Imzy, the Kinder and Gentler Reddit By Ex Employee, Is Shutting Down (imzy.com)

Imzy, a social media site led by ex-Reddit employee Dan McComas, announced on Wednesday that it will be closing its doors next month. The site was launched last year with much fanfare. Imzy sought to offer a community that didn't have trolls, one of the reasons that led McComas to leave Reddit two years ago. Ever since its launch, Imzy struggled to gain traction. According to web analytics firm SimilarWeb, the website was visited less than 400,000 times last month. McComas didn't elaborate why his service was shutting down, though he wrote: Some of you have been here since our launch into beta and some are brand new. We've loved getting to know all of you and seeing you build communities and make new friends. Unfortunately, we were not able to find our place in the market. We still feel that the internet deserves better and hope that we see more teams take on this challenge in the future.

Comments

A Community Without Trolls

[sexconker]

A community without trolls is like a city without crime.

Re:A Community Without Trolls

[computational super]

More like a city without citizens. One man's troll is another man's freedom fighter - if you're going to get banned for saying anything that offends anyone, which is what "safe spaces" always devolve into, you learn not to say anything. Doesn't lead to a very engaging user experience.

Re:A Community Without Trolls

[Baron_Yam]

>if you're going to get banned for saying anything that offends anyone, which is what "safe spaces" always devolve into, you learn not to say anything.

Which is why instead of a 'safe space', you need to find professional moderators your user community will come to trust to be fair about enforcing rules despite the fact that any community rule set will have grey areas.

Those kinds of people cost money, and given that Reddit-like sites don't seem to generate mountains of the stuff, it's unlikely you'll see them except for serious issues that are likely to cause legal problems for the company.

Re:A Community Without Trolls

[computational super]

I like how he didn't say anything remotely racist, but you actually did, and you fail to see the irony.

Re:A Community Without Trolls

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Places with no rules are great to troll people.. turn around and then have a reasonable discussion. Rule crazy places.. or even places that just have lots of rules.. say habbo
You troll the place and not the people I laugh till I cry when I say or do something funny and a box pops up telling me it's "not the habbo way"

Only stupid people need heavy moderation. Because without it they're constantly getting told they're fucksticks and it hurts their feelings.

Crime is wrong, trolling is not

[mi]

Bad analogy, because crime (in the usual meaning of the term) is just wrong, regardless of whether there are laws/rules against it. Trolling, on contrast, may be useful, informative, and entertaining.

Re:Crime is wrong, trolling is not

[headbulb]

Trolling by definition is not useful. It may be informative but there are much better ways of getting information through.

Trolling is just being an asshole to someone else online.

Re:Crime is wrong, trolling is not

[citylivin]

" because crime (in the usual meaning of the term) is just wrong,"

It was wrong for slaves to demand to be free?

It was wrong for americans to separate from their UK masters?

It was wrong for whistle-blowers to document and report on NSA spying?

It was wrong for people to be locked up for smoking a plant?

"Crime" merely means breaking the law. Laws are written by man, and man is not perfect and gets it wrong.

Frequently.

We are the trolls

[Headw1nd]

As much as one could make this a free speech issue, the sad fact is that trolling is roughly the level of discourse we have sunk to. Every conversation and argument, every argument a fight. We don't want discussion, we want our blood boiling as we curse our foes, our enemies before us and our allies at our back. I'm as guilty as anyone else.

Re:We are the trolls

[parallel_prankster]

This is so true. As someone who has been on Slashdot and Reddit for the past 5-10 years (on Reddit close to when it started), it seems most discussions have become hyper-partisan and you are no longer sure if you are talking to someone who is interested in having a serious conversation about the topic or just wants to vent out his feelings often as facts! And yes, I cant say I am completely clean on this either.

Re:We are the trolls

[WDot]

Same. My policy on pretty much every commenting system these days (which I unfortunately don't always follow), is only respond to a response if it looks like the person appeared to read and comprehend what I said. I almost never respond, because 99% of responses I read are arguing against words I did not say. Either that or they are simply repeating a point I addressed, as if I did not address it.

It's not just that it's impossible to convince anyone of your position over the Internet. It's impossible to convince them that there might be even the slightest flaw in anything they believe, even casually. I remember arguing with someone once who was very certain (and said so) that he had logic on his side. When I pointed out some fallacies in his arguments, he said those fallacies were justified, because he was wronged (in whatever it was).

It's not even just that. People are just talking over each other, repeating talking points that they believe and trying to shut up the other person. They have no interest in trying to convince the other person. I remember being disturbed 3-4 years ago when discussion got going in many forums about whether shaming and insults were valid rhetorical discourse. After all, "we" know we're "right," and the other side refuses to come around, so why not just shame and insult them until they go away? Then, of course, consensus will be reached.

Web forums suck still, why?

[swb]

Why do web based forums still suck so much after all these years?

Any web forum community I go to seems to suffer from the same problems.

Too many subforums that don't see any traffic, more or less forcing users into "general" forum that drowns in traffic. "Sticky" posts which are unedited glop, pages long.

Software that doesn't allow fetching more than a couple of screens worth of messages at a time, made worse by message headers that are way too big and relentless warlording by users with giant footers filled with pictures, dumb quotes, and other bullshit.

"Mega-threads" -- sometimes hundreds of pages long with almost no navigation or threading capability, and totally edited for content. A near total absence of sane threading capability. Search functions that don't return any useful information.

It makes me miss USENET.

The problem

[Cro Magnon]

The good news is, there's a site with no trolls. The bad news is, it doesn't have any users either.

Re:Telling

[AmiMoJo]

The whole story is actually a troll in this case. The implication is that the site failed because of censorship, but actually Voat, the hard core free speech Reddit rip-off isn't doing so great either.

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/...

Must be fun working in marketing and trying to explain to advertisers why "watchpeopledie", "fatpeoplehate" and "pizzagate" at the top three search terms that bring people to your site.

Re:Telling

[Distan]

Reddit is already being killed by the spread of this "social justice" variant of political correctness. These Imzy people actually thought the solution was more social justice? That's hilarious. I hope they drained a lot of money out of the pockets of like-thinking VCs on their way down.