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Voat

Voat was an online news aggregation and discussion platform structured similarly to Reddit, launched in April 2014 by Swiss developer Atif Colo as a hobby project initially named WhoaVerse.^[1] The site featured user-submitted content organized into communities called "subs," with upvoting and downvoting mechanisms to promote visibility based on community consensus rather than centralized moderation.^[2] Emphasizing minimal content restrictions to foster free expression, Voat attracted users seeking alternatives to platforms with stricter policies, particularly after Reddit's 2015 enforcement of anti-harassment rules that banned several subreddits.^[3] The platform's growth surged in mid-2015, drawing "Reddit refugees" to mirrored communities hosting previously quarantined topics, such as critiques of obesity and race-related discussions, which had been removed from Reddit.^[3] This migration highlighted Voat's role as a refuge for dissenting viewpoints, though it also drew scrutiny for enabling unfiltered discourse that mainstream outlets often characterized as extreme or inflammatory.^[4] Co-founder Justin Chastain, who joined Colo, later managed operations amid challenges including payment processor restrictions and advertiser aversion, reflecting broader difficulties for uncensored platforms in securing sustainable revenue.^[5] Voat operated until December 25, 2020, when Chastain announced its shutdown, citing the withdrawal of its sole investor in March 2020 and his inability to personally fund ongoing costs like server maintenance and legal compliance.^[6] Despite attempts to implement user subscriptions and donations, the site could not achieve financial viability, underscoring the economic pressures on independent speech-oriented networks amid dependency on third-party infrastructure.^[6] Over its lifespan, Voat hosted millions of posts and served as a case study in the tensions between open discourse and platform governance, influencing subsequent alternatives while exposing vulnerabilities to de facto censorship through financial isolation.^[1]

Founding and Development

Inception and Launch (2014)

Voat originated as a hobby programming project initiated by Atif Colo, a third-year Swedish college student known online as @Atko, who began development in November 2013.^[7]^[3] The platform was designed as an open-source alternative to Reddit, emphasizing user-driven communities and minimal censorship to foster unrestricted discussion on any legal topic.^[8] Colo coded the site part-time using C# and MVC framework, drawing inspiration from Reddit's structure but prioritizing "no legal subject off-limits" as a core principle to differentiate it from mainstream platforms.^[7] The site officially launched in April 2014 under the name WhoaVerse, initially attracting a small user base focused on niche discussions without significant moderation.^[7]^[9] Early features included user-created "subverses" analogous to Reddit's subreddits, upvote/downvote mechanics (branded as "voats"), and basic anonymity, all hosted on a simple domain.^[8] By mid-2014, WhoaVerse remained obscure, with Colo handling all technical and administrative duties solo, as it operated without formal funding or incorporation.^[3] In December 2014, the platform rebranded to Voat to improve memorability and pronunciation, adopting a goat mascot to evoke the "voat" pun on "vote."^[9] This change marked its transition from a student experiment to a more defined free-speech-oriented community site, though user growth stayed modest until external events in 2015.^[10] The rebranding did not alter core mechanics but simplified access, setting the stage for later migrations from censored Reddit communities.^[8]

Early Expansion and Technical Evolution

Voat originated as WhoaVerse, an invite-only beta platform launched in April 2014 by Swiss developer Atif Colo, who built it as a Reddit clone using open-source ASP.NET MVC and Microsoft SQL Server to replicate subreddit-style communities with minimal moderation.^[11] The site initially attracted a small user base focused on free speech, but remained niche until rebranding to Voat in December 2014, which aligned with its emphasis on uncensored discussion forums called "subverses."^[12] Significant expansion occurred in mid-2015 following Reddit's quarantine and bans of contentious subreddits, including fatpeoplehate and others on June 10, 2015, which displaced thousands of users intolerant of Reddit's evolving content policies.^[13] This triggered a mass migration, with Voat's daily active users and traffic spiking as Reddit expatriates established parallel subverses, marking the platform's first substantial growth phase from obscurity to a viable alternative aggregator.^[9] Technically, the sudden influx strained Voat's infrastructure, revealing limitations in its initial single-server setup and database handling, prompting early optimizations such as improved query efficiency, caching layers, and load balancing to mitigate downtime and support concurrent users.^[14] These adaptations, drawn from real-time scaling necessities rather than premeditated design, underscored the platform's bootstrapped evolution, with the open-source codebase enabling volunteer fixes amid resource constraints.^[14] By late 2015, Voat had stabilized enough to sustain the expanded community, though persistent performance hurdles highlighted the challenges of rapid, organic scaling on a volunteer-led project.^[3]

