
Imzy is shutting down - strange_aeons
https://www.imzy.com/imzy/post/imzy_is_shutting_down
======
cocktailpeanuts
I wish the founders well, but I feel like people nowadays give up too early.
And this is one of the most extreme examples of that.

Most community sites take a while to grow and you really never know what will
happen. Even Reddit was sort of a failure vs. Digg and they sold it off to
conde nast. It was only later AFTER the sale when Digg messed up on their own
and Reddit enjoyed success as a side effect.

You really shouldn't be building a community site if you're so impatient to
give up so early. I mean the site opened to public in October 26 of 2016,
that's exactly 7 months in existence. It's probably because they raised so
much money, which is why you should never raise too much money when you're
trying to build a community site. I have never seen a successful community
site that raised that much money before getting traction.

~~~
Angostura
I was there from early in the beta. The thing that annoyed me, when I
suggested that people should take a look at it was the decision that you had
to make an account to see content. Most people visited the homepage and then
said 'no'.

~~~
steedsofwar
This is one of the main reasons i detest pinterest. Lately they have changed,
so that you can see small amount of the content, before annoying you with the
login screen.

~~~
annnnd
Ditto for Quora. I see interesting content, but they annoy me so much with
their accounts (even when I'm just reading) that I never spend much time
there. Don-t worry, I will create an account when I have something to say, but
until then just let me be.

------
kickme444
Hi, I'm the founder of Imzy. It's a hard day but I want to make myself
available, especially to entrepreneurs who may have questions. This last 2
years has been fun, and hard and I've learned a lot. You can reply here or
email me at dan@imzy.com

I also have an amazing staff of developers, community minded folks, product
people, executives, who are looking for work. Many of them mare open to moving
(we are in Salt Lake City) and all are open to remote work. They are all very
talented. Please drop me a line if you're interested.

~~~
nebabyte
Hey Dan, I was a member in the early beta, am really sad to see Imzy go but
really appreciate you guys branching off and making the efforts toward a new
site (which I agree definitely still needs to exist).

> We still feel that the internet deserves better and hope that we see more
> teams take on this challenge in the future

As someone with a headful of ideas hoping to potentially take on this
challenge (:P) - any writeups or info on scaling/architecture would be much
appreciated. There are some HighScalability articles on the bigger sites but
every bit of info on comparison of architectures helps us newbies, heh.

Also, as others asked about - if you guys do manage to open source, that could
be a starting point for those who liked Imzy's layout/model (personally as one
of the ones who likes aspects of "oldschool" and novel design concepts, I'd go
in a diff direction; but the engine could still help me figure out components
needed and possibly other scaling/metrics/etc logic)

Thanks for giving it a shot, take care man.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> _any writeups or info on scaling /architecture would be much appreciated.
> There are some HighScalability articles on the bigger sites but every bit of
> info on comparison of architectures helps us newbies, heh._

I don't think Imzy's scalabilities issue is what did them in. I signed up to
see what it was about, and saw a JS bug and reported it, and they not only
fixed it super-quick, but also sent me a thank-you sticker. So their team,
while imperfect as all teams are, was at least responsive and dedicated.

If I had to guess - and I do - their problems stemmed from their community
size not growing as rapidly as it could have, and monetization.

That's the interesting thing - how do you build a community? How do you build
a bunch of communities? How do you advertise, how do you tackle moderation
successfully, how do you keep people invested, etc.

There's a billion write-ups on writing code, but nowhere near enough on
running a meta-community.

~~~
drewmeyers24
Building "a community" is one thing. You don't need a product to build one
community. You really just need passion, credibility, and perseverance -- and
some combination of a blog, email list, and facebook/slack group as the tool.

Building a bunch of communities (aka facilitating community) is a different
beast entirely, and seldom takes off very quickly at all. The best example of
facilitating community is Meetup.com.

I've been working on a facilitation of community model called Horizon
([http://www.horizonapp.co](http://www.horizonapp.co)) which is best thought
of as airbnb/couchsurfing with friends, friends of friends, and communities.
So, privately, rather than publicly with strangers.

You can either facilitate existing community, or build a community. Trying to
do both is a recipe for disaster imho.

------
minimaxir
Wait, what? They raised a $8M Series A less than a year ago!
[https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/26/imzy-raises-8-million-
seri...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/26/imzy-raises-8-million-series-a-
round-opens-communities-platform-to-everyone/)

That was also the time it was opened to the public. This shutdown appears to
be a strong counterpoint against Reddit alternatives becoming an inherently
successful business prospect.

