happen on Imzy from all
> sides. However, these opinions cross the line into malicious speech when
> they specifically incite violence or hatred, or make people fear you will
> act against them in a violent manner. We reserve the right to remove
> anything overtly malicious.

That said, each community has its own moderation policy on top of it. So
people expressing an opinion the community leaders deem unacceptable may be
banned from the specific community.

------
galfarragem
> It's like Reddit, without the trolls

That's HN.

~~~
ohyoutravel
Reddit definitely does not have the tech focus hn does. Maybe it did in the
long past, but not anymore. Definitely not a substitute for Reddit content
without the trolls.

~~~
krapp
It makes no sense to talk about Reddit and HN as if they had the same scope.
It would be more appropriate to compare HN to a particular subreddit.

~~~
willis77
There was a time when Reddit did not have subreddits (or even the ability to
comment). During this time, Reddit's community was very much like HN is
currently. It was mostly techy people who found Digg was getting a little too
"low brow". It may not have been explicitly tech focused, but it may as well
have been.

~~~
rmc
HN was delibrately set up to be "what reddit was at the start"

------
NotQuantum
It's a neat site. First thing I noticed when I made an account was that they
already have a place to setup a Payment method. Is it just me or is that a bit
strange?

~~~
guiseroom
One of the features of Imzy is that you can "tip" other users. If someone
creates something that you like, posts a good link, or makes a great comment,
you can tip them.

You can read more about that here: [https://medium.com/imzyhq/why-imzy-doesnt-
have-ads-and-what-...](https://medium.com/imzyhq/why-imzy-doesnt-have-ads-and-
what-we-re-doing-instead-ff3f1cb8c3c4#.5uhs7i9yl)

------
qwertyuiop924
Imzy sounds interesting. The questions is how well the rules are written and
enforced. If the rules are just "be nice," then the community may be pleasant,
but it will be rife for censorship of any sort of dispute, establishment of
"safe spaces," etc.

I've been through reddit, usenet, and the _chans, and I 'm part of the
programming culture (one perhaps more acidic than most), so I do detest
censorship. (ie, you can't say that sort of thing/express that sort of opinion
here). But that doesn't seem to be where Imzy is coming from. The use of a
_chan/usenet style most recent system as opposed to reddit-style voting also
shows that Imzy seems to have a good understanding of how corrosive "internet
points" can be.

Community moderation can be a good thing. HN and 4chan are living proof. And
if your criticism is "but my freedom of speech," xkcd.com/1357/ gives the
explanation for why that's wrong.

Basically, I think that if Imzy is well-run, it could be a very good site
(just like the good parts of reddit). However, if it's poorly run, it will end
up as an endless cycle of agreement, with any dissent leading to an immidiate
ban. Time will tell.

There are plenty of sites out there for those who wish to express themselves
freely. Well-moderated sites are considerably rarer, and we could use another
one.

But hey, maybe I'm crazy.

~~~
zhemao
Well here are the rules: [https://www.imzy.com/community-
policy](https://www.imzy.com/community-policy)

I think those are fairly clear. Granted there are always going to be grey
areas. I agree that effective moderation is hard. I'm sure the site admins are
cognizant of that.

------
gavanwoolery
Hmm, perhaps the intent is noble (or not, depending on your perspective), but
historically products like this have failed in the past (and I am not trying
to be needlessly critical, but just provide some feedback and perhaps a
warning). "I want to make product X, but with different ethical standards" is
not enough of a selling point for most people. It is hard enough to entice
people away from a popular platform even when you are adding new, desired
features. Happy to be proven wrong here.

As I have said many times before, I have found EVERY form of feedback to be
valuable, even the most seemingly poisonous feedback. A simple 3 line response
to any of your harshest critics will often turn them in to fans, or at least
neutral, if you approach them with humility and respect (i.e. admit that their
criticism has some degree of truth, and try to explain to them how you are
attempting to work around the problem).

The internet is not a good place to be emotionally fragile, especially when
you are willingly putting yourself out there. I am not expecting human
behavior to change any time soon so I'd rather help people understand that
they are talking to real people on the internet, instead of just filtering
them out. Of course, that is strictly a personal preference, I would not blame
others for thinking differently. :)

As for all the trolls and nasty internet content, I have no problem with it to
be honest. It will exist somewhere if not on Reddit, and I never encounter it
on Reddit anyhow (within my subreddits at least). Moderators tend to do a
pretty good job of keeping their respective communities clean. On the rare
occasion where I do encounter it somewhere, I just ignore it. Why waste my
mental energy?

