The truth is that Voat is yours. It was never ours. We have just played a role... We kept it going. We provided a site with a promise that we would be as open as possible (public moderation logs, raw vote stats, banned user logs, etc.) but adapt a live and let live administration. It was up to the community as to what would become of Voat.

Now Voat has been through a hell of a ride up until this point. We could write a book about it. Host terminations, media skewing, scalability issues, money problems, database explosions, registration switch offs, community upheaval(s), and the Voat Goat thoroughly checking your bits. Every. Single. One. Of. Them. (You know you loved it)

We've been overwhelmed with one or two waves of new Voaters. I can recall a few: The Disappearance, The Conspiracy, The Fappening, Safe Places, The Darkening, The Fattening, and The Racialists.

Looking at where most of us came from, I can't help but reason that everyone here is basically a wee bit crazy. We left another place because we wanted authenticity over sponsorship, transparency over secrecy, and freedom over collusion. We left over an ideal. That is crazy.

Now we're all here. A bunch of crazy people with only one thing in common, a single principle. It's tough at times with the "diverse" community we have. We have 50,000+ Amaleks (more than any other site in the world), underground SJWs, and outspoken FSWs. We have the cabal, lurkers, lefties, righties, racists, Marxists, and capitalists. Chefs, cops, developers, small business owners, artists, and autistics. Students, parents, widows, antagonizers', soapboxers, builders and destroyers. We're all using Voat. How we made it this far is a wonder.

We've met absolutely incredible people on Voat and these people have put tremendous effort into Voat. Countless hours finding bugs, writing code, reporting spam, submitting content, researching subverse requests, creating good bots, writing mobile apps, fine tuning CSS, moderating and growing subs, commenting and welcoming new Voaters. Each has traded slices of their lives for Voat, some have even put their jobs and security on the line for Voat. We will never forget the effort. You guys made Voat.

So here we are. Still alive, still going. Still holding true to our goals of offering a free place to fellowship with one another in the most civilized of ways. ;)

Where we go from this point is up to you as well. You can work for the success of Voat or you can work against it, but we are all in this together in the end.

As for Voat, we got some big things brewing. The API will be out soon. Trademarks should be in soon, and exciting new features are in the works for early 2016. We can't wait and we know you'll love it.

2015 was the year of the goat, 2016 is going to be the year of Voat!

Thank you Voaters.