Pour one out for the folks on Voat. The so-called “free speech” Reddit clone — designed to appeal to people too hateful for Reddit — has apparently run out of money and will close its virtual doors on Christmas day.
According to site co-founder Justin Chastain, in a weirdly sexually suggestive post on Voat titled “I Can’t Keep It Up,” the site has basically been running on fumes since its big investor pulled support for the site in March. “I personally decided to keep Voat up until after the US election of 2020,” Chastain explained. “I’ve been paying the costs out of pocket but now I’m out of money.”
Chastain has decided to milk the melodrama of the shutdown for all it’s worth.
I will lay Voat upon the cross on December 25th 2020 at 12 noon PST. I have chosen Christmas as the day to do so in honor of the only True thing you will find in this world and that is Jesus Christ, the son of God, and the only way to the Father. I chose 12 noon in honor of the twelve disciples who spread the message of salvation to the world. In this way, my hope is that perhaps 12 people will carry the cross for Freedom of Speech and sacrifice part of their lives for an ideal in the way I did, but hopefully with much more success, glory, and reward.
Well, all righty then.
The regulars on Voat responded to the announcement in classic Voat style, with one commenter declaring that “Killing Voat on Christmas Day is such a Jew thing to do.”
Another commenter agreed:
Governments put out orders to attempt to prevent people from seeing their families over christmas. Then this site shuts down the “online family” on the very same day. They want us isolated. We need to stop relying on internet connections and form irl communities, asap.
A third commenter ironically named Don’tBeRacist responded:
At this point I’m so sick of n*ggers and n*gger shit everywhere, I’d be happy with a group of people also opposed to n*gger shit like n*gger monkey music.
Yeah, I don’t think the world of internet discourse will be losing much when Voat goes dark.
The real question is where the Voat refugees will go. In a discussion of Voat’s closing on the GamerGhazi subreddit, one commenter predicted that the Voat People will wash up on Parler:
I think the best case scenario would be that voat scum migrates to Parler, causing a clash of anticultures and schism leading to it eating itself alive.
One can only hope.
Indeed. The more these awful people fight one another, the less damage they can do in the real world. Goodbye, Voat, and don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
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I’d never heard of Voat before today. Doesn’t seem like I’ve missed much.
“I can’t keep it up”?. That’s one overdramatic post.
https://www.ionos.com/digitalguide/hosting/technical-matters/what-does-502-bad-gateway-mean-explanation-and-solution/
https://www.wpoven.com/blog/need-know-502-error-bad-gateway/
Word of caution, if you are in the US and you KNOW you are blocked, it is actually illegal to try and circumvent it, per the CFAA. I don’t know Canada’s rules.
If you think you aren’t blocked or are open to it maybe being a miscommunication, the sites above talk a little about caches and firewalls, and what all you can do on the user side to verify that it isn’t a you problem.
If it’s a mistake server or admin side, there is nothing I know of to fix it, legally. Outside communicating with their support/webmaster, of course.
Sorry.
Any better tech folks feel free to chime in. I’m a dabbler.
A few quick things:
1) The answers I gave are the answers I have. Walls of text about how much my answers suck will not make me have less sucky answers.
2) Humans are much better at getting answers. Humans feel bad if a query turns out with no results found, computers just go “yeah, no results found”. If the stuff you’re looking for is public facing content, contacting them directly is often the best method. I know it sucks. I’m an introvert and hate talking to people, but many of the best organizations have limited web presences because…
3) Web facing content can be a pain to manage. Organizations who provide public databases are providing a valuable social service, but I’m not sure your assertion that accessing them is your inalienable right is entirely (or at all) accurate.
And lastly:
4) I know you’re frustrated. When asking for help, try to remember that the people you are talking to also have internal lives and may also be going through rough patches. Try to give them as much kindness and grace as you are demanding for yourself. Most mistakes are not malicious, they’re mistakes.
I’m bowing out of this here. Links in reply 2 had some tips for making sure it wasn’t a simple problem, and maybe someone else here will have pro level tips. Or google.
