I'm not going to comment on the aesthetics. That can come later. In fact it's nice to have a stripped down site like this so that one can focus on just the content avaialble.

And the content, is very... Vague. My initial thoughts when I came in was, "okkk.. what is this site? some social something something.. ok.. 500k politics. What's that? What do I do here? What does anyone do here?"

Now that I'm back here, I'll just address the points

* Signups require donation to a charity - I get that getting people to join by contributing to charity should automatically foster a better culture, but not sure how well that's going to help one grow. Maybe a model of suggestions and acceptance where acceptance is only by people who have joined the site via donations. Again, problems there of politics etc.

* no upvotes or downvotes, just voteable taggings - unclear what this meant. Especially given that the site is so sparse at the moment politics: 500k | 0 is really confusing. Also, voteable taggings. Do you mean that I can suggest a tag and vote for it? Can I downvote a tag? If I can, isn't it the same thing as upvotes and downvotes since a post can get downvoted out of the site?

* powerful search. With 8 posts seeded, one would expect at least a search box example (even one of those "click here to find out how to power search" that pops up an overlay is something). Also, what is powerful searching? Regex?

* focus on fostering positive behaviour and meaningful discussions - unclear how this happens.

* Violent allergic reactions to advertising - That's obvious

* something of a cross between craigslist/reddit/google if you squint super hard - I guess?

* more in the ReadMe - So I read that. And it's a noble goal. It really is. But many others have come and gone with just noble ideals. And on this point I don't think anyone can offer much feedback. All we can do is hope that you do break past the barrier separating noble and profitable. Example of why I say this, "adult, graphic, NSFW are all inappropriate for this site and will be removed." That is one of THE slippery slopes on the internet. Sometimes world changing news is graphic. Sometimes beautiful art is adult. Ask deviantart how hard it was to manage the latter on their site. Flame wars would constantly break out over whether content was porn or art just because photoshop and an artsy well lit background with drapes was involved in a photo of an individual in a sultry pose wearing equally sultry clothing.

If this is your MVP, I wish I could say I get it. But I don't. And I don't know if it's in the design. Not necessarily a more snazzy design but something a little more obvious at least. Maybe it's even in the fact that it's just trying to do too many things at once. The point is, what's the purpose? Everyone wants to be better. In your case you want to be better technically AND culturally.

That's two problems right there! And both are very vague as well. Do you want it to be a mono culture? That's great from some perspectives. Not so great from the perspective of discourse. Do you want candor? Get ready for fights. By technically do you mean you want better content? What's your bar? You have For-Hire, For-Sale, and Humour as categories listed amongst others. Each is a different beast by itself to manage. Or by technically do you mean the site can work better?

I wish I didn't have to sound negative on this. I really don't want to. But as I try to search for a positive answer to "here you could try this" I find myself with questions for everything else.

I guess the only suggestion I can really contribute is to scale it back. Strip it to the core. What do you want most? Work everything around that.