~~~
r721
>a strong counterpoint against Reddit alternatives becoming an inherently
successful business prospect

It looks like Voat is not in good financial shape too:

[https://voat.co/v/announcements/1866053](https://voat.co/v/announcements/1866053)

[https://voat.co/v/announcements/1881376](https://voat.co/v/announcements/1881376)

~~~
minimaxir
Voat never raised millions in venture capital, though. (and _can 't_ given
their content/userbase)

~~~
erikpukinskis
They will probably have a hard time raising from institutional investors, but
my guess is their userbase is primarily single men who spend large amounts of
time on the computer, a decent subset of whom have spending cash.

The "goats" are also people who feel like they've been politically badgered
into a corner, so I suspect they will spend to maintain their last refuge.
Your will to fight goes up as the space you are confined to gets smaller.

I think there's definitely a market for a "social network of last resort" in
this age of community guidelines.

Which... I think is a great thing. It's good that Twitter, Reddit, etc, are
being aggressive about harassment. That promotes the freer flow of certain
ideas (feminism, social justice, etc). But then that necessitates an alternate
space for the free flow of opposing viewpoints (harassment filters out the
weak, feminism is cancer, this woman should be raped for her opinions, etc).

~~~
jimmyk
_Which... I think is a great thing._

You think it's a great thing that there is less dialogue between people with
differing opinions and more places that function as echo-chambers?

~~~
sanswork
Yes I think it is a good think there is less dialogue between hate groups. I
want them to all feel they are the only ones in the world with those beliefs
so they died off with them.

~~~
jimmyk
Why would echo chambers, where people are surrounded by those who think like
them, convince anyone that they are alone in their beliefs?

~~~
sanswork
Honestly my response is the result of reading the thread wrong shortly after
waking up.

------
antonber
I run an online community. Building a safe space is extremely difficult and
full of grey area, online or offline.

There's a fine line between the freedom to express yourself and offending
someone else. As a community moderator, choosing what is and isn't offensive
is by definition subjective. It's an impossible task for a global, multi-
cultural community. You end up with a vanilla message board where most
interesting thought/debate is stifled. Reminds me of the campus "safe space"
debate.

~~~
prodmerc
You really don't want to cater to the easily offendable, imo.

I remember writing an ebook on affiliate marketing when it was a new thing
(free for email subscribers), which had the word Bullshit stamped on an image.
Two people said maybe I should tone down the language heh.

Fuck right off, buddy :D

~~~
CM30
This. The easily offended are a tiny minority, and those who attempt to cater
for them too much have usually had their product or business fail.

Don't worry about people in a community who get easily offended. If they like
the community they'll stay, if not then there's not really anything lost.

------
acjohnson55
It seems perverse that I only learn about a lot of products when news of their
shutdown hits HN. I'm not exactly sure I'm sure what Imzy is for, but it seems
in some ways similar to a concept I had for online communities built around
discussion of content. Might have been right up my alley.

~~~
munificent
> I'm not exactly sure I'm sure what Imzy is for

If I recall, it got started right around the time there was a lot of
shenanigans going on at Reddit around corporate drama, censorship, and the
nastier subreddits. Imzy and Voat popped up to try to offer an alternative.
(My impression is that Imzy was aiming for less awfulness and Voat aims for
less censorship.)

