Edit:
I'm simply blown away with you goats. I was expecting a somber farewell in this thread but instead you've done the exact opposite; pulled off a rally at the bottom of the 9th. On a personal note, and this may seem sentimental, but you have given me a new hope for Voat at very dark time for me.
All I can say now is: Let's do this! I think your message is clear. We have a ton of work to do, a short window in which to do it, and I fully understand I can't do it alone. We will need all hands on deck if Voat is to have any chance at survival.
I will post the plans I have for Voat as well as a status update on your contributions by Monday.
P.S. Old goats, be nice to the new kids. ;)
Original Post
As I sit here about to write one of the most difficult announcements yet, I was just reminded that my account is one month shy of three years old. Nearly three years ago I came here from Reddit when the vote counts disappeared and I felt I could no longer trust what I saw. Nearly three years ago I met @Atko and started contributing code because I believed in him, his mission, and what he was doing. So much has happened during these last three years.
I know a lot of you are new, but Voat has been through a wild ride, and never at any point was it an easy one. My memories are bittersweet when it comes to Voat. I’ve sacrificed the best years of my life for Voat, I’ve lost my business partner whom I miss a lot, I’ve lost people in my life, I’ve given up golf which was my passion, and even with all this I still believe in Voat. I still see the dire need for Free Speech in this world, I fear a world without it, and I still will do anything I can to continue providing it.
But alas, I am powerless to keep Voat running without financial support. As of right now Voat has no solid commitments. Voat has always needed a financial partner whom had balls of steel and backing deep enough to give Voat the capabilities to run as an actual business (being able to hire staff and set itself apart from its competitors), not just a one man show. Potential investors have one or the other of these traits, but we have yet to find one with both. In this day and age, this is Voat’s unicorn.
In the past Voat has been lucky enough to be part of special programs designed for startup companies which gave us free licensing on various products and significantly reduced hosting costs. These programs have since expired and we are now paying full costs. Last month was our first non-discounted month on Azure and the usage was $6,600.90 USD. Donations, ads, and merchandise only put a dent in this and this is the primary reason why we have not launched another merchandise run. And begging for donations was always something we hated doing.
I’m writing this announcement to prepare this community, and the Voat family, for the possibility of a closure. I’m not certain on timing and I have too much invested in this place to give up just yet, so I cannot provide any timelines. In the meantime, I will soon be scaling back all Voat’s servers by at least 50%. I will also turn off some features that are resource intensive.
Voat needs funding. Without it, Voat will be no more.
Voat needs an Angel
Canary
https://voat.co/v/announcements/1330806
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pangaea ago
Would switching to open source software be a possibility to cut costs?
lbruiser ago
It's not the license, it's the host. No matter where they go they will still need some powerful servers to host this site. At most it would reduce the cost some, but not enough.
pangaea ago
The hosting alone costs nowhere near $6500/month I'm sure.
0011011000111001 ago
It is most likely software licenses kicking in.
lbruiser ago
I can only go off of what PuttItOut says. However we do have a ton of traffic so I could see it. However my information comes from AWS and not Azure.
pangaea ago
My personal server costs ~$12/month for hosting + ~$12/year for domain renewal and no other expenses since I use only open source software but that is for a small personal server that is used to share images on Voat (specs: dual core CPU, 2 GB RAM, 500 GB storage, unmetered bandwidth). I've seen some good size websites run on ~$100/month servers though, using all open source software. This gets you terabytes of storage and like 32GB of RAM. This might be able to run Voat but I don't know the exact requirements.
WhiteRonin ago
Bandwidth? I wonder how much data this site pushes out each month.
pangaea ago
My server is unmetered and I'm sure you could get bigger unmetered servers too
WhiteRonin ago
This is a good to hear.
thrus ago
That requires re writing things and takes development resources, long term it may save money but upfront it is a cost sink for staff time and something that putt may not have working alone. It is good to think reducing long term but with something like this I get the impression short term is going to have to happen first like the server reduction putt mentioned.