> Reddit, in its earlier days, was never dominated by the Voat contingent.
Reddit never had free speech as a key attracting point. People came to reddit not because it was free speech, but because there was good conversations and content there.
Reddit's early "free speech attitude" came about mostly because they had a staff of 4 people who spend all their time trying to keep the site from crashing as it scaled. It was a stance of convenience which they kept as long as possible.
Vote explictly advertised it as a "free speech alternative to reddit". Free speech was it's number one advertising point. It's really not surprising it instantly attracted the wrong type of users and drove away everyone else.
I recall a clear period of time when at least some of the people running Reddit seemed very proud of how they didn't take down or ban subreddits that many people thought were inappropriate, offensive, or harmful. Unfortunately, since Aaron Swartz was the only sometime-Reddit leader I knew, I can't immediately point to other people from Reddit leadership who were explicit about this (as Aaron certainly was).
I believe there was a rough Reddit equivalent to Twitter executives' famous "the free speech wing of the free speech party" statement, but I can't cite one and I may be letting my memories of Aaron's views get projected onto his colleagues.
Reddit never had free speech as a key attracting point. People came to reddit not because it was free speech, but because there was good conversations and content there.
Reddit's early "free speech attitude" came about mostly because they had a staff of 4 people who spend all their time trying to keep the site from crashing as it scaled. It was a stance of convenience which they kept as long as possible.
Vote explictly advertised it as a "free speech alternative to reddit". Free speech was it's number one advertising point. It's really not surprising it instantly attracted the wrong type of users and drove away everyone else.