I think if there's a mass exodus from Reddit and the choice is Voat or something not Voat, the majority will choose not-Voat. If Voat hadn't absorbed much of the subreddits rejected for extreme and hate speech, then it would have a chance at growing with a more natural makeup. As it is now, any community that moved there would have to accept that there's a much higher percentage of extremist views there than present in reality. Initial adoption of a larger more general set of communities will be a hard sell for those communities.
Agreed. If there's any migration it will likely be towards more actively moderated forums - if you just want to talk about slow cooker recipes you're probably not hoping that it comes with a side of genocide advocacy.
Reddit has been an interesting exercise in shaping online communities, and the zeitgeist has changed in response. Where extremist views were originally approached on the basis of maximum tolerance, the resulting loss of more mainstream users (and the extremist domination of even unrelated subreddits), has shifted away from it. My suspicion is that mainstream users will gravitate towards forums that have a heavier moderating hand.
An interesting question is if this will cause a general return to more independent, freestanding online communities (as opposed to Reddit's model of centralizing a vast number of topics under one roof).
I'm a little confused why I'm getting upvoted and you're getting downvoted, when we're essentially saying the same thing. All you've done extra is explain what Reddit already did, and opine on what you think it means for future trends, yet it somehow it tickles people very differently. Odd.
