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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tribblepuncher ago
Certainly.
https://www.techworm.net/2017/05/microsofts-windows-10-block-downloads-kodi-pirate-bay-kickasstorrents-others.html
They're planning on blacklisting sites that they disapprove of due to piracy. I'm not sure if this is just in IE and Edge, or if it goes down into blocking lower in the TCP/IP stack (I'd imagine it might involve IP blocking at least, with evasion dealt with through forced updates). Extend this to whatever else displeases Microsoft, whether it be piracy, business, political, or carry opinions that Microsoft shouldn't be doing this. Once the code is in place, it's not difficult to add different addresses to it as well.
You can call it any number of things. I call it censorship, and that's a nice way of putting it. More realistically, it's not only censorship, but it's also gross abuse of a monopolistic position. In fact, that's what a lot of this Windows 10 push is about - so they can have an OS that they can control remotely, that spies on you, and when someone complains, their response will be, "OK, so you hate it, what are you gonna do about it?" And while many will embrace Linux, for most people who might not be so fortunate (e.g. owning hardware that isn't locked out), the answer is going to be, "nothing, sir, sorry for wasting your time." My guess is that Android and Apple will eventually follow suit, if current trends remain unstopped.
While at least Chrome already does this to some extent - that is to say, blocks attempts to access addresses with known malware - it also allows you to override the browser's judgment, and it presumably does not try to use it against you at some point, whereas who knows what Microsoft might do if (or rather, when) it phones home? Although from the way it's handled, that's all a hypothetical on Microsoft's part, since I seriously doubt they'll let you override it in the first place.
It's also arguably a pretty slippery slope legally, since if they're censoring some of it, they may be accepting legal blame to interfere with anything that they think is even remotely possibly connected to illegal activity, which would only mean far greater snooping and intervention, along with even more censorship.
So yeah. I expected this, but I'd have figured they would've waited a few years.