Why did you choose Snapzu over Voat?
There are a lot of new members here, and a lot are coming from Reddit. The two major networks that are snatching up these users are Snapzu and Voat.
Ex-Redditors, I'm curious what made you choose Snapzu over Voat. If you are a Voat user who happened across this post, what made you choose Voat over Snapzu?
8 years ago by Boop
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74 comments
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Snapzu's better in many ways, friendlier too. Like I said before in another post, Voat is filled with people who hate Reddit, peope who are assholes, people who are racists, and people who for whatever reason hate fat people. There's a dedicated section called "fatpeoplehate". What does that say about VOAT? I don't know, I try to avoid VOAT and Reddit as much as possible nowadays. I prefer Snapzu now even if it seems a lot "quieter".
Snapzu also has a tribe called Fatpeoplehate. Although it is smaller than VOAT's, this site is smaller than VOAT. Being quiet may only be temporary, as the userbase increases Snapzu will be much louder therefore that main quality you enjoy about Snapzu is temporary. Also just because some people subscribe to "fatpeoplehate" doesn't mean all the members on VOAT are haters. I don't think that a website that allows people to discuss their "hate" is advocating for anything else than a lack of censorship.
There is a tribe, but it is essentially completely abandoned as it was made very clear they were not welcome here.
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For me, I chose Snapzu over Voat because Snapzu seems to promote discussion. As well, the community prefers the upvote button over downvote, which contributes to a positive environment.
Voat at first seemed like the best alternative to Reddit, but quickly I realized why it would not work - it's almost a direct clone of Reddit. There's a reason why people are dissatisfied with Reddit, and I can't place my bets on a website that can't improve on another's failures.
I have high hopes for Snapzu because of the team behind it. They are aware of the needs of its users and are always looking to improve where other websites are lacking.
Completely agree with this, I found Snapzu by way of a friend mentioning it in IRC and doing homework as I had been looking for a Reddit alternative for a while now. Snapzu seems to promote and reward positive discussion rather than being just another Reddit clone and it's still somewhat ground floor which I personally like.
I didn't see this before I posted my very similar comment. I think you hit it perfectly.
I didn't want a clone. I didn't want a hostile community. Snapzu offers a better experience, it's reddit-like, but not reskinned. I like the leveling system, I like the customization, I enjoy the innovation. The community promotes discussion and debate. I simply feel it's a superior model across the board.
For me, it was because VOAT was down and Snapzu is pretty. But then someone posted something about privilege and was not bombarded with downvotes and cries of SJW. I was able to express my disagreements and everything went well. No hate, no name calling, just discussion. Very awesome community even if you don't see eye to eye.
I was also attracted to Snapzu's more tolerant, progressive community. There's some very loud communities on reddit and Voat that are very vocally reactionary when it comes to that kind of thing, decrying any kind of social justice or feminism, especially when it butted up against any of the hate or harassment communities. I haven't seen many accusations of SRS or SJW here, which has been nice.
A lot of people tried recruiting for voat shortly after the /r/fatpeoplehate tantrum. The arguments they made for why we should leave reddit and switch to voat convinced me that voat was welcome to the sort of people who welcome that sort of speech, but it wasn't for me. My reasons for wanting to move away from reddit have more to do with the lack of accountability for moderators than any "free speech" issues on the part of the admins. Reddit's moderating system is far too prone to abuse, and I'm pleased to see that the admins here are willing to listen to ideas to discourage that behavior here.
EDIT: I should clarify that I haven't left reddit, there are still a lot of good people there I enjoy interacting with. I'm trying to gently entice them over here.
The moderators were my reason for leaving reddit as well. It wasn't the only reason, but it was the straw that broke the camels back. I still creep over to reddit once in a while, but as soon as I'm there I'm instantly reminded of the many things I disliked there (the same jokes being repeated over and over, general hostility, down votes for any alternative opinions, etc.).
The moderators were what really did it for me though - in many cases, instead of letting someone know about a small mistake in a post or comment, it was instantly deleted, sometimes without explanation. Once I made a post which received about 40 up votes in about 30 minutes, before it was deleted by a mod for simply having "not good enough" content (isn't that what the voting system is for?!).
Since then I started my search for an alternative. Thankfully the drama with FPH pointed me to Snapzu and Voat (I was never invested in FPH at all, but I did see the many threads complaining about all of it). I tried Voat but noticed it was quickly flooded with all of the people from those subs, and with the rumors surrounding illegal activities on the site (such as child porn), I decided I didn't want to be associated with that site at all (especially at work). So I came to Snapzu and found exactly what I had been looking for.
Snapzu first attracted me because I judged it by it's cover. Then after looking around, I saw that it was a nice community and being a quiet guy, I thought this could be a place to be more confident on the internet and not be afraid of downvotes. I like the levelling system because it gives me a sense of satisfaction. Finally, the main reason is that voat was down, so I moved here.
Poor Voat would have gotten more users if its servers were able to handle the huge influx of activity.