Platform Mechanics and Features

Subverse System and User Interaction

Voat's subverse system organized content into user-created communities known as subverses, functioning analogously to subreddits on Reddit by grouping discussions around specific topics or interests.^[8] Users could establish a subverse on virtually any subject permissible under Swiss law, the platform's operational jurisdiction, though individual accounts were restricted to moderating only a limited number of subverses to curb undue influence by any single participant.^[8] ^[15] Subverse owners retained authority to deactivate their communities, appoint co-owners or moderators, and enforce rules, with moderators empowered to remove submissions or comments deemed violative of subverse-specific guidelines.^[5] User interaction centered on submitting and engaging with content through a link aggregation model, where registered participants posted titles, optional descriptions, and external links or self-text entries to subverses.^[16] Comments formed a hierarchical, tree-like structure beneath submissions, allowing threaded replies to foster extended discussions.^[16] Voting mechanics employed an upvote/downvote system, displaying raw vote tallies unlike Reddit's obfuscated counts; however, new users initially lacked downvoting privileges, requiring accumulation of at least 100 Comment Contribution Points (CCP)—earned via upvotes on their comments—before accessing full voting capabilities, a measure intended to deter spam and brigading.^[8] ^[15] Voting influence scaled with a user's history of positive engagement, amplifying contributions from established accounts.^[8] Submissions within subverses were sortable via tabs for "hot," "new," and "top" content, with each subverse maintaining up to 500 active submissions across 20 pages for navigation.^[5] This structure encouraged users to explore and subscribe to preferred communities, though analyses indicated high user turnover and a tendency toward focused, ideologically aligned participation rather than broad diversification.^[17] Overall, the system prioritized minimal platform-level intervention, delegating content curation to subverse-specific moderation while enforcing baseline prohibitions on illegal material, such as incitement or prohibited depictions.^[8]

Moderation Approach and Free Speech Principles

Voat implemented a decentralized moderation model, wherein individual subverses—analogous to subreddits—were governed by their creators (subverse owners) and appointed moderators, who held authority to approve, remove, or ban content and users within their communities.^[16] To prevent concentration of power, the platform restricted users to owning or moderating a maximum of ten subverses.^[5] This structure shifted primary content oversight to community levels, minimizing top-down intervention from Voat's administrators. At the platform level, rules were sparse and narrowly tailored to operational integrity rather than ideological content, prohibiting spam, vote manipulation, doxxing (revealing personal information), and illegal activities such as child exploitation material or direct threats of violence.^[8] Unlike Reddit, which expanded prohibitions on harassment and hate speech, Voat explicitly lacked a broad harassment policy, allowing user-generated content on virtually any legal topic without central censorship.^[8] Administrators intervened rarely, typically only for egregious violations affecting site functionality, such as coordinated brigading across subverses. This approach stemmed from Voat's foundational commitment to "unfettered free speech," positioning the site as an anti-censorship haven where users submitted, organized, ranked, and moderated content autonomously, with no legal subject matter deemed off-limits.^[7] Founders and proponents argued it preserved open discourse by rejecting "safe spaces" and administrative overreach, attracting migrants from platforms perceived as increasingly restrictive.^[8] However, the lax enforcement enabled proliferation of inflammatory material, prompting debates on whether absolute non-intervention truly advanced free expression or merely amplified toxicity without accountability.^[18]