I hope you have better results.
Addendum to last response. I know 1&2 look weird right next to eachother, but you might note that I tried multiple responses before being discouraged.
A computer will give the exact same result without trying a second method.
Okay, now I’m out! At least of this discussion.
Generally speaking, if you get the bad gateway error, the site is down and you need to wait for them to fix it. Sometimes there might be a workaround depending on the exact cause, but odds are the site will be fixed before you could implement a workaround. (If there even is a possible workaround.
@moregeekthan:
What if it’s not allowed to be down, because you didn’t do anything wrong that could make you deserving of being obstructed from completing whatever task you are trying to complete, so it being down would constitute committing a moral wrong against you?
You’d definitely be wrong there. It’s still fobbing me off with undeserved error messages THREE HOURS after the onset of this incident.
What I don’t get is, if this isn’t just an automated, mis-targeted block of a single user and was instead the result of bad manual input, why the fuck didn’t whatever fumble-fingered fart-goblin screwed it up to begin with simply hit control-Z the moment they realized they’d made a serious mistake? Or better still, test whatever they were fiddling with on their test instance first, before doing it on the production servers?!
And, of course, the perennial question: why am I always the one getting the blame? This sort of nonsense is constantly happening to me. Nary a day goes by when I don’t run into one instance or another of such BS, without having done a thing wrong or even out of the ordinary. What, in my actions and choices, justifies my being treated abruptly much worse than normal by someone (or their mechanical proxy/ies)? If I got normal treatment from them last Wednesday at this time, what makes this Wednesday different? Certainly they are capable of treating me the same as last Wednesday; the proof being that they did treat me that way, last Wednesday. There isn’t any reason for my actions to have much worse consequences today for me than they had then, when I am not doing anything differently!
It’s almost an inverse of the old saw about doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. In this case, I am doing the same thing over and over again expecting the same results, only for someone I don’t even know to interfere all of a sudden and for no reason that I can discern. That shouldn’t happen!
@Surplus
Three hours is nothing. They might not have even noticed there is a problem, or if they have, they might still be trying to find out what the problem is exactly themselves.
These things happen. Try again tomorrow or something.
@Surplus
What? This seems to be an example of the just world fallacy. I’m sorry this website is down, I’m sorry that’s causing you problems, but it’s outside of your control. You need to stop assuming that everything that goes wrong is a personal affront against you.
Are you seriously suggesting one of them may have pushed a button and then just walked away without even verifying that their button-push had had the intended (and only the intended) effect first? That’s damned irresponsible … and still not my fault, if so.
The problem is whatever their last input was right before it happened. The solution is to have proper change management in place and to use that to undo whatever change they’d tried right before it happened. This cannot even happen if things are tested on a non-live copy before implementing on the production machines, and shouldn’t take more than five minutes to fix if proper monitoring is in place, so they are alerted immediately if anything stops working after they change something, and proper change management is in place, so it’s a simple matter to roll back their configuration to just before the ill-advised change.
They shouldn’t happen to me, because I know what to do to avoid them, and because in this instance I wasn’t even the one who fumbled the ball, someone else was. Let it happen to them and leave me out of it.
Tomorrow?! I was supposed to be all caught up at four! It is now eight! This already grossly exceeds any reasonable timeframe given my lack of having-screwed-upness, and now you’re suggesting I should let it escalate to where I am a full day late in getting a thing done that I was supposed to get done today???
I am not that incompetent that it could take me a full day to complete a five-minute job and I refuse to let you, or anyone else, portray me as someone who is, let alone convince me to let myself be portrayed as someone who is. This is beyond the pale.
I got the job done correctly and successfully at 4 pm right on time and every single person and thing that says otherwise, including that damnable server, and you, and my own eyes, is wrong. Foot put down here. I am adamant that I did everything correctly and that every piece of “evidence” to the contrary is a fabrication and an elaborate attempt at defamation, gaslighting, or both.
