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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.
As a long time internet vagabond I tried Imzy but just couldn't do it.
The software itself wasn't bad. I could see it gaining traction for a lot of stuff that doesn't quite fit Reddit or forum discussion structure. The 'Choose a profile for this community" as well as "Post Anonymously" functions were great. I'm glad to see that some other website tried the AnonymousCoward idea.
The problem was it was the mirror universe of the Voat community where after two "Don't do that. That language shouldn't be used here" messages from mods I decided Fuck That Shit I didn't want to go online and feel like I was walking on eggshells around people that couldn't handle 'outside'.
One particular argument was that they took issue with the word "Coward" when I brought up how Slashdot used "Anonymous Coward". They didn't like the 'connotation' that it bore and calling someone a "coward" for wanting to post anonymously was answered with some logic I didn't quite follow.
I've said it before but Slashdot's founders seemingly put some forethought into how to design a forum. It's not perfect but it works. "Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.".
Non-nesting forums only work until you hit a critical mass. Trying to have any discussion on Facebook was futile, even within private groups of educated people because of the non-nesting commenting. Then they added it but only made it 1 comment deep. Once Fark comment threads hit a certain number of people commenting it fell apart. However in domain specific areas 'old school forums' still are best. You can find a niche of a niche of a niche forum out there to discuss why your Singer XTNEH2398 sewing machine has this weird issue and there's a half chance that it'll get seen by someone that knows how to fix it. There are multiple car specific forums out there that are infinitely better than Reddit or just a generic car site.
For large sites I take issue with Reddit's "everyone gets to vote", because it leads to bandwagoning. At least Slashdot's bandwagoning is limited to -1:+5. So while stuff can swing either way it's pointless to continue to pile on more moderation. The random, distributed nature of the moderation also seems to put a low pass filter on the moderation.
For those that think it's now Overrun with racists and what not I invite you to spend a week on Voat, 4Chan or Stormfront and come back to Slashdot.
I've never even heard of this site and I have been looking for a reddit alternative that isn't Voat. I've been around /. for a long-long-long time and nothing will likely ever replace its format adequately and I'm fine with that. Reddit has a much broader scope in usage and I really liked that about the site from the mid 2000s to about 2012. But its appeal to that broader scope is what truly made the site absolute trash. It wasn't even necessarily the mass-appeal that reddit finally achieved. It was the realization from marketing companies that it had reached a mass-appeal and started using the site as a new marketing platform for everything from hawking new movies and products to attempting to sway public opinion on certain topics with paid political astroturfers.
I used to spend entire days on reddit reading often insightful comments and learning things from people who do things you aren't always exposed to. It was a wonderful platform for that. Once they sold out, I can't even stand to be on the site more than an hour before I'm offensively bored.
As for imzy, the front page isn't very welcoming. If I didn't know what I had just stumbled onto, I might just move on to another website. Seriously guys, I can't even tell what the hell the site is supposed to be from the front page. Theres a scrolling ticker that keep iterating new items that appeal to the concept of "community". What if I don't want to belong to a "community" and just want to read shit other people post? Too bad I guess. Forcing people to sign up to view the content is a pretty antiquated style for a forum that is supposed to sponsor discussion. Also, that video doesn't even need to exist. It says nothing about what the site is about. Hell, I might be more inclined to think I'm watching some trailer for a terribly disjointed game or something. Its no shock these folks are closing shop. They decided "community" meant walled off from the trolls and forgot that they still needed to exist outside of that wall if they wanted to grow.
If you want to beat reddit, make a website that looks exactly like reddit and use a scoring and modding system like slashdot. Then, don't sell out like a bitch.
Imzy can absolutely suck it. They are a bunch of hypocritical jagoffs.
I was on Imzy for the exact purpose it was created- to be a bit nicer. So tired of the Twitter and Reddit trolls. Imzy is nice, great!
I posted for a while and had fun. Then someone with the username of 'FuckGringos' commented on a few of my posts. Okay, this is supposedly not welcome here, so I emailed the admins. "Hey, umm...the user with the name 'FuckGringos' violates your terms of service".
That was elevated to 'Jessica' (Dan's SO I believe) who said, "We do not consider that username to be offensive, because it calls out the group who holds the power and therefore is not racist."
Oh...it's one of those.
So I figured, "Okay, evidently Imzy is not the place for me, so I will delete my account. Not a big deal..." I go through the stupid-complicated account deletion process- which is basically you posting to their admin board explaining why you want to delete your account. It's public, but that was their process. One of the questions is basically, "Please explain in detail why you want to leave." Well, it's because FuckGringos is not considered offensive, but 'FuckXXXX' (any other group) is offensive.
That caused a shit-storm because evidently I was 'calling out another user' blah blah blah. As far as Imzy was concerned, me complaining about 'Fuck Gringos' was offensive, but the username wasn't.
Essentially Imzy was a frigging hypocritical circle-jerk of 'progressive' people against hate...unless you happen to be white. Evidently I was supposed to allow my white guilt to over-ride all of their terms of service or something and embrace the idea that I was bad and should accept the shame that comes with being white.
I've been waiting for a while to hear this news about them shutting down, and I'm happy. Because they (Thanks Jessica) were absolute liars when they told everyone, "This is a nice place."
No- it's not. It's a place where the new rules where white/CIS/men are all bad things, and everyone else is good.
Personally, I have no problem with any people based on their demographics, but I really hate the people who are full of shit and misrepresent what they do as good...when they are as bad as it gets.
Good riddance. I hope they wasted a lot of their own money. And yeah, now I'm 'not being nice' on Slashdot...because rather than make the Internet a better place, they made it worse.
Does anyone know of anything good to come out of Imzy?
No reason to lie.
On the off-chance that you really are genuinely curious, the simple answer is that I find it hilarious. I'm not forcing other people to get involved in a dumb argument, it's 100% their choice. I also consider it a public service, as it's teaching them (or if not them, possibly other observers) a valuable lesson about why sometimes it's best to just drop a discussion when it's clear you're not having any impact on the other person. Of course, most people would rather just escalate it to a screaming match (and usually expose themselves as hypocrites in the process) rather than let someone be wrong on the internet.