~~~
Angostura
It was basically aiming to be a nice, polite version of Reddit.

~~~
prodmerc
So, what would Imzy do when a user started acting "not nice"?

Because if they're forced to act nice, most people will just quit. Nobody's
nice all the time (everybody has problems), and online communities are great
for when you want to vent once in a while.

Plus, all the nicety invites narcissistic assholes who think they are better
than everyone else.

I've never heard of Imzy either, and I think I keep up with all the
potentially interesting stuff online. Launched in 2016 and not a single time
I've even read the name.

~~~
stale2002
They'd probably ban them.

Unfortunately, having your site based around the idea of throwing up barriers
to entry, and kicking people out, isn't good for user growth.

------
TekMol
October 2016:
[https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/26/imzy](https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/26/imzy)

"We now have a number of years to take our time and get the community thing
right."

Less then a year later they give up. Why? Some minutes ago, there was a post
of the founder here saying they still have most of that $8m:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14411586](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14411586)

~~~
detaro
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14411586](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14411586)
?

------
buro9
I worked on [https://microco.sm](https://microco.sm) with mattrco and it was
forum/community software too. It looks like
[https://www.lfgss.com/](https://www.lfgss.com/)

The #1 problem with a community startup: Every community is itself a startup.

The revenue math and compounded growth all makes sense, but you need to assume
that few of your communities survive, and that they each take as long as a
startup to get traction and grow.

If it takes you 1 year to get an MVP of sufficient quality to start attracting
communities, it's still going to take the community at least a year to have
sufficient attractiveness to bring in members. And it's unlikely that either
will take as short as a year, and if it did that isn't going to be enough to
bring in another round of funds to keep going.

Community startups are hard.

~~~
drewmeyers24
"Community startups are hard."

Ain't that the truth. I've got scars to prove it.

------
williamstein
I spent 5 minutes on the site, and I still have no clue what it is... I would
like to know, since it's interesting to understand what people have tried and
gave up on.

~~~
drewrv
It was like reddit with a shinier but harder to use UI, and less racists.

~~~
dboreham
Fewer racists. Or did you actually mean people who on average were less
racist?

~~~
mkl
"Less" is correct, and your interpretation is ungrammatical.

Here is what the experts (linguists) have to say:

> less has been used of countables in English for just about as long as there
> has been a written English language

\--
[http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/myl/languagelog/archives/003775.ht...](http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/myl/languagelog/archives/003775.html)

------
DanBC
Imzy was a nice place to be.

Some of the problems I had:

1) The interface was confusing. Making posts was confusing.

2) Users were allowed to create communities, and they did. There were a
gajillion of very tiny communities. This fragments the userbase and makes each
tiny community seem dead.

3) Not enough users. Seriously, seeding the community with posts is a good
thing. It sets tone and gives people something to interact with. If you're a
startup in this space you need to hire a few people on minimum wage and get
them to spend 9 hours a day making posts on different accounts.

It's a shame to see it go.

~~~
nebabyte
4) login required. Seeded content does nothing to attract new users when
behind a wall. Hell, I _had_ an account and the content still felt a degree
removed from when I wanted it. Even a static cached digest would at least
attract new users.

Agree on it being a shame though. Imzy was founded by a contingent of "the
good admins" who've left reddit, as far as I can tell.

~~~
wehadfun
Required login is a problem.

------
arkitaip
"The site will go dark on June 23rd."

(1) Two years is too little time to create a Reddit alternative (2) shutting
it down in less than 30 days is really bad.

~~~
jmcgough
Reddit took off within months of its launch. ~30 days to download data is
pretty standard.

~~~
killin_dan
Reddit spammed fake comments for months in order to gain traction...

[https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/how-reddit-got-
hu...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/how-reddit-got-huge-tons-of-
fake-accounts--2)

(I'm not proposing Vice as a great source, but it's the first thing that came
up on google.)

~~~
nostrademons
I first checked them out the day they opened (July 05), and was using them
daily by January 06. There were definitely real people and a growing community
by then.

