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No it wasn't. Voat was originally "Whoaverse", a reddit clone that the developer created as a school project. He literally copy-pasted the HTML/CSS from Reddit

No it wasn't. Voat was originally "Whoaverse", a reddit clone that the developer created as a school project. He literally copy-pasted the HTML/CSS from Reddit and then started gradually rebuilding some of the backend in C#. You can see the original version in the internet archive: http://web.archive.org/web/20140427060403/http://whoaverse.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20140427060403/http://whoaverse.c... He tried to get people to use it for a while, but since it was just a less-functional and empty Reddit, nobody was very interested. Eventually some of the users/subreddits banned from Reddit started using it since they had been kicked off real Reddit, and the developer ended up welcoming them while justifying it as "free speech". I think he mostly just seemed happy that some people actually wanted to use his site. It's all been downhill from there, and the original creator even abandoned the site a few years ago and handed it over to someone else.

hadrien01 6y ago
I believe the first migration to Voat wasn't for a subreddit ban, but when upvote/downvote counts on comments became hidden
- Deimorz 6y ago
  As the person that hid those upvote/downvote counts, I definitely remember that uproar well. A relatively small group "migrated" for a few days, but didn't stay. Here's Whoaverse one month after the up/down counts were removed from Reddit (notice that they added visible vote counts, which they didn't have before): http://web.archive.org/web/20140718134533/http://whoaverse.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20140718134533/http://whoaverse.c... Other than the stickied site announcement, almost all of the posts only have a handful of votes and only a few have any comments. The banned users were the first group that actually stuck around on Whoaverse/Voat, because they didn't have the option of just going back to Reddit.

hadrien01 6y ago

I believe the first migration to Voat wasn't for a subreddit ban, but when upvote/downvote counts on comments became hidden

Deimorz 6y ago
As the person that hid those upvote/downvote counts, I definitely remember that uproar well. A relatively small group "migrated" for a few days, but didn't stay. Here's Whoaverse one month after the up/down counts were removed from Reddit (notice that they added visible vote counts, which they didn't have before): http://web.archive.org/web/20140718134533/http://whoaverse.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20140718134533/http://whoaverse.c... Other than the stickied site announcement, almost all of the posts only have a handful of votes and only a few have any comments. The banned users were the first group that actually stuck around on Whoaverse/Voat, because they didn't have the option of just going back to Reddit.