------
throwaway4891a
37signals did research on this. For a respectful community, start with a
difficult-to-attain, invite-only profile where a person has to show a real,
verified profile pic and post their also verified name. More like ASW.
Anonymous positing is useful for exposing misdeeds of power or be more honest
than one would otherwise self-censor; anonymity is no panacea either.

"Safe-space" utopias never scale: there will be SJW bickering and whining
and/or extreme self-censorship which will lead to an extremely boring (and
irrelevant) platform. Plus, online platforms never have to guarantee free
speech... they're businesses and organizations which can choose to do just
about whatever they like within various, regional legal limits.

------
tscs37
I don't think this would be a really successful model.

For one, once this scales, it's either gonna cost a ton to moderate unless you
have it do people voluntarily, in which case you'll get moderators that don't
care or alternatively you won't scale.

On second, I'm having serious doubts if such a community could grow a honest
and public forum wherein opinions and statements are calmly discussed and
properly evaluated.

Especially the second one is a huge problem, it makes any discussion platform
essentially worthless, no matter how hard you try to be nice.

------
Tempest1981
Which of the following are considered "free speech"? The term means different
things to different people.

Some examples: (The first 3 are material-based, the last 3 seem are person-
based (is there a better word for that?))

* State an opposing/unpopular view

* Refute a forum posting with facts

* Refute a posting with lies (a recent hot topic)

* Insult a specific person, libel, defame their reputation

* Death threats against "enemies", inciting a mob against a person/business/group

* DOXing your enemies or opposing moderators, hacking their accounts, destroying data.

------
meddlepal
But that's the part of Redditch that makes it awesome... It's unfiltered.

------
AlexB138
So what they really mean is "Reddit without anyone who will disagree with your
sophomoric views on politics" it seems. It's people's choice if they want to
dig into a non-threatening bubble, but it's fairly sad. You don't grow by
surrounding yourself with people just like you.

~~~
sanswork
I've used reddit for around 10 years now and the past 3 or so it has become a
seriously hate filled place full of awful people. It makes me a worse person
when I interact regularly there these days so I rarely do.

If people on the other side of the political spectrum to me can't express
their views without being rude or mean than honestly I don't care about their
opinions. Is that living in a bubble? No it is choosing not to interact with
people that I consider to be jerks. It's only living in a bubble if you let
some social network define your life.

What I find sad is how upset people are getting here at the idea that not
everyone wants to deal with them. It's like there is a surprise that there has
been a backlash against jerks and all the jerks are sitting around complaining
about no one wanting to be friends with them anymore and how the other people
are jerks for that.

------
facepalm
The site attracted Lena "kill all white men" Dunham. Ooohkay...

------
noobermin
Random question, what does it take to get an advertisement in a major paper? I
suppose as long as you are part of the "in" crowd, any site/app/service you
build will garner a free article for publicity?

~~~
Joeboy
Send a press release with a compelling story. Make it something they can use
more or less verbatim. Phone to check they got it, try to find out who to talk
to about it. Ideally know an insider who can help you. Repeat for other major
papers.

It probably doesn't hurt if your story is that a major competitor to the
mainstream news orgs is run for the benefit of misogynists and paedophiles.

------
quickben
'Imzy', the name is a bit hard to pronounce.

~~~
duiker101
That's what you get when you name with this criteria:

 _the name means nothing; it was an available URL without copyright issues_

~~~
userbinator
That said, it sounds very appropriate a name for an IM service, and if people
were asked to guess without knowing about the site, that would probably be
their first guess.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I think I'd guess it's a mixture of "image" \+ "etsy", or maybe a pinterest
clone (image-zy).

To me an issue with the name is it has no obvious non-awkward member name:
Redditor sounds good; Voater quite reasonable; but is it Imzer? Imzier? Imzy-
er? none of which trip off the tongue.

~~~
sanswork
Could be like SA where it isn't made of up the name of the site.

------
amelius
Why can't a forum cater to everybody? E.g., you could hide troll comments
using a filter.

~~~
notheguyouthink
I'm wary of any type of moderation. I don't know how it can be done, but it's
very apparent that reddit has lots of moderation _(within subs)_ and it seems
to heavily promote echo chambers.