Community Dynamics and Migration

User Influx from Mainstream Platforms

In June 2015, Reddit administrators banned several subreddits, including r/fatpeoplehate with over 100,000 subscribers, for violating the site's new anti-harassment policy by encouraging targeted abuse against overweight individuals.^[19] ^[20] This action, part of broader content moderation efforts, prompted backlash from users who viewed it as inconsistent censorship, leading to a mass migration to Voat as an alternative platform promising minimal intervention.^[20] ^[3] The influx began immediately after the bans on June 10, 2015, with Reddit users creating equivalent "subverses" on Voat, such as v/fatpeoplehate, which quickly gained traction among displaced communities.^[20] Voat's servers buckled under the sudden demand, experiencing widespread downtime and performance issues as daily active users surged from prior levels, though exact figures were not publicly quantified by the platform at the time.^[21] ^[8] Voat co-founder Stefan Molyneux noted in July 2015 that the site had seen a "noticeable influx" over preceding months, accelerating post-ban, positioning Voat as a "censorship-free" refuge for those alienated by Reddit's evolving rules.^[3] Subsequent Reddit controversies, such as the 2016 dismissal of popular moderator Victoria Taylor, further drove traffic to Voat, but the 2015 bans marked the primary wave of migration from mainstream platforms, attracting users prioritizing unrestricted expression over moderated discourse.^[9] This period solidified Voat's reputation among free speech advocates, though it also amplified challenges in scaling infrastructure for the unanticipated growth.^[22]

Prominent Subverses and Content Patterns

One of the most prominent subverses on Voat was /v/fatpeoplehate, which emerged as a direct migration point for users from Reddit's r/fatpeoplehate subreddit after its ban on July 10, 2015, for violating anti-harassment policies; by mid-July 2015, it had amassed approximately 18,700 subscribers focused on body-shaming memes, images, and critiques of obesity.^[8] Similarly, /v/CoonTown recreated content from the banned r/CoonTown, a subreddit known for racial humor and stereotypes targeting African Americans, drawing users displaced by Reddit's August 2015 enforcement of content rules against "involuntary pornography" and harassment.^[23]^[5] These subverses exemplified early user influxes, with /v/fatpeoplehate later redirecting traffic to external image hosts amid declining activity.^[16] Later in Voat's lifecycle, conspiracy-oriented subverses gained traction, particularly QAnon-focused ones like /v/GreatAwakening and /v/QRVoat, which by 2018-2019 hosted thousands of posts analyzing cryptic "Q drops," political intrigue, and anti-establishment theories; /v/GreatAwakening stood out as the platform's leading QAnon hub, with submission volumes surpassing general news subverses like /v/news during peak periods.^[24] Other notable communities included /v/Nigger, which mirrored extreme racial content from Reddit exiles, though such subverses often faced voluntary shutdowns by Voat administrators for skirting legal boundaries, such as child exploitation material in unrelated "jailbait" forums closed in 2015.^[5]^[2] Content patterns on Voat emphasized uncensored aggregation of links, memes, and debates on topics suppressed elsewhere, including anti-feminist critiques, immigration skepticism, and "red pill" ideology; submissions typically followed a Reddit-like upvote/downvote system filtered into "hot," "new," and "top" tabs per subverse, fostering rapid dissemination of provocative visuals and text.^[25] User behavior showed high volatility, with spikes in activity tied to external deplatformings—e.g., Reddit's 2015 bans drove initial migrations—and persistent engagement in echo chambers for alternative media, though mainstream analyses often highlighted a right-leaning skew without accounting for the site's intentional rejection of centralized moderation.^[17]^[26] Conspiracy narratives evolved longitudinally, blending static motifs like deep-state claims with adaptive responses to real-world events, as seen in QAnon threads that integrated current news into speculative frameworks.^[27] Despite accusations of extremism from outlets like Vice and The Verge—which privileged platform-wide toxicity over subverse diversity—Voat's structure enabled niche, user-moderated persistence, with patterns of polite discourse amid controversial topics until financial pressures curtailed operations.^[8]^[28]

