Transparency On The Future of ATS

“No. For the love of God, NO!”

a reply to: Lagomorphe

Are you going to write the begging letter to him or will i

Member since 2006?If ATS has to resort to member donations to exist,this is the ultimate red flag upon universal Free speech.

originally posted by: carewemust

originally posted by: randomtangentsrme
a reply to: SkepticOverlord

It sounded like you did well with the donation option of a few years ago. I know at the time I was able to give, and gladly did so with an amount I could.
I suspect you could self fund from donations. But you know how that worked better than myself.

That's a great idea! There wouldn't be all the labor-intensive "busy work" of baby-sitting subscribers if there was a $$$ donation option. After AboveTopSecret.com is back on solid footing, donors could get "perks", like a Bronze/Silver/Gold Donor label by our Username.

Perks by donations are not right. More money equates to a better "perk", is a bad business model.
Think about what you just suggested.

originally posted by: SkepticOverlord

originally posted by: OtherSideOfTheCoin
Sorry bill I know you’re a busy man but out of curiosity what do you envision ATS “fading away” would look like?

Darkness.

In the time of the most uncertainty — the go to site of conspiracy dies.

Community is everything in these uncertain times.

I hope all of your find hope in your community!

11 years for me..... I guess this is the reality we live in.

Love you all!

originally posted by: KKLOCO

originally posted by: SkepticOverlord

originally posted by: OtherSideOfTheCoin
Sorry bill I know you’re a busy man but out of curiosity what do you envision ATS “fading away” would look like?

Darkness.

In the time of the most uncertainty — the go to site of conspiracy dies.

Community is everything in these uncertain times.

I hope all of your find hope in your community!

11 years for me..... I guess this is the reality we live in.

Love you all!

Star wars prequels: [paraphrased] "Democracy dies in thunderous applause."

www.youtube.com...

Maybe in the those 3tb of images in a serve there are a few gems of photos that some rich people would rather forget for a price

do what Nexus did with their magazine and make it to dvd with the old content 880-100 $ to buy it , i don,t mind chipping in 100$ a year .Get sponsors from the fields we interest , sell your old clobber on craigslist or ebay to help .

Put the Bat signal up for help , it may surprise us who comes running to help

a reply to: SkepticOverlord

First off, you should probably start by fixing your JOIN page. It has been broken for more than half a year. I've had friends and family try to join but they get "server configuration error, please try again later.". I've tested it from multiple computers, multiple VPNs, still broken. I bet you are hemorrhaging users right now.

Also, I would immediately ask all mods to tone it down a bit on their banning and moderation. This has been an issue for years. They seem to be hunting, acting like detectives and banning on a whim, and policing the place even if there were no complaints. They are eating away at your revenue. You should probably adopt "complaint only" enforcement.

You definitely can get costs down. Are you interested in transparency? I would like to know some numbers and data.

1: How much traffic do you get a month?
2: How much bandwidth do you consume a month?
3: Who is your host now?
4: What database type? MySQL?

Based on what you said, a 50GB DB instance with 53 queries a second, and 3TB of assets. I think your costs can be below 10K a month in AWS easy. I just need more info above to really tell you the cost.

originally posted by: SkepticOverlord
It's time to face the harsh reality. This website is quickly approaching a difficult situation. Here are the facts:

For independent sites like ATS, advertising revenue has been dropping across the entire Internet for the past five years. Combined with the recent significant drop in advertising due to the economic fallout of the pandemic, and it's horrible.

The number of visitors blocking what meager revenue is available on ATS continues to climb. We're well above the broader Internet average at more than two-thirds of all visitors blocking ads and other analytics tags.

The blocking of the analytics tags artificially deflates our actual traffic and visitor statistics. Making it impossible to attract a higher-quality ad supplier. Compound that with the reality that the current political climate has made many of our freely-expressed topics "toxic," and it's double horrible. (For example, Google AdSense is not an option for us.)

There are only two options:
1) Find a suitable buyer with the resources to invest in growth.
2) Slowly fade away until revenue can't support hosting.

We don't say this lightly — especially me, who has devoted 12+ years to this endeavor.

I can imagine the long list of ideas our members will suggest. I appreciate your passion and enthusiasm. It's why I did this. However, they would all require time and resources that we don't have.

The best hope for this project's longevity in free expression is for someone with resources to pick up the torch and carry it where we currently cannot. A new torchbearer would be critically important in these times where "free expression" is under attack.


Some contextual history:

We've entertained acquisition deals from a few suitable entities over the past several months. The most recent company was a near-perfect fit. But they are also suddenly facing an uncertain financial future due to the gutting of the online advertising markets.

We cannot find a business broker specializing in websites that are willing to represent a 100% ad revenue model to their buyers (for now).

Marketplaces and auctions such as Flippa are problematic. First, for success, an upfront investment that we don't have is required. Second, confirming the intent and principles of a potential buyer is near-impossible.


What Comes Next

Soon, we will make some type of "this website for sale" indication. From there, we'll see what interest we get. Please trust me in that we will have high standards for any new owner.

The website will continue to run. In the event we begin seriously fading away, there will be a fair warning.

With a heavy heart, thank you for your participation. It's my sincere hope that a new "torchbearer" will come forward, and you all will continue your efforts unabated.

I think Mister SkepticOverlord, a lot of that stuff taking this site down has to do with dumb politics, it's everywhere!

I once opened a thread about how full site was invaded by politics, i was told to shut up about it by most people or "be the change" and once i tried to "Be the change i wanted to see" i was also told to shut up LOL

The entire thing is dumb because tons and tons of people have been calling you all owners and admins about how idiotic and boring and cheap politics are destroying this site and you kept silent for years! And now it's completely wasted

Even on this thread, politics "left/right" is to blame for the entire thing.... Has to be most ridiculous thing ever

It invaded even this thread!! LMFAO!