I fear we won't make any major advancements until AI can accurately measure
our intent, snark, etc. Because we need to not be echo chambers, imo.
Unpopular opinions are amazing and needed. But the assholes, for any cause,
only serve to detract from the discussion.

I really dislike echo chambers.. and it's all i see these days.

~~~
nommm-nommm
>I'm wary of any type of moderation.

Even moderation that only removes spam? How about off topic posts?

------
dang
The original has a hell of a linkbait title (at least when it comes to
audiences with ardor for internet fora) so we changed it in accordance with
the HN guidelines.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
rch
Curious why this was flagged.

~~~
dang
Users flagged it. They don't tell us why, so we don't know why. It may have
been the title, so we changed it to the subtitle.

~~~
nkurz
_It may have been the title, so we changed it to the subtitle._

Switching titles based on flags doesn't sound like a very efficient approach.
Maybe you could add a text box or a pulldown for a private comment to the
moderators when flagging? Requesting a reason for a flag doesn't seem like too
much of a burden, and seems like it would make you much more productive when
reviewing. And as a user, it would be nice to have a way to clearly flag
"dupes", "broken links", "typo in title", etc. without worrying about being
misinterpreted. Would also be nice to be able to suggest alternative titles or
URL's in some easy "out of band" manner rather than in a comment or email.

~~~
dang
We bat that idea around from time to time and may try it. If we do, though, it
will be a way that preserves the option of rolling it back if it doesn't pay
for its supper. I fear increasing complexity.

------
melling
This story got flagged off the front page of HN. Strange?

~~~
SolaceQuantum
HN is doing some "no politics week" to "cleanse themselves".

~~~
veddox
"No politics week" is over
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13131251](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13131251))

------
PurgingPanda
I'd say censorship is a bigger issue than trolls. Creating safe spaces to
protect you from other views isn't going to make them go away.

~~~
Voloskaya
I am not a user of Imzy, so I don't know how they choose to censor, but I
don't see how censorship necessarily means living in a bubble.

Take a look at Reddit, where the /r/The_Donald, is just spam, shitposting and
fake rumors, nothing to learn. On the other hand, there are subs like
/r/AskThe_Donald/ which are very interesting.

IMHO banning communities like /r/The_Donald while encouraging the ones similar
like /r/AskThe_Donald, would create a much better place, where you don't live
in a bubble, without having to deal with people that just want to spam,
shitpost and "trigger".

------
aaron695
I guess most of the world could live in safe spaces like this?

But for the creators and doers it's horrific.

We move forward by being challenged. That includes everything.

(until AI has the ability to filter out things that challenge but don't move
us forward)

~~~
vanderreeah
If by safe spaces you mean places where people of colour aren't subjected to
racism, gay people aren't subjected to homophobia and women aren't subjected
to misogyny, then I fail to see how any of these types of attack would help
anyone "move forward", even "creators".

~~~
jdavis703
A safe space was originally a place where you could have a discussion about
anything. A transgender individual could sit down with say an evangelical
pastor and have an honest discussion about issues they disagree on without ad
hominem attacks, fear of saying the wrong thing, etc. Somehow Safe Spaces came
to be regarded as a place safe from anything remotely controversial, which
hinders having conversation with people on the other side of the divide.

~~~
vanderreeah
The problem here is that we don't have a fixed definition of this relatively
new concept. Your description here of safe spaces as places devoid of
controversy does not match up with my experience of encountering the concept
in the world and online. As I said, for me it means a place where prejudices
are not expressed in (in your words) ad hominem attacks, not a place where
complex, innovative thinking is forbidden. I'm not saying my experience of the
concept is right and yours is wrong, but the fact is this discussion is bound
to end in mutual confusion from the get-go given our differing understandings
of 'safe space'.

