The Announcement, "Voat is Shutting Down!"

[Deleted User 2149]

The scapegoat is the one chased into the wilderness to starve to death/ chased over the edge of a cliff. This obvious ritual would appear to have been the goat of atonement. It's where all their sins are layed on the head of the goat and washed away with its blood. Which begs the question: what was he atoning for?

This is an interesting observation and question. I actually think it's more the scapegoat, in this case, since Putt could have sacrificed us all, but chose to give us warning so we could salvage our accounts and communities. We were merely driven into the wilderness. I would bet some coin that SearchVoat had a slightly longer advanced notice, since he upgraded his servers a few weeks beforehand and was all ready to go with passwords for everyone and a new forum site.

I think it was a set up from the start, out of all the symbols or mascots available, we're supposed to believe the choice of a goat was coincidental?

I believe that choice was Atko's, and it is because he lives in Switzerland (@PeaceSeeker or @Cynabuns would have to confirm that, though), where goats are ubiquitous. They are nimble survivors, can climb any obstacle, eat just about anything, produce delicious cheese and the world's softest, warmest and most luxurious wools (Mohair and Cashmere). They're known for outsmarting trolls. And, goat rhymes with vote and makes a cleverly misspelled site name Voat. I think they are a terrific mascot for what he wanted to create.

All fair points; these things are always open to interpretation

[ICQ2]

Looked up references of the word "Goat" in the bible and there are a few pertaining to food, sacrifice for sin, animals first born belongs to the Lord and also the one mentioned here already about the scapegoat.
Then there is the thought of Voat=Vote
Thought of "To Hell with them, we are taking our stuff back, including the Goat." Could just as well have been an Owl, right? Personally, an Owl might have made more sense for knowledge, sight into the darkness, etc.

Just a few more thoughts.

[SearchVoat]

I would bet some coin that SearchVoat had a slightly longer advanced notice, since he upgraded his servers a few weeks beforehand and was all ready to go with passwords for everyone and a new forum site.

You'd lose that bet.

The server downtime 4 weeks ago was purely coincidental - I moved house and my ISP was slow reconnecting. (SV runs on an old PC in a cupboard.)

I had a long standing SearchVoat Alert set up for posts by Putts so I saw the announcement as soon as it was posted. 15 minutes later this was my response. Five minutes after that, in a state of shock, I posted this "discussion thread". Commenters wanted to know if I was going to build Voat 2.0 but I didn't think it likely.

Then I started seeing a lot of comments in the wake of the announcement from goats worried that either

1. old Voat posts would be lost (and we want to keep them), or

2. old Voat posts would remain visible forever (and we want to scrub them).

So a couple of hours later I posted Keeping Voat's data when Voat shuts down to reassure those with worry #1 that SearchVoat would be staying around as an archive, and to warn those with worry #2 that if they wanted to delete stuff from SearchVoat they're going to have to be quick about it:

If you want to delete your posts from SearchVoat, make sure you delete them from Voat before Voat shuts down then go to SearchVoat and hit edit/delete.

My only concern was that I wouldn't be able to let goats scrub their posts from SV after 25th Dec, because Voat is always the authoritative source for whether a post has been edited or deleted. I wanted to be able to delete posts for any goat who asked, but a random internet person would be unable to prove who they were on Voat and obviously I didn't want to just delete stuff because some random asked me to.

That's literally the only reason I started generating passwords and DM'ing them - so goats could scrub posts from SearchVoat. It took about 5 hours to get the password distribution going. By that time I'd realised the passwords could be used by other sites too, and I posted Identifying yourself at SearchVoat or any future Voat clone, which included this remark

Please keep the password secure and secret in case I can think of some way to make use of it

because I still hadn't considered the need for a forum. At this point I figured I'd just be leaving a message at the top of SearchVoat telling goats where to go and find each other, whether it's Poal, or Ruqqus, or Saidit or wherever.