I wouldn't attribute their success to fake accounts, although the fake
accounts were probably necessary to seed the community. Rather, they took off
once they added comments (Dec 05, IIRC). It's the same story as Whatsapp
(messaging), YouTube (related videos), and AirBnB (pro photos): there was one
feature that they really needed for product/market fit, and once they added
it, people started using the product on their own.

~~~
killin_dan
Steve Huffman himself attributes early success to the spam campaign.

~~~
spyhi
Yep, because otherwise the site would have seemed like a ghost town despite
growing because of the 1-9-90 rule. They had to keep submissions going until
they attracted the 10% of users that makes a community truly come alive.

------
distantsounds
nothing on the home page or "learn more" link actually shows anything about
the site, just that it's yet another online community. I'm not surprised this
shut down so quickly, you're giving almost no details to the user at all about
how it works, what it looks like, or any sort of interactive demo. requiring
someone to sign up just to see it in action is silly.

~~~
timdeneau
I wonder what their bounce rate was. Seems like such a strange decision to put
a community behind mandatory registration… should have dropped you into some
public topics instead.

~~~
chrshawkes
How in the world did they raised 8 Million a mere 8 months ago is baffling to
me

------
brian-armstrong
I don't know anything about Imzy but this page traps my back button. I hate
that :(

------
Overtonwindow
Whenever I see a startup shutting down, sadly, my first thought is: Who?
Granted I don't work in technology, but I'm a big user, fan, consumer, etc. So
I have to wonder: Am I just missing these companies, is their market too
narrow, or do they have trouble reaching a larger audience?

~~~
wott
Hey, Imzy is the first one of those startups you are talking about, that I did
know before reading its "incredible journey" message :-) It's also one of the
very few the purpose of which I understood.

Granted, I didn't think it was a startup but a hobby project run by 2 or 3
volunteers on their free time... That millions and millions are invested in
such projects is a mystery to me.

------
joshu
What was this? It appears to be some sort of community, yet the front page
offers zero discoverability?

------
stupidhn
I'm on HackerNews multiple times every day.

Imzy is a company that came, raised over $10MM in funding, and went out of
business in 7 months. This is the first I've heard of them.

How on earth does that happen? It's inexplicable.

~~~
kickme444
We were actually a company just shy of 2 years.

~~~
imchillyb
You were a /usable platform/ for just shy of 7 months.

Being a company and having a usable product are not similar things.

------
spiderfarmer
How do you burn through 8 million dollars in 2 years on what's basically a
forum? This is crazy.

~~~
fs111
bay area salaries?

~~~
chrshawkes
They are front Salt Lake City

------
lyra_comms
If you will miss Imzy, check out Lyra - we're a nonprofit conversation service
which respects language and the reader's attention. www.hellolyra.com

We're also a nonprofit and don't accept ad revenue or investment, so please
excuse the plug. In contrast to Imzy, we're more focussed on conversation than
community-building, but this enables us to make our sharing model harrassment-
proof by design.

~~~
drewmeyers24
Just checked your home page. Really no idea what the service is after 3
seconds of looking. Sadly, that's all most people are going to give you when
they land on your website.

------
owenversteeg
That's too bad. I tried it out, made an account and posted and everything, but
there were too few people and everything was very tricky to figure out.

I wish there was a simple Reddit clone that focused on positivity, like Imzy,
but it seems that all of these things are way too expensive.

I mean cmon, eight million dollars (in the last round alone) wasn't enough to
keep a link sharing site alive? How is that possible? What on earth were they
spending that money on?

~~~
prodmerc
I sort of don't like how centralized Reddit is, but there is indeed a
subreddit for everything.

UpliftingNews, Wholesomememes seem to be very popular, positive shit being the
main content

------
INTPenis
I clearly remember when Imzy and Voat sprung up out of reddit turbulence,
trying to ride a wave of discontent in the reddit community.

I'm sorry to say I was cynical and doubted they would last.

You can't force a community to happen. I never followed Voat but I did give
imzy a chance and the feeling was very much that they were trying to force a
community.

Personally I think the best chance of building a community is to build it
around a service. Look at reddit and imgur for examples. They both started out
offering a pretty specific service to users but grew into communities because
people could use the service in a social way.

I believe there are other examples of this but mentioning instagram feels
silly since they're now owned by THE largest community. But it's the same
thing, they were a photo website and now every 13 year old is there.

I'm sure there are more examples of this. Offer a service to people, something
mildly useful or entertaining, and attach a social aspect to it and I'm sure
you'll get a community to spring up.

