I switched from Reddit to Voat about 5-6 months ago amidst the whole censorship incident(s). It was great. Quality content in the default subs, a friendly community that displayed absolutely no hivemind behaviour and genuinely interesting debates in comment sections. Not only that, there was no censorship at all (barring the removal of illegal content) and there were, and still are, a lot of smaller communities that were awesome to be a part of.

And then something happened. Something which can only be attributed to the influx of users that came from the banned hate subs on Reddit. The friendly community that exhibited no hivemind behaviour is completely gone. /v/news and /v/politics are filled with articles from biased sources that are posted only because users now know that they will get a response from the largely right wing demographic of Voat users, not because they are factual or present an alternative outlook on the narrative of the articles that are posted to Reddit. It is because this is popular now.

I am not making this post because I disagree with the politics of the newer group of users who flooded to Voat. At first I actually thought it was refreshing to see opinions that differed from my own, rather than have a constant stream of things I already agreed with. I am making this post because Breitbart and Daily Mail are not sources that should be rising to the top of /v/news and making it to the front page every day. They are opinion sites. You are censoring yourselves and have created a hivemind that is no different from the one that exists on Reddit.

That is not the only issue. I have managed to mostly block it out, but now it is starting to creep into every corner of Voat, not just on the default subs, but in smaller communities too.

I loved this site because it wasn't a safe space. But it is now a safe space. A safe space for a different demographic to the one that exists on Reddit. We are now all part of a huge circlejerk, and even if you agree with the things that are being posted here, that is not a good thing.

EDIT: This is not a "Oh it just isn't the same anymore, I'm going back to Reddit" post. I just noticed something that is becoming prominent in the community and thought I would post about it.

EDIT 2: Redirecting everyone to /v/SoapdoxBanhammer. For no reason.