Then I realised that it might not be so easy to authoritatively choose a place and just say, "there you go, that's Voat 2.0, so long!" We really needed a proper discussion forum, a place to debate which among the possible Voat alternatives would be best. So I started searching and comparing "open source discussion forums". Pretty much plucked phpBB out of the air and installed it. Then I realised I could just copy the usernames from the SearchVoat db to the phpBB db, creating registrations for everyone I'd sent a SV password to, and hey presto: The Authentic Voat Survivor User Group. Complete with red usernames and goat avatars. And this post: New SearchVoat forum for information about the future of Voat, exactly 30 hours after Putts' announcement. Busy 30 hours.

I've had no direct communication with @PuttItOut throughout this (other than a brief "keep in touch" email I sent to his personal addy), so I was absolutely over the moon to read this Voat post from him, supporting what I was doing, and of course he dropped by and said hello here too.

I created a couple of subverses here for fun - politics, whatever, SBBH - but didn't really expect anyone to post to them. I'm pleasantly surprised that there is interest in making this place work in the longer term. There have been some encouraging comments, and some people have even put their money on the table. A couple of hundred bucks so far, which won't go far, but it's a good start. It feels to me like a tiny spark, a faint glow at the bottom of the woodpile, an ember that we have to keep blowing on and nurturing as it grows little by little until maybe - maybe, one day - it bursts into flame and the spirit of Voat will live on, here. I'm starting to see how this could actually become a reasonably viable Voat 2.0, so I'm going to keep at it. I'm not possessive about it, I'm not going to discourage anyone from going anywhere else, or from promoting other sites here. It's just a hobby.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

[Cynabuns]

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

You are truly an angel for creating this life boat for goats to keep us afloat. Thank you @SearchVoat

[Thisismyvoatusername]

That's literally the only reason I started generating passwords and DM'ing them - so goats could scrub posts from SearchVoat. It took about 5 hours to get the password distribution going. By that time I'd realised the passwords could be used by other sites too, and I posted Identifying yourself at SearchVoat or any future Voat clone, which included this remark

Please keep the password secure and secret in case I can think of some way to make use of it

because I still hadn't considered the need for a forum. At this point I figured I'd just be leaving a message at the top of SearchVoat telling goats where to go and find each other, whether it's Poal, or Ruqqus, or Saidit or wherever.

Then I realised that it might not be so easy to authoritatively choose a place and just say, "there you go, that's Voat 2.0, so long!" We really needed a proper discussion forum, a place to debate which among the possible Voat alternatives would be best. So I started searching and comparing "open source discussion forums". Pretty much plucked phpBB out of the air and installed it. Then I realised I could just copy the usernames from the SearchVoat db to the phpBB db, creating registrations for everyone I'd sent a SV password to, and hey presto: The Authentic Voat Survivor User Group. Complete with red usernames and goat avatars. And this post: New SearchVoat forum for information about the future of Voat, exactly 30 hours after Putts' announcement. Busy 30 hours.

Thanks for all of this work. It is great and appreciated.

Purely out of curiosity how many people did you send passwords to? Just wondering if a Voat 2.0 really does take off, how many red names could there potentially be if people returned to the fold from Poal, Ruqqus and elsewhere?

[SearchVoat]

Purely out of curiosity how many people did you send passwords to? Just wondering if a Voat 2.0 really does take off, how many red names could there potentially be if people returned to the fold from Poal, Ruqqus and elsewhere?

I sent 15,543 passwords, of which 551 have been successfully used to log in here. Obviously I don't know how many others were logged in to Voat over the final 3 days, and posted something over the final 14 days or so, and saw the Inbox message, and made a note of the password. Probably not many more than the 551 that have already logged in, I would guess.

[Vindicator]

All fair points; these things are always open to interpretation

The extra ruler I use to measure the likelihood of which interpretation is true is to ask "Overall, are the fruits good, or bad?" In the four years I've been part of Voat, I have a) never seen admins do something to harm anyone, even when they had the means and b) I HAVE seen those who attack Putt/Atko also attack and harm other users and user's work on Voat. I witnessed this from my very first night as a moderator of v/pizzagate, which was the week of Christmas 2016.