And I can relate with you, I prefer reading and listening to talking. I like to read others' posts and comments before I post. When I do finally talk, I talk a lot if it's about something I'm highly engaged in. The free use of the downvote button on Reddit was a huge turnoff to me, and a reason why I lurked way more than I talked. It's just so discouraging to see your comment get downvoted just because someone didn't agree with your opinion.
I rarely commented on Reddit. When I did, it was on my post that made it to front page. I was called karma whore and was downvoted to oblivion to the lowest comment karma can go. I didn't particularly like that moment.
It's not about choosing Snapzu over Voat for me, it's about moving away from the practice of having one site (Reddit) account for such a large amount of my time. I don't think that as Reddit dies (and it is dying), there's going to be a single alternative that replaces it;. I think people are tired of seeing this same scenario play out over and over, every few years. This happened with MySpace, it happened with Digg, and now it's happening to Reddit. I think when the dust settles this time, instead of a "new Reddit" there will be several viable Reddit alternatives that take over the market.
Although this is obvious, it did totally not occur to me. Thanks for the insight!
Yeah. It's alright to have different, smaller sites for differing focuses. After all, you cannot please everyone. That's why I am registered on Voat, Empeopled, and here.
I have done almost the same: here, Empeopled, Stacksity and Commentum. I'm not going to bother with Voat.
My initial reason for joining was that Snapzu was accessible, so it was more of an availability thing.
Now though, I just really like the community, and the other tangible parts of Snapzu. (The XP system, site layout, etc)
Also....it's not like reddit is dead, I can still browse there and have no need to jump to a clone like Voat.
I love your last point, you're totally right.
I still use Reddit. It has many healthy, established communities that have great moderators and users. Why should I move to a clone that has much less content and keeps going down? Voat has potential, but it can only do well by promoting its differences with Reddit, not its similarities.
My main reason for joining Snapzu over other reddit alternatives is because of the openness of discussion in the community. It reminds me of how reddit was back in the day, before the massive influx through the Digg event.
As to why not Voat? I prefer to be in a place where people understand that "free speech" doesn't always mean "I can say what I want without consequence."
Because I didn't feel the need to follow a group of people upset about not being able to harass and abuse people.
Snapzu was the obviously more friendly and reasonable choice.
I personally still use Reddit (and too a much lesser extent Voat).
However, I find that I generally spend more time on Snapzu simply because I like the people and overall atmosphere. The site is very nice as well.
Mostly that people didn't want to go to voat because of hate speech censorship. That sounded pretty good to me
Never been to Voat, probably will never ever go to Voat. :P I'm happy with what I have. If you spend you're whole life looking for something better you'll never appreciate what you've already found! ;)
Personally, I haven't left any. I use reddit (I have a subreddit there that probably wouldn't be very successful here), Voat (when it's not being DDoS'd to hell and back), as well as Snapzu. The internet is big enough for everyone.
I go to reddit for the sights, snapzu for the conversation, and voat for the crazy.
Voat was being DoS'ed at the time when I wanted to try both. I went with Snapzu, but it took so many days to get an invite that I almost abandoned. At least I could see the discussions.
Now, I'm not even interested in looking at Voat - I feel right at home here :).
I use reddit for the small communities (hiking subs/fishing/outdoorsy/geek stuff), and Snapzu for general content. It's a great general content aggregator that's not full of stupid crap like the reddit front page is. Plus, people here are more willing to listen to an opposing opinion instead of just blindly upvoting the current circlejerk content from reddit.
Well I'm not abandoning reddit for one, so I don't need a clone of reddit that is the same but worse. Also, all of their content seems to be just hating on reddit and being overly reactionary. It's kind of a silly place in my mind.
I haven't really chosen one over the other yet, but so far Snapzu seems more interesting to me since I don't get the impression that it's trying to be the new Reddit but rather its own thing. That and people here generally seems nicer towards eachother.
Still deciding.
Snapzu seems like it wants to bring it's own uniqueness to the table, Voat seems just to want to copy reddit. Voat looks pretty unappealing (visually) and the community seems more toxic over there. It's simple as that for me really.
Same. Voat just seems like a Reddit clone, whereas Snapzu differs from Reddit in a lot of positive ways. It seems like a much less vitriolic place than either Voat or Reddit, so far.
I don't want a Reddit clone. Snapzu is clearly inspired by Reddit, but makes innovations that I really like and make it new and fun. Plus the community is great!
It wasn't a direct rip off of reddit. It's borrowed ideas from Reddit, but overall created a much nicer and friendly community, and the friendly aspect is very much appreciated.
1) it's not just a reddit clone 2) Observing for a few weeks I felt the posts and conversations as more what I was looking for.
Snapzu is different from reddit, while Voat is a reddit clone. Functionality that worked in 2005 doesn't necessarily work that well anymore.
This was recommended by my very own brother. I trust him with these sorts of things he's quite the nerd. I'm very happy I choose snapzu though. I really enjoy the community and the website design. I hope this site continues it's amazing attitude with new users and some originality.