I’m not falling for it. I will not believe ill of myself here. I know, with certitude, that I have not screwed it up, let alone at anything close to the claimed magnitude. A day to complete a five-minute task … ridiculous. I. Am. Not. That. Slow. And the hell with anyone, or any thing, who continues to attempt to argue otherwise.
And I am sick of constantly having to defend myself against accusations of incompetence and stupidity. My whole life I’ve been subjected to this crap, had my capabilities and my value questioned, baselessly. No more! This BS stops with today’s incident. From now on I am to be treated as exactly who and what I am, and that is to be exactly who and what I choose to be. Anyone attempting to argue otherwise, especially if they attempt or use coercive force in any capacity, will be deemed guilty of violating the 13th Amendment or its equivalent in their jurisdiction, in that by denying my right to self-determination and attempting to impose their idea of who and what I should be over my own objections they are, in effect, attempting enslavement.
In short, no-one can make me be an incompetent against my will, and anyone who ever again tries will be prosecuted to the maximum extent possible under the law, and referred if necessary to a human rights tribunal for investigation.
Sick of this shit.
@Naglfar:
Making it look as if it takes me a day to complete a task that shouldn’t take more than five minutes is a personal affront against me. As is withholding information, or anything else, from me unjustly for a like interval of time when I have not done anything to deserve it.
And the just world fallacy would be believing it couldn’t happen at all, not believing that it is morally wrong for it to happen. In fact, a believer in the just world fallacy would infer from the fact that it did happen that I deserved it … incorrectly, of course.
@Surplus
Once again, this isn’t your fault. No one said it was. You need to stop assuming everything happens because of you, the world doesn’t revolve around you.
Great, but we have no control over that. We’re just people on the Internet.
I think you need to take a few steps back and realize how hyperbolic this is. A website not working is equivalent to enslavement?
Unless someone is specifically making this not work for you, on purpose, and no one else, then no, it is not an affront against you. Earlier today I couldn’t download something and had to try again later, these things happen.
I don’t know why you’re trying to bring morality into this.
What the actual fuck?
Like, I haven’t had the internet for a week. Not because someone has it in for me but because CenturyLink screwed the pooch. Shit happens.
@Surplus
1. You seem to be operating on the assumption that if you do everything right, then you DESERVE the results that you want, the rest of the world be damned. To quote a Clint Eastwood movie out of context: “Deserving’s got nothing to do with it.”
2. No matter how correctly you do everything, the world isn’t going to fall in line and do what you want. Bad things happen to good people and good things to bad people. I’ve got several people who owe me a lot of money because they are continually being screwed over by life in general and I’m all they have to support them. Sorry.
3. Unless you find a group of super sober people like you, you are never going to get people to get on board with your attitude of “I did my part right,
so I am entitled to my just reward”. No amount of long drawn out arguments online will change that. Again, sorry.
@Naglfar:
If this was just one isolated incident I would agree with you, but there is a pervasive pattern of this sort of nonsense interfering with everything I do. As I said in an earlier post nary a day goes by without my being treated by someone (or thing) as if I’ve made some significant mistake and being denied something I was expecting as a result of this alleged mistake, or having my time wasted because of it.
According to the world, I can’t do even the simplest tasks right, even when I not only can, but have done said task perfectly ten thousand times with my eyes closed.
The world is wrong about me and I’d very much like to know why.
@Surplus
It’s late where I am and I’m going to bed, but for the last time, there is no conspiracy against you. I know you’re having a hard time, but you’re really not helping yourself by coming up with this spiral about how the world is against you. I cannot, nor can anyone else here, fix the issues you are having. Again, I’m sorry, but I don’t have any better explanation.
Promised myself I’d be staying out of this, but …
WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCK ARE YOU WITTERING ON ABOUT?!
Listen closely.
MACHINES FAIL. ALL THE FUCKING TIME. I’m spending a couple hours today elbows deep in a new boiler because the hot water sensor picked last night, half way through my bath, to go tits up.
