Today, PuttitOut announced the possibility of a closure of Voat due to financial constraints.

Since Voat is one of the few places left where free speech is not a wish but reality, we urge you to donate. A small amount of 5 to 10 Dollars on a regular basis could do it, provided the Voat community can activate enough users. https://store.voat.co/donations

Questions we hope to answer shortly:

How to donate anonymously if you don’t have bitcoins or a prepaid credit card?

How do donate a larger sum than 50 Dollars? EDIT: Easy. To donate 200 $ just "buy" four 50 $ donations at once.

We can pull this off, Pizzagaters!

Crensch showed us how in a comment:

At $5 a pop, 1,320 Goat Horns would need bought for the usage costs.

At $20/month for 5 Goat Horns + to-be-released-benefits, only 330 goats would need to subscribe.

Have a system-run subverse that can hit "all" where GHd comments and submissions are on display, and instead of, or in addition to the highlighted subverse, have the top GHd comment/submission on the front of /all no matter what for X amount of time.

For $50/month have your username made a different color for your posts/comments so people can see that you heavily support voat without having to click on your username.

Only 132 goats would need to subscribe to that for the month's costs. Maybe another one for 100? 66 goats.

Some combination of all of these would likely work to bring us close to server-cost levels.

Let's all work together to keep Voat afloat. Let's help keep our Voatie Goat going until that angel comes along: Set up a repeating donation. You even get a cool new badge every month when the money transfers over. We can fight or we can fold!

PuttitOut: Voat needs an Angel

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