Kind of a tangent but Voat used to be a direct clone, though it seemed to attract more of a certain negative tone among its users that seemed to characterize the site. Culture of a site is as significant as the tech in terms of persuading/dissuading users from participating, particularly early on imo.
Reddit has its own particular, identifiable cultural aspects (some positive, some negative) though it's also large enough that it's managed to escape being pinned down to only its more negative aspects. Twitter maybe not as much among some crowds though it's still a very broad userbase.
Admin, mods and finally users set the tone of a site and lead by example. On HN for example the more one has read over time what the tone of the place is and the type of content and moderation, the likelier it will continue, almost Ship of Theseus style with regard to users.
While if this place for example were more accepting of crass comments and submissions then the culture would adapt and invite more of the same. Some might like or prefer that but it also has its downsides, particularly for users who like aspects of a site/sub-community but find other aspects more difficult to be an apologist toward.
Idk where I'm going with this apart from I wouldn't want to be in someone's shoes trying to broadly handle maintaining a decent culture that isn't weighed down/characterized only by its more negative aspects :p
To add some context, Voat soared in popularity as Reddit closed down some hate-focused subreddits such as /r/fatpeoplehate. Predictably, when your user base is made up of almost exclusively people who are fleeing Reddit because Reddit wouldn't let them hate people loudly enough, things go downhill, especially if you're positioning yourself as a "free speech absolutist" alternative with lax moderation policies.
I'm hopeful that Reddit alternatives which get popular now are getting an influx of more moderate users, who are fed up with Reddit's management's terrible treatment of developers (and overall bad direction lately with the redesign and pushing website users to use the app and generally chasing profit over all else). Sort of like how Mastodon got an influx of mostly decent users who are fed up with how Twitter is being run by an incompetent chud.
EDIT: But to be clear, what these Reddit alternatives are trying to do is still extremely difficult. They have a better starting-point than Voat, so I give them better chances to not end up as cesspools, but nothing is certain.
This is pretty much by biggest hope for the current uproar.
Voat was almost destined to become a nasty place because of the audience that reddit was disenfranchising at the time. If losing /r/fatpeoplehate was enough to make you seek an alternative platform, then the community you wanted to create smelled a lot like /r/fatpeoplehate. And regardless of whether you think that's a community that should or shouldn't exist, I don't believe it's a solid foundation to attract a wide userbase to.
The communities currently being disenfranchised are power-users, community moderators, developers .. if (Voat equivalent) were to happen today, it might find itself with a much more productive community to build from.
Ah, Voat. Thinking back, I cringe at the fact that I was quite a prominent user in it's very early days, before it got took over by antisemitism etc. Before the FPH crowd and others who were banned from Reddit came over, it was a reasonably nice place where otherwise-silenced (/"uncomfortable") topics coule be discussed in a fairly pleasant and intellectual way (sometimes). I even bought some merch to support the site when ako (or w/e the founder's username was?) was complaining about running out of money for the site.
A good example was that I actually remember discussinf about the increasing rate of transexuality amongst children on there (what could be the causes, the consequences, etc.), all the way back in circa 2015. 8 years before it became such a hot-button topic...
Voat never went away though - Poal was created and the entire, quite angry and detestable, userbase migrated.
There will always be a spectrum of humans, and every spectrum has two ends, and there will probably always be the "80% middle" forums, and the "10% ends" forums...
Reddit has its own particular, identifiable cultural aspects (some positive, some negative) though it's also large enough that it's managed to escape being pinned down to only its more negative aspects. Twitter maybe not as much among some crowds though it's still a very broad userbase.
Admin, mods and finally users set the tone of a site and lead by example. On HN for example the more one has read over time what the tone of the place is and the type of content and moderation, the likelier it will continue, almost Ship of Theseus style with regard to users.
While if this place for example were more accepting of crass comments and submissions then the culture would adapt and invite more of the same. Some might like or prefer that but it also has its downsides, particularly for users who like aspects of a site/sub-community but find other aspects more difficult to be an apologist toward.
Idk where I'm going with this apart from I wouldn't want to be in someone's shoes trying to broadly handle maintaining a decent culture that isn't weighed down/characterized only by its more negative aspects :p