Transparency On The Future of ATS

I might get flamed for this but I think some members are being a little bit delusional about the state of things on this site.

Skeptic has made it clear that this site needs about $25,000 per month to run effectively. According to the ATS Stats page there is only about 3,500 members who have posted more than 1,000 posts. Assuming optimistically 50% of them pay $10 a month then that's still only about $18,000. Now that I think is the absolute best case and am sure the owners have a better grasp of the analytics than anyone else but I would be very surprised if there is any more than about 100 or so members with over 1,000 posts who are posting regularly and even among us there are some who are saying they wouldn't be up for paying a subscription (myself included).

So let's be totally realistic here, a monthly subscription is clearly not going to work and I think Skeptic would have went down that road if it was viable.

The next suggestion seems to be around crowd funding of some sort. At $25,000 per month thats going to cost $300K to keep us going for a year and again, that is not going to happen. There is no point in donating say $100 to a site that is quite clearly not going to last to the end of the year. What happens to my donation if this site closes down anyway. Again it's not a realistic option to crowd fund and its been tried before and it never worked.

Bill has also set out why the advertising model is no longer viable so simply removing add blockers is not an option.

Selling then seems like the only viable option and honestly I think you would struggle to give a site like ATS away. According to bills numbers the running cost is 25K per month to make the site viable and thats just not going to happen.

Now again to be totally brutal and without wanting to get into any kind of political debate I do think the membership need to acknowledge that ATS is predominately a far-right alternative site (yes with some of us pesky liberals). In the currently climate, rightly or wrongly, such a political leaning is not popular and it is not the kind of site that a big company or wealthy famous individual is going to want to be associated with.

TLDR: ATS is probably going to shut down

a reply to: SkepticOverlord

Hi

would you consider patreon and keep ATS alive through donations via patreon but set up some sort of content with your mods and admins , maybe something to look into , ?

I know its obviously a resource time based issue as well , but im sure there are enough members in ATS who'd be willing to make a patreon account to donate 2$ a month or $5 a month to keep ATS alive or something along the lines

all the gold members who spend hours researching to post here and have done for over a decade, could you get them involved like content creators and members can give donations as patreons ?
each forum section of ATS could have a selection of content authors who provide content for ATS patreons
there could be live streams with discussion forums etc , using twitch , or youtube as hosting platform for those

SO, I have a not insignificant amount of BTC and other crypto coin. Does ATS have a donation capability?

I couldn't bear seeing ATS, one of the last bastions of free speech and free thinking disappear.

I knew there was trouble from oppressive revenue generators when "certain topics" couldn't be discussed starting around 2013

One day, those behind this horrible behavior will answer for what they're doing. For now, you should let some of the better off members donate what we have available

Look at other sites who publish mob objectionable topics and sustain revenue

Hate to say it, but wonder if elimination of politics (how nlbs separated it from ATS for a bit) would worn

originally posted by: Riffrafter
a reply to: SkepticOverlord

On a final note, I believe you will be *very* pleasantly surprised if you launch a GoFundMe campaign.

It won't address the time issue unless it's really successful which would allow you to hire someone to do the day-to-day stuff.

My big question is why wait until it's basically too late to tell everyone this? I know I'll hear "everyone knew" but no, everyone didn't know it was this dire.

So sad to see ATS struggling and potentially disappearing. I have spent a lot of time here lurking over the past 10 years, not really a big poster as I prefer to read.

I have learnt so much from so many people on here, I cannot imagine a day where I cannot get my fix.

Sad times ahead.

a reply to: OtherSideOfTheCoin

That rate of loss is unsustainable, yes. A new owner or the current ownership could find new revenue streams, or monetizing strategies, however, to at least reduce that number, so it's not the only figure that needs to be considered, for due diligence. It's not enough to speculate from. I'm sure the request for investors or buyers will likely answer those questions, so we may as well wait.

