First off, I need to say that I know I’ve let a lot of you down (if not all). I know I’ve not met your expectations of an admin or a leader. I have no excuses as even I feel this way about myself. I won’t make attempts for empathy, I will only acknowledge the truth, and it is such.
Life is full of surprises. You can be rich one minute and living out of your car the next. You can be healthy one year and a regular in the doctor’s office the following. You can have life figured out only to discover you know nothing in the end. The only constant in life is change.
My life is not the same it was when I first met @Atko and started working on Voat. I have much less time, I have a bit less fight in me (getting old does this), I have a bit more struggle in life. These life changes have forced me to put Voat on the back burner (which hurts me).
Let’s get real
When it comes to “Free Speech” sites, I once believed that people cared enough about the value of free speech to make “clone” sites like Voat (or gab) successful. I’ve come to realize, and have said before, that this single factor isn’t enough. People simply do not value this right enough to make a “clone” successful.
You can see this with Voat. A majority of Voat users still use Reddit. People use Reddit for posting and interacting when it comes to PC topics (4 wheel drive subs, movie subs, book subs, etc.). They use Voat to post the things they can’t post on Reddit. This creates an imbalance where Voat becomes increasingly un-PC, while Reddit gets the neutral content (I know even the most hardened ideologue has a level of civility). The end result is this imbalance drives people away as people wear out when confronted by content like this over the long run.
I don’t know the solution to this, and I am not attempting to pass blame, I am simply stating a truth that has to considered.
What makes a clone not a clone?
Why I mention this in the first place is that I know a “clone” site will not become sustainable based on Freedom of Speech so I’ve tried to revolutionize the “community” aspect of Voat by providing a way the community itself can “vote” on policy (rules, mods, anything actually). It's the future capability of this feature-set that is appealing. A community can become self-sustaining and self-manageable through this new technology. After all, the draw of sites like Voat or Reddit is that it is community-oriented vs. self-oriented.
And I’m going to finish it. I’m going to finish it for me. I’m going to finish it for you. I’m going to finish it for Voat. I’m going to finish it for Freedom of Speech (because I still believe in this ideal).
I’m going to finish it because a “clone” site with no differentiation but policy will never succeed.
So Voat, please forgive me for my shortcomings if you can, and expect my work to continue on making Voat a truly unique website.
Soon.
P.S. Downtime today was because of a full disk (Thanks @derram for letting me know). We had an issue from about a year ago that inflated some files to crazy sizes and I took the time today to deal with this. So the next downtime should be something completely different! Yay!
https://voat.co/v/announcements/1330806
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drozzxd ago
The globalists won't be defeated without free speech sites like voat. Thanks for sticking it out.
Tallest_Skil ago
Censorship: BYPASSED 2
The jews won’t be exterminated if you’re too much of a fucking pussy to call them by their name, either.
Look at all these fucking kikes downvoting me with their sockpuppets and bots.
LostInContinent ago
Hey, OP, ^^^^^^^this^^^^^shit is the major reason why Voat is adrift. Conspiracy bullshit. Never proven, but never disproven, only perpetuated and handed off like some pathetic warped oral tradition.
Also, if I disagree that someone's post adds to the conversation in any meaningful way, I cannot downvote that post because I have not initiated posts. This assumes, from the outset, an absence of integrity and intellectual honesty on the part of each and every Voat member when they sign up and, while you can throw rocks at Reddit with justifiable anger for many things, they don't pull any crap like that. If my comments get downvoted, it's not going to destroy my life.
And I'm not going to blame it on women, queers, or the melanin-privileged, FFS. Get a grip, people.
Tallest_Skil ago
HAHAHAAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
You really expect us to fall for this? Go on, coward. Name something that “hasn’t” been proven. Just ONE thing.
I don’t know what this statement means. Are you talking about the requirement to have 100 upvotes of your own before you can downvote anyone else’s content?
Rather (and we’ll assume you’re talking about the aforementioned sub-100 restriction), this is done for the sake of sockpuppet and bot accounts, so that you can’t make a thousand accounts and have them immediately control the narrative by downvoting everyone else into CENSORSHIP. Sure, you CAN still make the bots, but for them to be able to downvote, they have to upvote each other. And to upvote each other, they have to comment. And we can ALWAYS tell when it’s a bot commenting.
No, they just literally shadowban you so that you can still post but absolutely no one can see your comments. That’s totally better, right?
Funny how none of those are jews, isn’t it? Funny how you don’t even seem to comprehend what we believe and why we believe it.
Get an argument, coward. NAME JUST ONE THING.