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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BreesusLovesYou ago
All this talk of individual donations is nice, but there's not realistically enough of us willing/able to make large enough reoccurring donations indefinitely to keep up with the expenses of running a serious social media site. We need a mass campaign to contact someone with deep enough pockets that they could eat costs on their own, that might also share the free speech ideals of Voat. Difficult to know who if anyone would be willing to publicly take the criticism that would come with tolerating some of the uglier sides of free speech, but we should figure out candidates that might and coordinate a twitter campaign to try to get their attention. I'd nominate John McAfee to start.
9143915? ago
With only 30 people documented we already have 1/9 of the currently stated monthly operating costs pledged. Voat has hundreds of active content submitters, thousands of active commenters. We definitely can fund this ourselves.
BreesusLovesYou ago
Little donations might help pay for servers and such. It doesn't get voat a real staff and keeps it relegated as a couple guys side project until they run out of the energy to keep doing something for nothing or life gets in the way as we've already seen from Atko.
9147322? ago
As Putt said in the announcement, if Voat can fund itself for a few months more he should be able to introduce the infrastructure necessary to properly low costs and maybe take on a larger staff in the near future. This is a step in that direction.
BreesusLovesYou ago
No he didn't. He said he wasn't going to shut down immediately but he was scaling back resources and talked about his own sacrifices to keep voat running. No where in there was anything to suggest that short of a deep pockets investor would voat stay open. People in the comments assumed if they could raise the server and software costs all would be fine, but completely ignored that he basically said, "Look I can't do this for free forever."
Go read what he actually wrote. https://voat.co/v/announcements/1866053
9147469? ago
I suppose I was more referring to several of the comments he made within the announcement thread. His position right now is not one of giving up, but of warning us of potential worst case scenarios becoming reality. He has, within this thread, stated his intention to contact free speech supporting celebrities, to make significant changes to Voat and its management given the opportunity to do so, etc.
Read through his recent comment history to see what I mean. History.
BreesusLovesYou ago
I know he made some comments on not giving up yet and all, but they all also centered around the idea of needing one year's funding to include being able to hire a small staff for voat to go forward long term. You can't crowd fund that. There's nothing in his comments that says it he gets a few months the situation will get better and he'll be able to hire anyone. It's all, "I need mass funding to get a staff if this going to be a thing."
So donate a little if you can, that's nice, but it's not the answer. From everything Putt has said a big enough investment upfront to have the capital to hire a staff for a year is the only way voat stays open long term. I don't know if financially that is the correct way for him to look at the situation, but that's what he has said.
Any effort to save voat needs to include ways to try to help Putt find a serious investor. "Everybody give five bucks," isn't gonna do it.
9147772? ago
I agree morally trustworthy investors would be ideal, but I see nothing wrong with trying to get enough of the userbase to pledge $6000+ a month. With 40+ users we have almost $1000 already. I'm confident enough people pledging $5 or $10 a month could buy as substantially more time.
BreesusLovesYou ago
Like I said it's nice, and maybe it does buy some time. But realistically people posting in a thread, "Hey I'll donate $X / month" that they may or may not actually follow up on isn't a sustainable model.
All it takes is a relatively small percentage of those who pledged to donate to not follow up one month - be it because they had unexpected expenses in life, forgot or lost interest, or just straight up lied because they wanted both fives in a comments section but never really intended to donate, or whatever - and expected revenue from donations pledged goes tits up.
So again, its nice if those who can donate do. But Putt can't count on that as a budget, hire a staff off of that or do any of the things he says he needs to stay open.
9148332? ago
I agree. Obviously pursuing this as a crutch is best if we have more pledges than we actually need, because yes people will fail to deliver. Doing this in the meantime is by no means a bad idea or a waste of time. No it's likely not sustainable but it is worth attempting to see what the results yield, for those who can afford to try pledging something small.