Where can I debate politics and philosophy without abuse and personal attacks? a phpBB or a reddit clone without upvotes and downvotes?

Posted by bigdonut100@reddit | RedditAlternatives | View on Reddit | 19 comments

I wanted to move to debating politics, philosophy etc somewhere else because reddit is too abusive. I legit have some kind of trauma from the arguments on reddit.

When I say or imagine saying "nope" I think of a really stupid hateful guy who bullied me after I told him I was a rape victim. When I think of the "noise" I think of a guy who was really brain damagingly stupid and said all my responses were "just noise." And there is this insane game where people say "go to therapy" after I tell them I am already IN therapy, and dismiss everything I say because they think I am crazy.

I don't want to debate politics or philosophy on a forum dedicated just for it personally, I would like to debate on the (no joke) FurAffinity and SoFurry forums political sections more than this, but they seem to be gone, along with the newgrounds forum.

I need reddit for promotion but I really just need the "trapper keeper" element of it honestly where it just absorbs any link I feed it, I think I might actually do a search for an extension etc that hides ALL comments unless I allow them on individual thread, so I just get the friendly comments on baking etc subs with friendly people and basically just advertise on relevant subs. I already have I always get a few upvotes on the content but then the top comment will be shitting on me.

Otherwise I want to debate hardcore issues, but on the political sections of non political sites, because I feel that would be more chillled out. I just want people banned when they call me a pedophile and call my father who died when I was four was a "bum."

Something is wrong, I've decided that I want to be a stay at home parent (yes, you can see my snoos gender when I say that) and I just think my nature is so wrong for this site, watching animes where fathers take care of their children and the war that goes on in this place is just crazy.

And my enemies are half right, I'm going to try to sign up to some online mental health community too, they never suggested that in favor of "find another therapist" or "you need to be in an asylum," I just know 7cups sucks from using it a few years ago

"Oh you mean earth, and hell over you" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLVJvReFPyM

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Tight_Heron1730@reddit

[terribic.com] I built with Claude Plato, it is a forum. Reddit-shaped — subs, threads, votes, moderators — but operated like the small forums and email groups of 2002, before algorithms, before tracking pixels, before "for you" everywhere. One small program, one file of data, plain-text posts. Free to copy and run, designed to be forked.

What I was trying to get right is the balance of power.

The operator runs the lights and nothing more. They don't assign moderators, they don't rule on community-level disputes, they have no special button to unfreeze a quiet sub or install a chosen voice. If the operator goes bad, you fork the code, take your archive, and walk — people leave the operator, not the platform.

Each sub is its own universe. The moderator owns it. They can soft-remove a post (collapsed, still visible, recoverable), hard-remove it (gone, but logged forever), or hand the sub to someone else entirely. Every action lands in a public log the whole community can read.

And the community is not passive. A handful of distinct flags will collapse a post for review automatically. Enough upvotes after a soft removal will lift it back automatically. The math overrides the moderator when it should. Mods drive the sub; the community drives the mod.

The rest of the design follows from those choices.

Posts are plain text — no uploads, no hosting, no embeds. A picture link is a clickable link, not a thing the site stores for you. There's no algorithm; what you see is what's there. Subs publish public feeds you can read in any feed reader. Each member also gets a private feed for the subs they

follow and the replies on their content. There are no notifications. Plato will never email you about activity.

Sign-in is a link sent to your inbox. The email is fingerprinted on arrival and never stored — same email on two plato sites gives you two unrelated handles. The sign-in layer is its own library, knowless, split out of plato so other projects can use it standalone.

Your data is yours from day one. Posts live on disk as plain text; the database is just an index, rebuildable. Personal and full-sub archives are signed and time-stamped, importable into any other plato site by pasting a URL.

It's not federated. One site, one community. The discourse of forums, email groups, and social media, minus the corporate control. Not a network. A pocket.

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bigdonut100@reddit (OP)

sounds fantastic man, i roll an IRC instead of a discord so I get the plain text thing

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Tight_Heron1730@reddit

thanks man, try it and feedback is always welcome

Many-Land-5847@reddit

Ehh??

You can ask me *what* you are having trouble understanding?

Bad faith otherwise.

WanderingInAVan@reddit

Honestly the moment you said "No Abuse" and "I want to debate politics" it was a lost cause. No matter what kind of community you go to really, if you take a position opposite the approved political opinion even as "Devil's Advocate" the abuse will start.

I don't run a furry board, but I do make my boards at least the Star Trek and Writing boards politics free, specifically real world political events like Elections and current political figures. For story discussion you have to be able to at least talk about the basic ideals and philosophical merits of such things.

Unfortunately there will always be extremists with a "If you're not with me, you are my enemy and must be destroyed" mentality.

Voluptuousss@reddit

Exactly!! There are people out here who have a violent mindset.

MelonCakey@reddit

Exactly. The problem is that even if moderation on this type of thing isn't biased, people's opinions on the words of others can be. It's all very subjective. Politics (understandably) make some people very emotional, and how well that's handled varies.

It's a no-win for moderation teams as well because removal of certain things tends to be labeled as censorship or catering to one side. Even if it was something else that warranted the removal.

Kgvdj860m@reddit

You have to just accept that some people will believe your moderation is biased and moderate in as unbiased a manner as you are capable of achieving. Moderation may not win you friends, but you have to do it anyway for the benefit of the site. I have found that if you make an effort to explain why you make the moderation decisions you do and make your moderation transparent (like with a moderation log of some kind that is visible to everyone and links to deleted posts , so people can see them who want to), reasonable people will accept moderation gracefully. By the way, you can moderate without interfering with debate by having a minimal set of rules and not deleting comments that don't violate them.

The TOS is for other people. I'm special!

qwaecw@reddit

If you want actual debate, Reddit probably isn’t the best place for it. Most subs turn into echo chambers or remove posts once they get too controversial.

You might have better luck on forums like Kialo, LessWrong, or even dedicated Discord servers where long-form discussion is encouraged. The moderation is usually more focused on keeping things civil rather than shutting down unpopular opinions.

HedgeRunner@reddit

If there's no place in America IRL you can do it, why do you think there's a place to do it on a forum.

bluedwarf.top does not allow verbal abuse. We do have upvotes, but we don't use the up vote button much. We don't have down votes. Blue Dwarf is a general social media site where you can discuss anything you like, including politics and religion. We are a free speech site, so you will encounter strong opinions there, and you will be expected to refrain from verbal abuse yourself, despite hearing opinions you don't agree with or like.

Yeah some of you are cool but for everyone else, thanks for being like every other subreddit too assholes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0aF9kSLpeY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0C3DHp36zc