This article is more than 1 year old

Attempt at building kinder, gentler Reddit downvoted off the Web

Chat forums beyond El Reg just do respectful whimsy, so goodbye 'Imzy'

Reddit can be a nasty, nasty place. So nasty that in 2015 half a dozen Reddit employees – some who said they'd experienced personal abuse or threats of violence from Reddit members – bailed from the company and set their sights on "rethinking the way communities exist on the internet".

That plan eventually became Imzy.com, a community similar to Reddit but with rules that forbade comment from unregistered users and encouraged polite, respectful debate.

It didn't work and now founder Dan McComas has posted that the site is shutting down.

"We are sorry to say that after nearly two years of building Imzy, it is time for us to shut down the site," he wrote.

He doesn't offer a reason beyond: "Unfortunately, we were not able to find our place in the market."

McComas' post details how users can export their data. They'll have to hustle: requests to do so must be lodged by 16 June. The site will go dark on 23 June.

Imzy is known to have received at least $11m in funding, loose change by Silicon Valley standards.

Meanwhile, over on Reddit, debate continues with its usual vigour, while 4Chan keeps frothing and Facebook tries to screen out the worst with rules that forbid pictures of breastfeeding but allow videos of violent death. ®

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