Controversies and Debates

Claims of Extremist Content

Claims of extremist content on Voat primarily surfaced in mid-2015 after Reddit banned subreddits such as r/CoonTown and r/fatpeoplehate for violating anti-harassment policies, prompting users to migrate to Voat and recreate similar communities.^[29] r/CoonTown, in particular, was noted for aggregating memes and comments employing racial slurs and anti-Black rhetoric, which critics labeled as racist propaganda rather than mere provocation.^[30] On Voat, equivalents like /v/CoonTown and /v/Nigger emerged, hosting content that academic analyses later identified as exemplars of offensive and racially charged discourse, contributing to perceptions of the platform as a haven for uncensored bigotry.^[5] Media coverage amplified these concerns, with outlets describing Voat as a "troll haven" rife with casual racism and low-level hate speech, often linking it to broader alt-right migration from mainstream sites.^[8] ^[31] By 2019, Voat's co-founder Justin Chastain publicly urged users to halt death threats and violent rhetoric, citing instances where posts veered into explicit calls for harm, which violated the site's prohibitions on illegal content despite its free-speech ethos.^[28] Later assessments, including upon Voat's 2020 shutdown, portrayed it as a repository for hate speech alongside QAnon theories, though empirical studies focused more on its role in propagating antisocial behavior than orchestrating real-world extremism.^[6] Voat's community-driven moderation, reliant on user reports and admin interventions for spam, doxxing, or direct incitement, allowed pockets of inflammatory material to persist, fueling arguments that lax oversight enabled extremism. However, platform rules explicitly barred content promoting violence or illegality, and no verified reports linked Voat-hosted discussions to organized terrorist activities or widespread radicalization campaigns, distinguishing it from platforms with documented ties to militant groups. Claims often emanated from outlets and researchers predisposed to equate politically incorrect speech with systemic threat, potentially inflating the platform's role in extremism relative to its user base of under 500,000 active accounts at peak.^[32]

Censorship Resistance vs. Responsibility Arguments

Voat's operational philosophy prioritized censorship resistance through minimal platform-wide rules, prohibiting only illegal content such as child exploitation material, doxxing, and spam, while delegating moderation to individual subverses and user downvotes. This approach was designed to foster an environment where controversial opinions could flourish without administrative intervention, explicitly contrasting with Reddit's 2015 subreddit bans for perceived harassment, which drove migrations to Voat. Administrators and users contended that such resistance prevented the subjective, ideologically influenced censorship observed on mainstream platforms, arguing from first principles that open discourse counters bad ideas with better ones rather than suppression, thereby preserving platform neutrality and user autonomy.^[16]^[33] Proponents of this model, including early Voat adopters from banned Reddit communities, asserted that responsibility for content lay with users and subverse moderators, not the platform, as centralized oversight inevitably devolves into bias—evidenced by Reddit's progressive-leaning quarantines of right-leaning groups. They highlighted Voat's 2015 hosting termination by a Swiss provider over "politically incorrect" content as a case of external censorship pressuring platforms to self-regulate beyond legality, reinforcing the causal link between free speech commitments and deplatforming risks. This stance aligned with broader libertarian arguments that platforms should emulate common carriers, avoiding liability for user speech to sustain viability against advertiser and partner boycotts.^[34] Critics, however, emphasized platform responsibility to mitigate harms from unmoderated extremism, pointing to Voat's evolution into a hub for alt-right ideologies, QAnon conspiracies, and explicit racial rhetoric following influxes post-Reddit purges. Media analyses and security reports attributed real-world amplification of divisive narratives to Voat's lax policies, arguing that anonymity and minimal rules enabled unchecked proliferation of content deemed hate speech by observers, including calls for violence short of direct incitement. Hosting and payment disruptions, culminating in Voat's 2020 shutdown amid financial strain, were cited as empirical consequences of shirking proactive curation, with detractors from outlets like Ars Technica—often critiqued for left-leaning institutional biases—claiming the platform's free speech absolutism excused abdication of duty to civil society norms. Despite this, Voat occasionally banned subverses for rule violations, illustrating tension between absolutist ideals and pragmatic enforcement needs.^[35]^[33]^[36]

