Yes

Alrightie, you guys have fun~

Okay, there are subreddits that are hug boxes by a culmination of factors, one of which can be caused by voting. I have seen subreddits that are safe spaces because of the mods they have & the mods are accountable to nobody but the admins. Are there places like some discord servers bad because they have moderation & the mods are jerks? Yes, but that is a product of the people who are mods, not the concept of moderation. I have seen subreddits in civil wars within communities because there are lots of different people with lots of different opinions, with mods who to tolerate both sides & both sides being big enough to have both their views represented in up votes.

That's the thing. It takes no work for a conversation in discord to go smoothly. It is exceptional when reddit isn't a self affirming circlejerk

I'm not even talking about moderation. I'm talking about design and user behavior

And how the two interact

You're the one going off about corgis and mods and shit when none of it changes the fact that the voting system is bad, and has to he overcome for any kind of conversation to be viable

And this is an issue other sites solved *ages* ago, by not having a shitty system implemented on a base level

You are overlooking the most obvious part of voting & that is demographics, the more chilled out communities don't care if you have a contrarian opinion, they will even upvote it if is well stated, there are communities who are interested in welcoming new people to join it rather than just isolating themselves to just the hard core elements.

Even a garbage place like /r/CringeAnarchy, which is a place that that have a bunch of lax mods who do the bare minimum to moderate, a place that should according to what you propose should be a hugbox for "alt-right" opinions, just cant do it. As circle jerky as it can get, it simple cant achieve the peak, new people keep on coming in, disagreeing with content, & getting upvotes. People posting cats instead of cringe, people are confused if they people are up voting stuff to cringe with or cringe at or just question if it is cringe at all & asking question of what the is going on. People keep on calling out satire posts instead of falling in line, people keep on switching to mock right wing cringe & /r/CringeAnarchy itself.

The places that do turn into hug boxes are not the ones that vote in circle cerks that can be hostile to contrary opinions & content, it is the subs who have mods that ban people with contrary opinions & content that turns into safe spaces.

>the foundational feature of the site doesn't matter if users choose to not abuse it
I've already addressed this. A shit law isn't not a shit law if enforcement is poor. If you're going youre going to start talking about post/community quality though, you're not really going to win me over there either

But it does matter that it exists & does get used without sedition, why would you assume that people could only use it to be a jerk?

Yes, a bad rule does matter even while it's not being used

And it's not about intent

All you have to do is press a button to show displeasure, and if enough people do this the comment will be hidden

& if there is more than enough people people who disagree with the downvotes, then they can equally as easily upvote it.

Which wouldn't be an issue if the function *wasn't there*

The *key component to the website*

It's democracy

And the problem of mob rule

Why the US is a republic

I am acknowledging the fact that one aspect of the core functionally of the site can be used & abused in certain situations, but there is more general upsides to the voting system for for a site made on voting on. If you don't like a democratic system of organizing by the appeal of masses who use it, & would rather have a linear feed of content where the newest content is the most important content, then you can sort by new (& if you are in a thread by old instead if you please), or go to another one of the hundreds if not thousands of forums on the internet that does that. Also downvotes remove stuff, if you truly are are interested in the opinions that drew the most aiur, then you can scroll to the bottom.

Which is why nobody lives in an actual democracy

You're moving the goalposts

What is the goal post I moved?

The discussion was about how Reddit is a "mistake", not about which sites I should use

It's actually worse than, say, a democratic system with rights, because your ability to have your voice heard is determined by other people's subjective like or dislike of it, and not even a majority

Which is precisely why brigading is a problem

Sorry, I meant to use the word someone instead of you, this was a poor use of word for target subject.

Even then, site preference doesn't discuss the core claim

Look, reddit gives a poster the "right" when the don't break the rules to state their thoughts, a poster just does not have the entitlement to receive equal attention as all other posters by all audiences regardless. If someone goes to the town square, they might have the place to express their opinion, but the audiences can ignore them because the speaker's opinion is uninteresting, the audiences can stick out their tongue at the speaker, the audiences can call the speaker's opinion garbage to encourage them to shut up, the audiences can recommend people ignore the speaker, the audiences can pay attention & praise another speaker over first speaker who is siting alone, the audiences can protest so loudly that they drown out the speaker with their own speech, but despite the control the audience has react to the speaker, they can not remove the speaker.

Heckler's veto isn't legit, which is what reddit's voting system ultimately boils down to

You can choose to not listen, but disrupting someone else's speech is unethical

And it' directly what the site promotes

Well there continuing the analogy, an alternative to the public square situation that what reddit provides, & that is formal debate environment that screens the audience only to those who are sit still & be quiet to provide a safe space for the speaker to have a platform regardless of their opinion.

Though I have difficulty thinking of stuff like that aside from platform that allows people to post content that people will have to go out of their way to find & mute comment sections.

Reddit is not a public square

Neither is the private garden in front of the Utah state capital building, except that it is used as one for the purpose of public discussion.

Beemann is also disregarding that I am using the "public square situation" as an analogy.

That's because your analogy is hilariously selective

It's like a public space, except for all the ways in which it isn't at all, including moderation and site formatting

I did also state that reddit gives a poster the "right" when the don't break the rules to state their thoughts, this analogy is used to highlight the limits of base user to user interaction where a base user has no authority to remove another base's post, the only individuals who have the authority to do that would be the rule.