A lot of people and things died this year but the one I’m probably most bummed about is Voat.co
I loved reading what was posted to that website and the community was one of the most tolerable groups of people I had the pleasure of running into on the internet. I hate “big tech.” I hate the media and I hate social media. But Voat was great. People said what they wanted to say. Sure there were some trolls… Yes there were taboo words… But I got the sense there were people who wanted to spread knowledge, and people who wanted to learn. People who weren’t as easily susceptible to programming as the average idiot who posts on message boards. There were people who had simply grown tired of –or perhaps never tolerated — the censorship and propaganda plagues all of the mainstream corners of the internet. Reading Voat and sites like it are a reminder that there are “cool” people out there in the world, and if I can navigate my way through the bullshit, I might find some.