External Pressures and Incidents

Cyberattacks and Security Breaches

In June 2015, Voat.co faced its first reported distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, with the platform announcing on June 14 that it was under assault, the second such incident within 24 hours, leading to significant downtime.^[37] These early attacks coincided with a surge in user registrations following Reddit's moderation policy changes, which prompted migrations to Voat as a free-speech alternative.^[38] By July 2015, Voat endured additional DDoS attacks, including layer-7 application-level floods confirmed by its Cloudflare protections, which overwhelmed servers and exacerbated scalability issues during peak traffic.^[39] Over its six-year lifespan, the platform reported being targeted by DDoS attacks multiple times, contributing to intermittent outages and heightened operational costs without evidence of successful data exfiltration or account compromises.^[5] No major security breaches, such as unauthorized data access or ransomware incidents, were publicly documented for Voat.

Deplatforming by Hosting and Payment Providers

In June 2015, Voat's hosting provider, Host Europe GmbH, abruptly terminated all contracts and shut down the site's servers without prior warning, citing the presence of "politically incorrect content" that violated their terms of service.^[21]^[40] The action followed a surge in traffic after Reddit banned several subreddits for harassment, prompting users to migrate to Voat, which amplified scrutiny of its content.^[34] Voat's founder, Justin Chalmers, described the termination as driven by political correctness rather than illegal activity, emphasizing that the platform supported free speech but did not host unlawful material. The site was offline for several hours before securing alternative hosting from a different provider, allowing operations to resume.^[41] The same month, PayPal froze Voat's payment processing services, attributing the decision to violations involving sexually oriented material on the platform.^[5] In response, Voat administrators temporarily shut down four subverses (user-created communities), including two featuring sexualized content, to comply and restore services.^[5] This incident highlighted broader challenges for Voat in maintaining financial infrastructure, as payment processors increasingly enforced content-based restrictions amid the site's reputation for unmoderated discussions. No further public deplatforming by major payment providers was reported, though chronic funding shortages persisted, contributing to operational strains separate from these events.^[4]

Decline and Shutdown

Financial Unsustainability

Voat's financial model depended heavily on user donations and sales of Voat Coins, an internal virtual currency, with minimal advertising income due to the platform's controversial content and free-speech stance.^[6] In May 2017, co-founder Justin Chastain warned of imminent shutdown owing to surging operational costs outpacing revenue, leading to a crowdfunding appeal that raised sufficient funds to continue operations temporarily.^[5] These challenges persisted, as the site's aversion to content moderation limited partnerships with advertisers wary of association with unfiltered discussions.^[4] By March 2020, Voat lost its primary external investor, forcing Chastain to fund server and maintenance expenses from personal resources.^[42] On December 22, 2020, Chastain announced the platform's closure, stating he had subsidized costs out-of-pocket to sustain Voat through the U.S. presidential election but had exhausted his funds.^[43] The site went offline at noon PST on December 25, 2020, exemplifying the broader vulnerability of donation-reliant platforms lacking scalable revenue streams.^[6]

Final Announcement and Closure (2020)