It’s nothing you did because it is completely fucking impossible for an external user to cause a 502 error. So grab a ladder and get down from that damned cross, the Pope needs it back.
Round of applause for Threp!
Hope the boiler is fixed and you got your bath.
Aye, it’s a quick enough fix, and the repair gods were pleased enough with the sacrifice of knuckle skin and blood that it’s working perfectly.
Bath … not yet. Missus claimed the tub while I were still buttoning the boiler back up. 😀
Just glad it went last night and not tonight!
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Rust in pieces, Voat. You won’t be missed.
@Surplus to Requirements
Yes, the world is a broken mess. Welcome to the club. You will get your free membership pin as soon as you make it yourself, because everyone else is too busy with their own crap to make one for you.
I completely relate to the frustration and I don’t want to dismiss that. There are few things as hair-pullingly, scream-inducingly annoying as doing everything right and then still ending up with a problem*. However, you’re going to have to find better ways of coping, because it’s never going to change.
Fact is, every now and again, the world is going to throw shit in your face. It’s not because of anything you did. It’s not even because it hates you. It’s because the world is full of shit and it has to go somewhere.
Until we have perfect human beings living in a perfect world, shit will happen. Over and over again. To you and to others.
I’m not sure if this is helping, but I’m trying to be as honest as possible. I’m a bit concerned with how quickly you went from “I have a problem” to “they’re doing it to me on purpose”. I think you might want to keep an eye on that.
* Story time:
Years ago, I had to get an extension for my study time and I went to check the posted website. It was quite confusing and didn’t respond properly, so I went to the help desk. I was told they had changed the site and there was a new site I should use. So, I get the instructions and go to the new site.
It still doesn’t work. I go back to the help desk. I meet a different person who tells me that with the new site, the rules have also changed and I need to do things differently from the instructions I got two days ago at that very same desk.
So, I finally get it sorted and all is well. Until a month or so before my graduation date when I get an official letter warning me that my study time is up and I’m about to be kicked out of school. Turns out, they have given me too short an extension, not covering all the time to the final exam.
So, while trying to study for my final exams, I also had to go back to the help desk to sort out an extension to the extension, or I might have been booted before graduating.
What should have been ten minutes of typing ended up being days of confusion and worrying. All because the people whose sole job it is to know the rules didn’t know the friggin’ rules.
So I get it, is what I’m saying.
What gets me is when someone (or something) goes out of its way to cause problems for me. It’s one thing if I jump off a cliff and go “splat”. You jump off a cliff (without gear), you go splat — the world doesn’t really have a choice in the matter. On the other hand, in many of these cases the world did have a choice, and it wasn’t even something improbable. All it had to do was carry on business as usual, something it’s very clearly capable of doing (or it couldn’t possibly be business as usual) and that is the default thing for it to do (or it wouldn’t be business as usual). But it didn’t. It had to go out of its way for anything out of the ordinary to happen, rather than just follow the well-worn path in the usual manner.
It’s long since ran out of benefit of the doubt from me. Too many times it’s chosen to unnecessarily complicate something I was doing, and with a general pattern of trying to make me look incompetent. (Would allegedly random accidents all work toward a common goal? Why do they never work in my favor, and almost always specifically try to make me look foolish, rather than not making me look like anything particular at all?)
@Surplus
Nothing is going out of its way to cause problem for you. You have constructed a conspiracy theory.
You act as though “the world” is one entity. It isn’t.
They wouldn’t, and they don’t. You are finding patterns where there are none, aka pareidolia.
@surplus
Half of your problems you create yourself. You do this time and time again. And in the nicest way possible you aren’t a King. You aren’t important enough for someone to create a world just to fuck with you. You are experiencing normal like and you make it worst for yourself with your attuide and delusions you refuse to get help for. You are not the center of the world. You are an everyday person like the rest of us, unimportant in the grand sceme. Unless you are secretly an assassin that none of us know about, chill and stop being paranoid. Or for the love of Jesus get some fucking help.