Update, June 23: Host Europe has issued a statement, which can be found at the bottom of this article.

Switzerland-based Reddit clone Voat says its servers have been closed down and contracts terminated by its hosting provider, which comes less than two weeks after it saw a surge in signups following a clampdown in online harassment by Reddit.

Reddit is a popular social news site that lets users submit, discuss, and “upvote” articles and stories, but it has often been accused of letting trolls run rampant across the site. As such, it recently announced it was removing five subreddits (topic-specific sub-sections) that were considered inappropriate: r/fatpeoplehate, r/hamplanethatred, r/transfags, r/neofag, and r/shitniggerssay.

With Reddit moving to curb harassment and bullying on the platform via ongoing policy changes, many users fled to use Voat, a near-identical site launched in early 2014 that promises a “censorship-free community platform.” However, Voat’s founder and chief technology officer, known as Atko, says that it has now been targeted by its Germany-based hosting provider for being “politically incorrect.”

“Our hosting provider, hosteurope.de, has terminated all our contracts and shut down all our servers without issuing a warning or trying to talk to us,” wrote Atko. “This includes my private server which was only used to host my girlfriend’s blog. She is a scientist. She published her research papers on that blog (preformatted papers to which she owns the copyright). That server contained no other data whatsoever.”

Atko says the only reasons he was given by the host were: “We have received significant information that the content on your server includes political incorrect parts that are unacceptable for us” and “we cannot keep bond of trust to you as our customer.”

With just a few hours notice, Atko says he moved all the databases to a new cloud platform. However, this is a major glitch for Voat — having struggled to keep up with the recent surge in traffic, he had already been asking the Voat community for donations to fund more server capacity. With what seems like a temporary home for now, Atko is still seeking donations both through Bitcoin and PayPal, though he casts some doubt on what the future may hold for Voat.

“Ladies and gentlemen, my eyes have been opened by this,” he said. “I don’t know about you, but we are living in a weird world. We will have to carefully evaluate our long-term options of providing a platform of free speech if we are to stay online.”

Reddit has a long history of toxicity, but with a recent $50 million investment, it has tried to shake off its tarnished image and be more welcoming to new and existing users. Voat, on the other hand, is still a fledgling platform with little money and not a whole lot at stake, so it can afford to be a little more “daring” with its social community, letting its users essentially write what they wish. However, there’s only so much it can do when its hosting provider pulls the rug from under it, meaning it will now have to find a new permanent home elsewhere, somewhere other than Germany.

Update, June 23

We reached out to Host Europe, and it provided us with this statement:

“Host Europe does not publicize details of existing or previous contractual relations. To remain under contract, Host Europe customers must be legally compliant. Host Europe is liable for any content posted on its servers as soon as it receives knowledge of it and therefore must uphold these regulations strictly. Host Europe is committed to finding a solution together with its customers based on mutual trust and suspension of service is the last step.”

The above is actually a contraction of its full statement which it published on its own blog yesteday, where it denies that the reason for pulling Voat offline was due to “political incorrectness,” instead suggesting that it only pulls content if it “violate laws or are morally unacceptable.” It finishes with this fairly straight forward confirmation as to why it terminated its contract with Voat:

“Host Europe wants to make clear that we will not tolerate any form of illegal right-wing extremist content and we explicitly distance ourselves from this.”

The full Host Europe statement is as follows…