~~~
anant90
[http://cdixon.org/2015/01/31/come-for-the-tool-stay-for-
the-...](http://cdixon.org/2015/01/31/come-for-the-tool-stay-for-the-network/)

This article by Chris Dixon sums up what you're trying to say — couldn't agree
more with it!

------
lowglow
I checked out Imzy a couple of weeks ago:

1\. Barrier to entry was a login (I had previously gone here and left when it
first started, and didn't sign in. I eventually created an account just to
check it out.)

2\. Interface was confusing

3\. Exploration felt difficult

4\. It wasn't immediately obvious why I was there

5\. Not enough juice/content to bring me back

tl;dr: Social networks + open domain communities are hard.

------
pervycreeper
This was inevitable from the very beginning. Disagreement forms the kernel of
worthwhile discussion.

An argument can also be made that "echo-chamber bubbles" are affecting people
personally, intellectually, and culturally in tremendously harmful ways, so
this is a very tiny step in the right direction.

~~~
davidivadavid
Can that argument be made persuasively, though? I for one do not enjoy online
"debating" one bit and try to avoid it as much as possible. I see it mostly as
people shouting at each other.

Meanwhile, the best "debates" I've ever had were with people within what could
arguably be described as my "filter bubble."

------
henrygrew
Imzy suffered from the big launch syndrome which always fails, instead they
should have applied the proven path approach [http://course.feverbee.com/the-
proven-path/theprovenpath.pdf](http://course.feverbee.com/the-proven-
path/theprovenpath.pdf) community startups are hard but success is possible
with lots of patience, i run
[https://www.kenyatalk.com/index.php](https://www.kenyatalk.com/index.php) and
can vouch for the proven path

------
orionblastar
I like Imzy and am sad they are shutting down.

Reddit needs alternatives to it that works better.

I am working with someone to open source their Kr5ddit code on Github by
rewriting it. Look at [http://k666.kr5ddit.com](http://k666.kr5ddit.com) which
is a start with no money invested yet. Look at
[http://kr5ddit.com](http://kr5ddit.com) to see how it uses bitcoins to buy
Kr5ddits used to moderate stories and comments. It is not complete yet, but it
is a good idea and allows anonymous posts without an account, but you can't
earn kr5ddits without an account. Imzy tequired invites to get an account.

~~~
dredmorbius
Why does Reddit need alternatives?

What would "works better" entail?

------
Huhty
My team and I launched a Reddit-like platform called Snapzu
([http://snapzu.com](http://snapzu.com)) in 2013, a couple years before Imzy
launched and I know exactly what the struggles/hurdles are in building
community and generating consistent but vital user growth. | However, we are
extremely lean (all of us are working part time and out of pocket) so our
monthly costs of operations are extremely low, allowing us to keep going. We
also have no outside funding, so basically no investors breathing down our
necks, or any rush to monetize.

That being said, our original base plan (like Imzy's) never really
materialized (because of the harsh "network effects" AKA "chicken or egg
problem"), so we've since pivoted allowing us to use most of our core tech (of
which we admit we slightly over-built at the time) in a separate (but still
completely tied in) SaaS-like service that allows bloggers to have their own
Reddit-like communities for their blogs.

Utilizing a voting community on a blog brings several previously untapped
benefits which I won't get into here, but our recently launched landing page
at the Blog Enhancement Suite
([http://blogenhancement.com](http://blogenhancement.com)) explains it. Note:
It's still a work in progress and we're playing around and A/B testing the
copy, but the service is live.