Your 1000 post threshold seems arbitrary, however. Many people who rarely or never post may want to continue coming here, and may be willing to put a few dollars towards it.

a reply to: sapien82

Heck I'd donate $1000 a month to keep ATS running

a reply to: Bent8484

it might be arbitrary but the point is you're going to really struggle to hit the $25K mark.

I personally think the only value is going to be in the domain name, someone might buy it up for a game/book/movie or whatever.

I do wonder if a option might be to migrate ATS over to a new site that is just a basic web forum that can be run much cheaper. That though just wouldn't be the same but its the only option I can think of that might work.

1st: I'm a long time member with nowhere near 1000 posts and I would happily pay a monthly fee to save this site. I come and go in spurts but it is my favorite site, it is where I get my news and my alternate news stories, and it is the only site I have always told people I am actually proud to be a member of.

2nd: this is the exact time that sites like this need to exist. With censoring of speech going the way it is simply giving in and shutting down the site seems like giving up. This is the time we should be fighting as much as possible to preserve free speech and alternative views. If a place like this won't do it, Noone will.

3rd: where else are people going to go? It ain't Facebook, Reddit, or any other platform. So where will people go? Are there other sites that offer similar experiences?

originally posted by: yuppa
Hey.how much cash do you need to make ATS safe for the next year? Im gonna start a Go fund me,under business for ATS if i can.

Everyone keeps missing one of the most crucial points of my opening post and follow-up response: lack of time.

You'd be better off forming a collective entity of members and raising money to purchase and manage the site on your own.

originally posted by: face23785

originally posted by: hawkguy
I would commit to a membership. I believe many of the contributing members in Aircraft Projects would feel similarly. There's a quite interesting and eclectic mix of voices here and I feel that the quality contributors would be retained in a transition to a membership based model.

Toxicity would almost certainly decrease as well.

That's what I'm most wondering is where are all of those folks gonna go, since that's my favorite forum. Wherever they wind up, I'd like to follow.

SmAshomAsh forum it is.
Let's go. He will be happy
smashomash.com...

a reply to: Bent8484

Plus ATS could be rebranded, marketed as a nation of free speech, open in your face discussion of reality and a true alternative to mob controlled antisocial media

originally posted by: OtherSideOfTheCoin
I do wonder if a option might be to migrate ATS over to a new site that is just a basic web forum that can be run much cheaper.

There are not many ways to inexpensively run a site with our legacy technical debt of a very large/active database, and supporting image content.

a reply to: SkepticOverlord

How many millions are we talking about?

a reply to: SkepticOverlord

Thats kind of what I was thinking.

Would it be possible use the ATS Reddit sub, just get members interested to migrate over to that sub.

I think it might be an idea to give us some kind of timetable for the site shutdown if thats going to be possible.

Also I was thinking about a much cheeper version of ATS, just a poor mans forum that has very basic functionality.

Totally get how ATS could be a expensive venture.

I think a subscription-based model will work if we helped up membership. If all of us go out and try and get some organic leads/members to sign up we could save things. I am willing to donate/pay as well.

I think with the current climate in the US people need to know about places like ATS. If more people found our community more would join for sure.

a reply to: Bent8484

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe... All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Roy Batty

Well, politics is what drove people away from ATS. ATS was once unique in its own way, it had that X-Files Mulder and Scully vibe to it. We had countless of threads about end of the world (Nibiru, planet x etc.). Than it became a politics only forum and that's where it started to go to crapper. Many members left.
Who can blame them?

Political boards dominate the internet, it's a topic in the top 5 on the interenet . There are countless of boards on the net where you can discuss politics and ATS just drowned in that gray mass.

a reply to: XCrycek

Agree end toxic politics and the overhead decreases rapidly post wise

Sadly as SO says there is no time

a reply to: XCrycek

The toxic politics is probably a contributing factor, kind of hard to attract new advertisers and investors to a site that spends a lot of time just having some pretty hateful debates about immigrations, trans-genders and minorities.