On December 22, 2020, Voat co-founder and CEO Justin Chastain posted an announcement titled "I Can't Keep It Up" in the site's /v/announcements subverse, declaring the platform's closure due to insurmountable financial challenges.^[43]^[4] In the post, Chastain explained that external investment had ceased in March 2020 amid broader economic pressures from the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving him to personally fund operations through personal resources and limited donations, which proved insufficient.^[6]^[42] He expressed personal exhaustion, stating, "It's embarrassing but it's true, I just can't keep it up," and noted attempts at meditation, prayer, and outreach for support had failed to yield viable solutions.^[43]^[33] Chastain outlined plans to cooperate with law enforcement on any ongoing investigations related to site content and to explore options for handing over user data to a potential successor platform, though no such entity materialized before shutdown.^[4]^[6] The announcement highlighted Voat's operational costs, including server maintenance and moderation, which had escalated without corresponding revenue growth, exacerbated by prior deplatforming incidents that limited payment processing and hosting options.^[42]^[44] Voat ceased operations as scheduled on December 25, 2020, at 12:00 PM PST, rendering the site inaccessible and ending its six-year run as a Reddit alternative.^[4]^[6] At the time of closure, Voat had approximately 50,000 registered users, a fraction of its peak activity, with subverse subscriptions totaling over 1,000 communities, many of which focused on uncensored discourse banned elsewhere.^[44]^[45] No immediate data export was provided to users, prompting subsequent archival initiatives by third parties.^[6]

Post-Shutdown Impact

Archival Efforts and Data Access

Following Voat's shutdown on December 25, 2020, archival efforts focused on preserving its content for research and historical analysis, given the platform's role in hosting communities displaced from mainstream sites. Researchers Amin Mekacher and Antonis Papasavva compiled and released what they described as the largest publicly available dataset of Voat's activity, encompassing 2.3 million submissions, 16.2 million comments from 113,000 users across 7,100 subverses (Voat's equivalent of subreddits). This dataset spans the site's full operational history, from its founding on November 8, 2013, through its closure, enabling empirical studies of user migration patterns, such as those involving QAnon communities.^[1] ^[46] The collection method involved systematic scraping of publicly accessible data prior to shutdown, though exact technical details remain tied to the researchers' access during the site's active period. While presented as publicly available for scholarly use, direct downloads require contacting the authors or accessing via associated repositories, with no open bulk mirror identified in public sources.^[1] Independent preservation initiatives included searchvoat.co, an unofficial indexing tool launched around 2018 that allowed querying Voat's content without requiring a login—bypassing restrictions imposed on the original site since mid-2019. This service indexed posts and comments, facilitating post-shutdown searches until its permanent closure on August 8, 2025, attributed to compliance with evolving online safety regulations.^[47] ^[48] Archive Team, a volunteer group dedicated to web preservation, documented Voat's structure and history but did not release a comprehensive public data dump or mirror, unlike their efforts for other platforms; their wiki entry notes the site's free-speech orientation but lacks details on captured volumes.^[47] Current data access remains fragmented, relying on academic datasets like Mekacher and Papasavva's for bulk analysis, supplemented by partial Wayback Machine captures of individual pages via the Internet Archive. Discussions in data preservation communities, such as Reddit's r/DataHoarder, urged pre-shutdown scraping in December 2020 but yielded no centralized public hoard.^[49] These efforts underscore challenges in archiving uncensored platforms, where institutional biases in mainstream archives may limit comprehensive retention of controversial content.^[1]