------
Neliquat
This is the opposite of why people are leaving reddit. Neat idea, but
misguided.

~~~
zhemao
It's the opposite of why some people are leaving Reddit.

But judging by the number of people who have come to the site from Reddit,
it's clear that it is the reason a lot of people are leaving Reddit.

------
yarou
Boy, just what I wanted, another hugbox where I can feel good about my views
without someone challenging them. Sign me up! /s

------
Noos
Places like this tend to show the hypocrisy of the average leftist when it
comes to free speech, though. When free speech benefits them by weakening
social norms (especially religious ones), they champion it, but the moment
free speech starts to subvert the new liberal norms they put in to replace it,
suddenly we get arguments about how free speech is a limited concept and pleas
to rediscover civility and tolerance.

So much of discourse honestly is bullshit, and no, this place isn't immune
either. Replace "free speech" with "disruption" to get this place's hypocrisy
too. Oh, let's trumpet the sharing economy, whose purpose is to disrupt and
ignore law in order to give urban programmers benefit, but when some employer
decides to disrupt employment law by discriminating against older techies or
native born ones, and the same thing happens.

It's all about self-interest in the end. I'd rather a reddit style community
that tolerates all self-interest than one that claims to be encouraging
civility when it's really something else.

~~~
vectorpush
There is just about nobody anywhere on the political spectrum that believes in
absolute free speech, people simply support speech that falls within their
ideological boundaries. The criteria for obscenity on the left is sexism and
bigotry, the criteria for obscenity on the right is blasphemy and criticism of
traditions. If someone takes a knee during the national anthem conservatives
will say that person should be fired and naturally liberals defend that as
free speech. If someone addresses a transgender woman as "he" liberals will
say that person should be fired and naturally conservatives defend that as
free speech.

When it comes to the selective protection of free speech, accusing any
particular side of hypocrisy only reveals the bias of your particular
political perspective.

~~~
nommm-nommm
>If someone takes a knee during the national anthem conservatives will say
that person should be fired and naturally liberals defend that as free speech.
If someone addresses a transgender woman as "he" liberals will say that person
should be fired and naturally conservatives defend that as free speech.

Isn't it possible to defend it as free speech AND say that person should be
fired? Something like "its their right to say it/do it but it shows their
"true character."? You can both support free speech and also want a person to
accept the consequences of what they do or say.

I mean, I wouldn't personally fire anyone for those social transgressions but
I can see how if I had certain world views I would see each person as less
trustworthy or less desirable as an employee or coworker.

~~~
vectorpush
Threatening someone's livelihood based on their speech is about as
antithetical to the idea of free speech as you can get (short of suggesting
they should be arrested or killed for it).

It might be different in a situation where the speech reveals a critical
incompetency for an important job (like a judge who suggests certain races
deserve harsher punishments or an MD that suggests homeopathy is a viable
alternative to chemotherapy etc), but in the general case, if we accept loss
of livelihood as a consequence for uncomfortable speech it is a tacit
endorsement of censorship.

~~~
nommm-nommm
Oh give me a break. It's free speech to be rude to other people. Being rude to
customers and coworkers will get you fired. Censorship! Being in the news for
being a huge dick outside of work, like the ESPN reporter was (she was caught
on camera berating a clerk) will get you fired. You cannot have some sort of
meaningful distinction. You MUST own up and take responsibility for your
actions. Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from responsibility and
accountability. It doesn't mean freedom from any and all consequences.

This entitlement BS really annoys me.

~~~
vectorpush
> _Being rude to customers and coworkers will get you fired._

Being fired because you're rude to customers or coworkers is obviously not a
free-speech issue, that is a "disruption to the work environment" issue.

> _Being in the news for being a huge dick outside of work, like the ESPN
> reporter was (she was caught on camera berating a clerk) will get you
> fired._

Once again, not a free-speech issue. If your job is to represent an
organization as a professional public figure and you tarnish your public image
by acting like a dick in public, that is clearly a situation where you cannot
do your job effectively and so it makes sense that you might be fired.

> _You MUST own up and take responsibility for your actions. Freedom of speech
> doesn 't mean freedom from responsibility and accountability._

That's an oft repeated platitude that doesn't really add much to the
discussion because just about everyone agrees with that statement. If one's
actions are causing a disruption at work or bad publicity for one's employer,
it's natural that those actions might jeopardize one's job. What I'm talking
about is calling for someone to be fired after they say things you disagree
with as punishment for saying those things; the distinction between that and
the former is that the employer's actions can be justified without taking into
account whether or not the employer agrees with the employees speech, at the
end of the day if you're bad for business the employer is not obligated to
endure the burden of your choices, however, when individuals seek to get
others fired because they dislike their speech or ideas, _that_ is
antithetical to the notion of free speech.

------
threepipeproblm
I will probably try this, out since Reddit seems unwilling to address
corruption in its management.

