What’s up people? I’m back for another day of muckraking, blogging, writing…whatever you wanna call it, I’m here to do it. There won’t be a movie review, since there’s nothing coming out that I want to see. But there is a lot of news that I need to talk about, starting with the attack on Voat…Well, it was going to start with that originally, until the short AMD news hit. Allum Bokhari from Breitbart is out with a piece on it now due to that delay. It’s all good. That allowed me to go eat dinner first as well.

Let’s take a look at Mr. Bokhari’s piece:

Reddit recently alienated a wide swathe of their users by going on a censorship wave, leading to almost a week of chaos on the site as users revolted against the decision. Now, German web server provider HostEurope.de has joined her in the history books of internet villainy,  pulling service from Reddit’s free-speech friendly competitor, Voat.co.

Their reason? Political incorrectness.

The news was announced by Atko, the owner of Voat, earlier today

Allum goes on to post a portion of the statement. I’m just gonna post the whole thing:

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. This includes my private server which was only used to host my girlfriends blog. She is a scientist. She published her research papers on that blog (pre-formatted papers to which she owns the copyright). That server contained no other data whatsoever.

The reason they gave us when they notified us that they have cancelled our contract is “…we have received significant information that the content on your server includes political incorrect parts that are unacceptable for us.” and “Due to the fact that we cannot keep bond of trust to you as our customer…”.

Luckily, we have managed to move our databases to a cloud platform mere hours before they shut down our servers. Ladies and gentlemen, my eyes have been opened by this. 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. Your donations are what keeps us afloat.

Also, I am back in Sweden from my post-graduation vacation, currently packing my things and I will be driving (moving) to Switzerland tomorrow or day after tomorrow.

Edit: just to clarify, I have been a hosteurope.de customer for well over 5 years, always paying my bills and never hosting any illegal content.

Edit 2: thank you all who donated. I removed info on how to donate as I feel we have received enough to help us survive for quite some time. We will publish a detailed report about how much money we have received through donations (all bitcoin transactions are already public) and what the money will be used for. I can already say that we have received around 8000 USD since our call for donation went up a few days ago. This money will most likely have to be taxed, but a detailed report will be published asap. I have received interview requests from several major news agencies but responding to these agencies will have to wait. A voat which runs smoothly and satisfied users is my #1 priority. It would feel wrong for me to be spending time appearing in the media while there are plenty other more pressing issues to deal with right here.

VentureBeat, a notoriously anti-GamerGate outlet, has more:

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.

https://twitter.com/Nero/status/612010834768719873

I said the site’s future is in air because that’s how it has been portrayed, but it’s up as of now and seems to be running the best I’ve seen it run since the fall. So maybe they have it all under control. We know where these smear jobs are coming from, though. Take a look at the notorious ShitRedditSays subreddit. Some SJW thug is claiming responsibility, Al Qaeda style:

2VP30VB

(archive, original)

This is the game they like to play. My own site has been taken offline with the same types of lies, although thankfully it didn’t involve kiddie porn smears like they did here. You have to always remember, in their mind, there are no bad tactics, only bad targets. Taking down a site is nothing to them, because they don’t care about free speech when it comes to others. Oh, they love their free speech! Believe that. But when it comes to you and me, or anyone deviating from the chosen path, they will shut your shit down by any means necessary. The only thing shameless extremists like this respect is being exposed and ridiculed. That’s why I try to do it daily.