Lessons for Alternative Platforms

Voat's shutdown highlighted the acute financial vulnerabilities of alternative platforms committed to minimal content moderation. After a key investor withdrew support in March 2020, co-founder Justin Chastain funded operations personally until resources depleted, leading to closure on December 25, 2020.^[4] This reliance on limited donations and sporadic investment proved unsustainable, as the platform's user base—peaking around 2015 amid migrations from Reddit's policy changes—failed to generate steady revenue amid ongoing technical and hosting costs.^[50] A core lesson lies in the perils of deplatforming by upstream providers, which alternative sites face disproportionately due to associations with controversial content. Voat encountered repeated service denials from payment processors and hosts, mirroring experiences of peers like Gab and Parler, where similar content policies triggered cuts from entities such as PayPal and GoDaddy.^[4] Platforms aspiring to censorship resistance must thus diversify revenue streams—potentially via cryptocurrency donations or self-hosted infrastructure—to mitigate control by centralized financial intermediaries, whose decisions often reflect institutional pressures rather than neutral risk assessment. User migration dynamics underscore the double-edged nature of free-speech appeals: while Voat absorbed communities banned from Reddit in 2015, sustaining engagement proved elusive without broader adoption or advertiser interest.^[50] This influx amplified reputational risks, deterring mainstream viability and reinforcing isolation in niche ecosystems. Alternative platforms can learn to implement voluntary, community-driven curation mechanisms—beyond pure laissez-faire—to foster quality discourse that retains core users while reducing toxicity that invites external backlash, thereby enhancing long-term resilience. Chastain's reflection on Voat's endurance despite odds emphasizes prioritizing operational independence over fleeting traffic spikes.^[4]

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[37]
Voat on X: "http://t.co/d7zRWrIBjR is currently under a DDoS attack ...
Jun 14, 2015 · http://Voat.co is currently under a DDoS attack. This is the second attack in the last 24 hours. 4:42 PM · Jun 14, 2015.
[38]
[Censorship] Voat is currently being hit by a DDoS, this is the second ...
Jun 14, 2015 · voat.co is currently under a DDoS attack. This is the second attack in the last 24 hours. ^[Mistake?] ^[Suggestion] ^[FAQ] ^[Code] ^[Issues].
[39]
New Reddit rival Voat hit by DDoS attack - Fortune
Voat ...
[40]
Reddit clone Voat dropped by web host for 'politically incorrect' content
Jun 22, 2015 · Provider Host Europe cancelled contract after Swiss site was flooded with Redditors in wake of harassment ban.<|separator|>
[41]
Web Host Shuts Down Reddit Clone Voat For Politically Incorrect ...
Jun 23, 2015 · Hosting provider hosteurope.de closed all servers of Reddit clone Voat due to politically incorrect content. Voat, however, managed to stay ...
[42]
Voat CEO Closes Site, Citing Failure Of Meditation And Prayer
Dec 30, 2020 · The cofounder and CEO of Voat - the 'free speech' Reddit lookalike - has closed the site, saying he 'just can't keep it up'.Missing: hacked breach
[43]
I Can't Keep It Up | announcements - Archive.today
Dec 22, 2020 · I personally decided to keep Voat up until after the U.S. election of 2020. I've been paying the costs out of pocket but now I'm out of money. A ...
[44]
Reddit clone Voat shut down on Christmas Day - The Independent
Dec 29, 2020 · Voat, a controversial Reddit clone that hosted “politically incorrect” content and conspiracy theories like QAnon, has been shut down by its owner due to a ...Missing: reason | Show results with:reason
[45]
Far-Right Reddit Clone Voat Has Shut Down, for Real This Time
Dec 26, 2020 · Basically, Voat just ran out of money, and could not find anyone else willing to finance the hateful rhetoric on its site. Voat co-founder ...
[46]
None
Nothing is retrieved...<|control11|><|separator|>
[47]
Voat - Archiveteam
Aug 2, 2025 · Voat is a Reddit alternative with lesser strict rules of communication. It was launched as “WhoaVerse” in 2014, and was renamed to “Voat” in ...
[48]
Search Voat User Manual | SearchVoat - Archive.today
See The SearchVoat Forum for information about the future of Voat. Search Voat User Manual (SearchVoat). submitted 6 years ago by ...
[49]
Voat will be shutting down as of December 25th 2020 at 12 noon PST.
Dec 22, 2020 · Guy running it has been struggling to keep it afloat. I got bored a little over halfway down but I didn't see any details like costs called out.<|separator|>
[50]
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/12/reddit-alternative-voat-shut-down-on-christmas-day-citing-lack-of-funding/