Wondering how free speech issues will play out here.

~~~
MK999
free speech is moving to voat and gab this site is not advertising itself as a
free speech zone more like a polite speech zone

~~~
krapp
Voat does not really support free speech, as per their user agreement:

    
    
        You may not use Voat to break the law, violate an individual's privacy, 
        or infringe any person or entity’s intellectual property or any other 
        proprietary rights.
        

(...)

    
    
        You agree to not post anyone's sensitive personal information that relates to 
        that person's real world or online identity. Do Not Incite Harm: You agree 
        not to encourage harm against people. Protect Kids: You agree not to post 
        any child pornography or sexually suggestive content involving minors.  
    

No site which recognizes the authority of laws prohibiting content or
expression of any kind truly supports free speech. When most people say free
speech it seems what they really mean is a degree of censorship that doesn't
interfere with them personally.

~~~
bpicolo
Free speech doesn't mean "anything goes even if illegal"

~~~
krapp
To me, it does. Free speech is an upper bound on human expression - anything
less than absolute is something less than "free."

I'm not advocating for this - sites should police certain illegal and immoral
activities. Doing so is clearly in the benefit of society and the quality of
any online community. But accepting this is subjugating free speech for the
sake of cultural norms and legal necessity.

~~~
veddox
That is an _extremely_ loose definition of freedom. Ever heard the dictum "One
man's freedom ends where another's begins"? Or, as somebody once put it: "My
freedom to swing my fist ends where your face begins."

Liberty for all is only attainable when all restrict their individual liberty
to accommodate others. If that isn't the foundation of your society, "homo
homini lupus" is what you get.

~~~
psyc
> "My freedom to swing my fist ends where your face begins."

Ever heard it? How could we ever escape it? I've been reading this smug,
patronizing sentence on the Internet for 20 years. I've come to believe that
this formulation is so important to the people who say it, because they know
they're exceptionally punchable.

~~~
veddox
Hm, you have honestly intrigued me. How is that a "smug, patronizing
sentence"? Could you imagine any society worth living in that is not based on
this rule?

To me, respecting another person's freedom is the only way to ever get
anywhere close to a society that offers "liberty and justice for all". Can you
offer an alternative approach?

~~~
psyc
I don't disagree. But it suggests an extremely low opinion of the intelligence
of the audience to point it out. There's no need to point out to a civilized
adult, especially professional, educated adults prevalent on a site like this,
that freedom doesn't include violating others. And it's a strawman, because
nobody is ever arguing that freedom includes violating others. What's usually
being argued is whether a specific action _should be considered_ a violation
of others' rights, as opposed to those others being e.g. oversensitive,
controlling, or intolerant.

~~~
veddox
I was not addressing the audience in general, but the user whose comment I was
referring too, specifically this statement:

> anything less than absolute is something less than "free."

Now maybe I misunderstood the poster, but that does sound pretty much like
what I was talking about... If you felt patronized, my apologies, but my
remark was not aimed at you.

------
gonmf
Kudos for Imzy but unfortunately (imo) these kind of initiatives are
accompanied by attacks to websites that don't further restrict their users
speech in a manner that is more savory for the media or politicians in
question.

These discussions about free speech always remind me of an event of the movie
Amistad, which I will surmise very briefly:

A number of people are sold into slavery, and in attempting to free themselves
they kill their captors, being imprisoned and put to trial shortly after.

The movie raises some very interesting questions (and the story it is based on
many more I bet), but what I find relevant here is that one person may say
that homicide is the ultimate crime, and the next that freedom is, instead.
One may argue that since the law of the land allowed for slavery, supported by
the majority of the population, it then supplanted their right for freedom.

I think the moral of the event was that the slaves rights were inalienable.
They were not to be given or taken away. Freedom of speech can also not be
legislated upon, you can ban people but they will just move on to exercise it
some other place or way. And freedom to insult or berate or "troll" is still
speech, it conveys meaning, it cannot be stopped from human spirit no matter
how much the majority deem it bad taste.

You can down vote now.

~~~
zhemao
> Freedom of speech can also not be legislated upon, you can ban people but
> they will just move on to exercise it some other place or way. And freedom
> to insult or berate or "troll" is still speech, it conveys meaning, it
> cannot be stopped from human spirit no matter how much the majority deem it
> bad taste.

Sure, and Imzy believes that you may exercise that right on some other site
and not theirs.

