Voat shutdown: QAnon and anti-vaccination Reddit clone shut down on Christmas Day – The Independent

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 lack of funds.

An investor defaulted on the contract in March 2020, site co-founder Justin Chastain wrote in a post announcing its closure, and as such the site lost all of its funding.

Mr Chastain personally decided to keep Voat up until after the US election of 2020, and had been paying the costs out of pocket but now [was] out of money.

Some say life is worth it all if you can help just one single person. In this way I know Voat was worth it because you guys have changed thousands and thousands of peoples hearts and minds. Youve made so many people aware of the lies taught as truth and the truth taught as conspiracy. Its beautiful. What a great thing, Mr Chastain continued.

Voat launched in 2014 as an alternative Reddit platform dedicated to free speech, and as such allowed hate speech, racism, and other content that would be banned on more mainstream platforms.

Voats web host, hosteurope.de, dropped support for the site in the same year after it received significant information that the content on [the] server includes political incorrect parts that are unacceptable for us.

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It also said that it had to take action due to the fact that we cannot keep bond of trust to you as our customer.

Since then, the website had reportedly been host to other antisemitic and racist content, and had apparently been approached by an unnamed US agency due to the large quantity of death threats made on the platform.

Parler describes itself as "unbiased social media focused on real user experiences and engagement" that allows "free expression without violence and no censorship. It is home to numerous far-right figures including Milo Yiannopoulos, Proud Boys creator Gavin McInnes, as well high-profile US republicans like Ted Cruz. Anti-Muslim far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer. Candace Owens and Katie Hopkins also use the platform.

Discussion of Voat on those platforms is currently scarce. There were no posts on Gab that were immediately visible when searching for Voat, while only 19 posts on Parler used the hashtag #voat at time of writing.

I just saw that #Voat is shutting down on Christmas. I tried Voat. It was by far the most frustrating userbase I've interacted with, one user wrote on Parler about the websites closure.

"I think it took a day for me to be called a 'n****** lover. I was so conditioned to SJWs [social justice warriors] calling me a racist I took it as a compliment."

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Voat shutdown: QAnon and anti-vaccination Reddit clone shut down on Christmas Day - The Independent