I've been paying attention to and observing Imzy ever since I learned about
it, which was shortly after their launch. Some mistakes I feel they made,
right off the top of my head:

1\. No front page (for lurkers): They force users to join to be able to view
content. The 90/9/1 rule is real, ESPECIALLY in the "community" space. 90% of
users just want to lurk and that's just the nature of the internet. It's
probably the same here on HN. 9% will participate in some ways, voting, etc.
1% will submit and comment, etc.

2\. Lacking in social media: I've been following the @Imzy Twitter account for
the entire duration, and most of their Twitter activity basically stopped
approx 5-6 months ago. At that point I had a feeling that they we're starting
to "give up" because it likely wasn't effective enough for the time they we're
dedicating to it. We faced that exact problem, but we split up our content
into 15 main categories (science, gaming, politics, tech, etc) and have
Twitter, Medium, Wordpress, etc profiles for each. We then automated them
using IFTTT using our category RSS feeds so that each account automatically
tweets/shares the best posts as submitted by our users into said category.

3\. No real target market: It's really hard to get people to stick around when
most of them DO NOT share most common interests. Again, it's why we made sure
to categorize the content so that people that want Science stuff can easily
find it and/or subscribe to the Science RSS, follow the Science Twitter
account, etc. We now also only focus on attracting bloggers, our new REAL
target market (in a business sense) after the pivot.

4\. Giveaways: Imzy was giving away all these plushys and stickers and stuff
in return for loyalty. I just don't believe many people care about gimmicky
things like that and it must drive up the costs/expenses that could otherwise
be spent elsewhere with more effectiveness.

Imzy IMHO also did a lot right. I envy their PR tactics/strategy, as they got
mentioned on all the top tech sites numerous times. Their devs/team made a
solid app/website.

I wish the Imzy folks best of luck in their future endeavors.

~~~
fernly
I'd be interested in snapzu, but when I put in my email to request an invite,
it says "already registered", yet when I try to log in, it says "email not in
our database".

------
sideproject
If you're looking to create your own community, I run a small tool called
HelloBox

[https://www.hellobox.co](https://www.hellobox.co)

We started as a "build your own HackerNews" then we transitioned it to a
"build your community" tool. We've been going for about 3 years - a plenty of
work to do and undergoing a pretty big re-design at the moment.

------
DavidJM
Do you think if you pivoted into a niche like drivetribe you could have
survived?

[https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/533ml7/our_journe...](https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/533ml7/our_journey_building_imzy_for_the_first_year/)

------
chrisabrams
I still didn't get my stickers....

------
GoatHerderson
What did Imzy do? Anyone know?

~~~
cookiecaper
They were a Reddit clone that tried to be more mainstream both in UX and
content moderation.

~~~
Danihan
Reddit never would have been reddit without gonewild and jailbait.

------
crsv
The execution overall at Imzy seems lazy. Kind of shocked that a founding team
that raised an A last October is folding in May. Embarrassing performance all
around.

------
phyzome
I'll miss the community. Really nice folks. :-(

------
bbctol
Been on there for a while, but not posting much as... there isn't much to post
about. Something of a pity, but also very expected.

------
crsv
Overall execution feels lazy. Can't believe someone funded this team at a
series A at that valuation.

------
mindcrime
How did they go about promoting the site? I ask only because I have never even
heard of Imzy until just now.

~~~
dredmorbius
There were a couple of splashes of coverage about June/July 2016, and again in
October. Faded out quickly after that.

------
seibelj
Turns out the vast majority of people don't want to spend their lives in a
permanent "safe space"[0]. That was a fast flameout

[0] [https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/25/a-chat-with-imzy-co-
founde...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/25/a-chat-with-imzy-co-founder-
jessica-moreno-on-building-a-kinder-online-community/)

~~~
kristianc
I don't see what's massively objectionable about wanting to build a community
based on tolerance, kindness and mutual respect.

~~~
geofft
It's an existential threat for people who want to be intolerant, unkind, and
disrespectful, because it makes it clear that spaces that don't accept such
behavior end up being at least as productive and as useful for the world as
spaces that do.

