[deleted] wrote on December 23, 2020 at 6:23 PM (edited on December 23, 2020 at 6:26 PM)

Rambler OP wrote on December 23, 2020 at 6:29 PM

It's possible. It had been canned once before when it was hosted in Germany.

I don't know much about the guy or the site outside of being a casual lurker since it started, but I wish him luck.

RichardButte wrote on December 23, 2020 at 8:41 PM

I've read somewhere that the BC address associated with Voat donations have over $100k. No source.

Rambler OP wrote on December 23, 2020 at 10:00 PM

BTC isn't exactly anonymous. If he's ever posted a BTC address publicly, you can then just sort of follow the transactions around even though you may never know the true owner of one address to another.

Does he mention what his operating costs were or what sort of server setup he was rocking? Voat is/was a lot larger than I imagined, I've seen numbers stating hundreds of thousands of users. I'd imagine scaling (especially with whatever BS Microsoft licensing requirements would be) would get quite costly, but well within his ability if that rumor was true.

What was the end game with Voat anyhow? I see where they had previously had an angel investor and some tech money coming in, which isn't bad in it's own, but usually outside funding and investments isn't done based on charity because the guy with the money supports your platform. They usually seek a return of some sort...

Wahaha wrote on December 23, 2020 at 10:25 PM

There was a BTC address posted publicly and some goats over there did some digging providing conflicting information. I don't know much about bitcoin so I never ventured out to research deeper into this.

But it's fair to say money wasn't the issue. What I found most credible is that the admin was in a position of either shutting down or compromising the place and went for the shut down. Of course, since the canary died ages ago, lots of goats think the place was compromised anyway. If you subscribe to that the most credible thing becomes that the site served it's use.

I'm not especially unhappy, since it got kinda stale over the years, anyway. All the goats that thought the place was compromised went away so the remaining folks dispersing around poal, notabug and other similar places will likely stir things up in those places and maybe make things interesting again. At least I hope so.

The great thing about Voat wasn't that people called OP a niggerfaggot, but that bullshit got caught regularly and that sources to data was provided. Basically, people over there weren't sheep, but goats.

Rambler OP wrote on December 23, 2020 at 10:33 PM

Gotcha. Well, I can't blame him for turning the lights off it it's to protect the users. I know if that was the case he wouldn't be able to come out and say that is why, or at least, I don't think he'd be able to.

I'm not familiar enough with the history to really pass judgement either way. I just know a lot of people are going to miss a place they enjoyed for years. I always try to give the benefit of doubt to people, so hopefully it's for a good reason if it's not financially related. Or maybe it's for a horrible reason. We may never know.