I came across this submission posted by my great pal Theo (actually I wouldn't trust him around sharp objects, but that's just me) and it was such a clickbate title! I was expecting him roast me for posting poetry to Voat.
I was ready to laugh.
I didn't laugh. It wasn't funny, it was concern fagging about my credibility, mental state, and casting doubt about Voat and who we partnered with. I hate clickbate.
If you filter down the list of demands you get to the important stuff. This is some of it. I've said this before, and will one last time.
Why would anyone invest in Voat?
- They believe Free Speech is important
- They see a lot of potential in Voat
They aren't selling ads, so obviously they are selling us out.
- Voat data has never been shared with anyone, and will remain this way.
How is Voat ever going to make money?
We realized years ago that advertising was a dead end. At best it would possibly cover hosting costs. It is sad in a way, because we could get some advertising, but we can't expect Voat to change. If I said "Hey guys, we can get some advertisement money if we clean up the defaults a bit," how would that end? Basically we can't advertise here because of the content. It's that bad.
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We have a new feature set coming out soon that will allow Voat to generate revenue in fun and different ways. We are going to move in this direction and build out revenue capability on top of it.
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Additionally, while developing some prototype features, we realized that we could use the software for a different purpose, potentially opening up an entirely new market separate from Voat (no Voat wouldn't change). So we are working to this end too.
Who is The Angel?
I'm not saying, because it's unimportant. I have controlling interest in Voat. The Angel is a silent partner and does not get involved with the running of Voat. Maybe they should because it takes a ton of time and they might be better than me. ;)
Short of it is:
If you don't trust me you should leave Voat, it's what I did with Reddit. That's honestly my best advice.
What I didn't do when I left Reddit was make a bunch of destructive posts about how much I didn't trust them. You know, to go along with that builder/destroyer theme we have going.
Another sticky? Who is this power mod!?
view the rest of the comments →
BraunF14 ago
"Basically we can't advertise here because of the content. It's that bad."
I love that you're realistic. We all pretty much are and should have already considered this before anyone else starts asking to purchase ad space. Thanks for the chuckle. But yeah, we are pretty out there and I love it.
aaronC ago
Even if voat was less edgy with content, if it's not sucking up to liberals the odds of losing advertising providers is extremely high. Far left has been going after advertisers on websites they don't like for quite some time. When a website creates their own monetization scheme, it takes away a tool liberals use to shut down websites by cutting off their funding.
A website can not be free (as in freedom) if it's being indirectly funded by liberals. And if you're using advertising services, you're being funded indirectly by receiving commission for displaying ads from the liberal company allowing you to display those ads.
It's more of a rule for general websites. Even if you sell your own ad space directly, without a service like adsense, those companies advertising may, and probably will, be attacked by liberals into either removing those ads or something worse.
Apexbreed ago
This gives me the idea to start threatening companies who advertise on any platform that allowed communist content (all of them). Might as well play their game back. We need media sources to back this play though.
RoBatten ago
It frustrates (((them))) that they don't have this avenue of attack on Voat. So we get hit hard with shills . . .