Therefore it's extremely important for such people to establish the world as a
a safe space against safe spaces, and to push the idea that such spaces are
untenable or morally bad or whatever will avoid more of those spaces existing.

~~~
LordKano
I make an effort to not be intolerant but I have found myself being attacked
for holding beliefs and political positions that are "outside of the
mainstream" and there are people who can not tolerate that.

I like that they made the attempt to build this but I would have never joined
it because I could see myself getting into conflicts because of my beliefs.

~~~
kristianc
Would you join a Subreddit which reinforces these political beliefs and is
that not a safe space in itself?

It seems to me that everywhere on the internet that you might class as a
'haven of free speech' (whether it's 4chan, Twitter, Mumsnet or Atheists
Rationalist Skeptics Anonymous) comes with an underlying set of social norms
which to some extent preconfigure the kind of debate that will happen there.
Imzy is just another one of those, no?

~~~
LordKano
_Would you join a Subreddit which reinforces these political beliefs and is
that not a safe space in itself?_

If I understand your question, yes. I would join such a Subreddit because an
echo-chamber isn't what I seek.

I completely agree with forbidding things like doxing or making threats of
violence but I'm concerned that "Safe spaces" only encourage intolerance
towards other points of view.

Disagreement is good. Maybe I'm wrong and you can show me a side that I had
never considered. Maybe you're wrong and I can present an argument that
changes how you think about something. I have had my mind changed by a
persuasive argument in the past. Perhaps I will again in the future. I have
friends that I have seen change their views over time and I hope that I was at
least a part of what caused them to change on those issues.

~~~
kristianc
> If I understand your question, yes. I would join such a Subreddit because an
> echo-chamber isn't what I seek.

Good.

> I completely agree with forbidding things like doxing or making threats of
> violence but I'm concerned that "Safe spaces" only encourage intolerance
> towards other points of view.

Now now. If I went on /r/the_donald and started leaving comments about Gun
Control, Trans Rights and Abortion, you and I both have a fairly good idea
what would happen.

How do I know that? Well, a giant Pepe the fucking Frog fills half the screen
when I even load the page, for a start, and I literally cannot upvote in
/r/the_donald until I click the frog and subscribe. It's the online equivalent
of a pub hanging a sign on the door saying who it welcomes in. Sure, you _can_
ignore it, but are you really going to?

It's a de facto safe space. In fact, it's not even really a de-facto safe
space, given Rule VI of The Donald is "This forum is for Trump supporters
only." and if rule VII - "No linking to other sub-reddits" doesn't make it an
echo chamber, I don't know what does.

Likewise, If I went on a Democrats subreddit and started raising Republican
talking points, I'd be shown the door pretty quickly.

The issue isn't "pro" or "anti" safe-spaces, because everywhere is a safe
space to someone. It's when people start to get selective about which safe
spaces they're going to allow that gets to people.

~~~
EdiX
> Now now. If I went on /r/the_donald and started leaving comments about Gun
> Control, Trans Rights and Abortion, you and I both have a fairly good idea
> what would happen.

/r/the_donald has become (or maybe always was) a safe space for 1488
identitarians. Things like /r/The_Donald and Stormfront are part of the
problem just as much as safe space policies.

> Well, a giant Pepe the fucking Frog fills half the screen when I even load
> the page, for a start, and I literally cannot upvote in /r/the_donald until
> I click the frog and subscribe

Disable custom CSS, it's a dumb feature anyway.

------
5_minutes
Looks like a wonderful product. Too bad I find out about it on the day they're
shutting down.

------
icedchai
Why are you shutting down so soon? ~2 years doesn't seem like a very long
time.

------
jjman
Will you guys follow the trend recently and Open Source your code base?

------
javabr
yet another startup I only hear about when they are shutting down.

~~~
mysterydip
Agreed. Why is that, and how can it be avoided? I guess that's the million
dollar question.

~~~
cphoover
that's probably why they are shutting down?

Bad marketing?

------
nik736
Surprise, surprise. Last time I heared something about Imzy was when they were
handing out beta invites.

