Former fired Reddit Vice President Dan McComas is back, currently testing a new competing social sharing site that will offer “healthy, positive communities.”

Called Imzy, the site itself is currently in private beta testing, and has groups dedicated to video games, music, movies and over 400 others, which according to TNW will give content creators a place to interact with their fans through sharing and comments.

Besides an emphasis on nice, social justice friendly things, presumably strictly controlled, Imzy is also looking to differentiate itself by allowing moderators and contributors to the site to earn money via tips from other users, with Imzy taking a small cut of each tip to make money as an alternative to advertising.

In additional to the tipping system, the site will also look at advertising alternatives such as merchandise sales and possibly paid classified advertising.

McComas told TNW that “Imzy wants to provide a safe place to share and discuss without the fear of being harassed, a problem Reddit has struggled with for several years.”

According to The Information, the site has already raised $3 million from Charles River Ventures and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures.

Safe spaces

If you’re not aware of the current push to create “safe spaces” the idea originated on College campuses and seeks to create spaces where nothing deemed even remotely unfriendly can be said or shared, and that includes different, otherwise valid opinions and even facts, on anything that upsets social justice warrior orthodoxy.

What McComas is trying to do with Imzy is build a safe space version of Reddit online.

Putting aside the Orwellian nature of policing thought and restricting free speech, what is not understood by the precious petals who hold these beliefs is that the vast majority of people are not inflicted with the same levels of mental illness they suffer from, and it is a form of mental illness when you break down crying and cannot cope because someone holds a different opinion to yours.

That same level of thinking is already polluting tech startups and indeed did for some time at Reddit during the time Ellen Pao was running the show, an obsession that all speech must be policed to remove anything that a minority may disagree with.

It’s interesting that Imzy as raised $3 million already, and perhaps there are enough precious social justice warrior snowflakes out there to make the business work, but there is one thing for certain: a site that acts as a safe space will never be hugely popular because the vast majority of people haven’t lost their minds yet, and hopefully never will.

Image credit: South Park Studios.