We were heavily spammed with the "Voat is compromised", "Voat is a honeypot" narrative -- always by accounts that were neither pizzagate researchers nor positive contributors in any way anywhere on the site. They were usually obvious throwaways or accounts with a pure troll history.

Once early on, one of our greatest researchers, KarenRussel63, who had some hacking skills, was publishing data acquired after infiltrating a CP server, doxing the pedos. The perps came to Voat, demanding it be removed. After a week or two they made accounts so they could claim KR63 was exposing the personal info of fellow Voat users against the Voat User Agreement. Putt was ultimately forced to delete the submissions containing their names and addresses, BUT he did not delete the submissions explaining how KR63 got it or ban KR63, which he could have. From my point of view, he did what he could to leave the research intact.

That's just one example.

The fact that at least two of Voat's major DDoS events were directly connected to pizzagate research, jeopardizing the whole site, yet Putt never tried to censor us or prevent us from investigating, also counts for a lot in my opinion.

[Vindicator]

You'd lose that bet.

Noted! Thank you very much for the detailed reply, SearchVoat.

Busy 30 hours.

I'll say! Please accept my deepest and most profound thanks on behalf of all pizzagate researchers who worked so hard to contribute to Voat in hopes of a brighter future. Your fortitude, diligence, magnanimity and readiness to solve huge problems have kept that flame alive. I am floored at what you have done these past two weeks. To me, this already feels like home.

I've had no direct communication with @PuttItOut throughout this (other than a brief "keep in touch" email I sent to his personal addy), so I was absolutely over the moon to read this Voat post from him, supporting what I was doing, and of course he dropped by and said hello here too.

Thanks for the clarification.

As far as I'm concerned, you are 2020's MVG!

[Deleted User 2149]

All fair points; these things are always open to interpretation

The extra ruler I use to measure the likelihood of which interpretation is true is to ask "Overall, are the fruits good, or bad?" In the four years I've been part of Voat, I have a) never seen admins do something to harm anyone, even when they had the means and b) I HAVE seen those who attack Putt/Atko also attack and harm other users and user's work on Voat. I witnessed this from my very first night as a moderator of v/pizzagate, which was the week of Christmas 2016.

We were heavily spammed with the "Voat is compromised", "Voat is a honeypot" narrative -- always by accounts that were neither pizzagate researchers nor positive contributors in any way anywhere on the site. They were usually obvious throwaways or accounts with a pure troll history.

Once early on, one of our greatest researchers, KarenRussel63, who had some hacking skills, was publishing data acquired after infiltrating a CP server, doxing the pedos. The perps came to Voat, demanding it be removed. After a week or two they made accounts so they could claim KR63 was exposing the personal info of fellow Voat users against the Voat User Agreement. Putt was ultimately forced to delete the submissions containing their names and addresses, BUT he did not delete the submissions explaining how KR63 got it or ban KR63, which he could have. From my point of view, he did what he could to leave the research intact.

That's just one example.

The fact that at least two of Voat's major DDoS events were directly connected to pizzagate research, jeopardizing the whole site, yet Putt never tried to censor us or prevent us from investigating, also counts for a lot in my opinion.

We should speak, I may have info of interest. I'll pm you once I figure out how to!

[SearchVoat]

Just a tip in case people need it to try it sometime: Using SearchVoat today I found an old post which had a [text](link) to another voat post within it. That link didn't work because (as we all know) voat is kaput. So I archived the post and the link then worked because it was also archived. I was able to access it that way.

@SearchVoat please see parent. Can Voat-to-Voat embedded links be fixed in the SearchVoat archive? Most subverses aren't fully backed up to archive.is like v/pizzagate.

These links should work now, in general. lmk. Still need to fix up eg https://voat.co/u/username and https://voat.co/v/subverse but that's for another day.

Direct links to submissions and comments like these https://voat.co/v/subverse/123456 and https://voat.co/v/subverse/123456/7890123 should redirect correctly. They still display as if they point to voat.co but the href (i.e., click on it) will loop you back to searchvoat.co.

(@kestrel9 in case you don't get a ping when nested-quoted like that)