"Politics this, politics that, so boring!"

LOL

Some things never change mister owner, too bad this time it was allowed for so long that it caused everything to die

As like a million posts before mine and including mine said: "politics are killing the site", yet nothing done about it

Too bad i guess


There could be hope, if you change the site to be "abovepolitics.com" and remove everything else, then you can just have that single one and people move over there, everyone else sorry, but if even with like a gazillion thread about politics every month the site is going down, what can other topics do anyway?

WOW never knew so many people cared about ATS so much. Its just a site folks. As for saving it?

Ah! That's easy, just go post or make interesting threads. Internet sites just vibe off traffic, and that usually happens in two ways. Mind numbing garbage that appeals to peoples tendencies and habits. The lower frequencies are more numerous for sure. But even those get tired of there same ol and look for something else. Or just content that appeals to peoples various interests. Either way both pass in time.

Other then that. Talk about encyclopedia dramatica. I mean I will miss some of the people who write on here. Though for the life of me I cant remember who or what there monikers were. But I am sure they didn't suck that bad.

I assure you of one thing...I will not follow new ownership, not that I ever really trusted the purveyors of ATS, but nobody in todays world of marketed truth is believable.

Its the member contributors that have made this sites value, it has nearly nothing to do with the owners contribution.

So....

originally posted by: galadofwarthethird
WOW never knew so many people cared about ATS so much. Its just a site folks. As for saving it?

Ah! That's easy, just go post or make interesting threads.

"Be the change you want to see" LMFAO, unless no one cares and your thread is sent to oblivion because is not about Trump or gets 'infected' and then just forgotten, as it happens here lots

Internet sites just vibe off traffic, and that usually happens in two ways. Mind numbing garbage that appeals to peoples tendencies and habits.

Such as the gazillion politic threads here, so many that no one cares or notices other stuff anyways :S

The lower frequencies are more numerous for sure. But even those get tired of there same ol and look for something else.

Like in other sites, so they probahly go away now because of nothing new/fun/good found here anymore?

Or just content that appeals to peoples various interests. Either way both pass in time.

Meh, on Reddit you find like a million more interesting things day by day, because it is totally separating politics from other topics and you can really completey avoyd politics if you don't want to read about that stuff, every forum has clear rules, you can subscribe to a forum list and not ever see the ones you don't like, it was told here million times that it was dumb to not allow that and it was all excuses that 'just don't read them' and stuff, people are dumb?

Meh

a reply to: BoneSay

Perhaps topics pertaining to US politics and related conspiracy angles should be confined to one sub-forum and one sub-forum only? Any mention of US politics in any other thread on any other sub-forum should be moderated and topics started moved to the US political forum. I've been on other forums (not conspiratorial) that have banned political discourse entirely due to the toxic debates turning to arguments leading to the banning of members and "white anting" the forum. I think that US politics has "white anted" this one.

a reply to: Lumenari

ATS with an adult section? Could it get any better? I'd pay for that! Never understood that whole puritan ATS "can't even talk about sex" thing. But then I'm European, so what do I know....

originally posted by: harold223
a reply to: BoneSay

Perhaps topics pertaining to US politics and related conspiracy angles should be confined to one sub-forum and one sub-forum only? Any mention of US politics in any other thread on any other sub-forum should be moderated and topics started moved to the US political forum. I've been on other forums (not conspiratorial) that have banned political discourse entirely due to the toxic debates turning to arguments leading to the banning of members and "white anting" the forum. I think that US politics has "white anted" this one.

Tons and tons of people said that before, they were ignored and sent away and/or told "if you don't want politics create threads that are about what you want to read" or such stuff like that, which is very dumb because not everyone comes to teach or instruct but most people want to read and if interesting stuff is drawned by politic dumb threads about every single little thing said by trumpr or someone else, then people just doesn't care to join or post here, they go some other place where they can post without having a gazillion people try to turn things into politics

Just on this thread see on first page, immediately politics come around, ridiculous lol

Too late to change things around i guess, by what the OP says

And other things like people saying "if you dont like it you can go somewhere else" or stuff like "the site is full of life, every day lots of threads are open, just go read the ones you like" has to be the dumbest excuses ever, because here on this same thread you can see it wasn't the answer to anything, it killed the site because of dumb people forcing their dumb ideas

The site is not going to be the same, no site ever does when someone else buys it and lets see if we get the same dumb excuses again, such "nothing will change, it will even get better because more money!" LOL

Why is Reddit not dying? It has been less time around that this site? And it was very small and now it's way bigger but it doesnt allow the infection of politics every single forum like it happens here, it turns people away and they know it. so they have clear rules that no one can force and you get banned soon if you try to fool the rules. Here it was all wrong, you can be banned for anything but you have the ridiculous mud place and the same topic everywhere, that's cool but critizise just a bit someone and you get banned, ridiculous rules, and way to apply them was just amateur.

Can lie everything they want, but reality is reality

Anyways, i hate seeing the site go away, but choices were made, and sometimes, bad choices are bad choices, no matter what excuses follow

Wasn't around much past year, due to all i said before plus the mental sexual oppressor that was protected and excused while shifting the blame on me for daring to talk about some illness i got

Thanks for all the fish, i guess? And good luck lol

-

Sayra

My heart is broke. We have to do something to save ATS, we cannot let it die.

If this is the end, It's a been a fantastic ride.

I've been here since 2007. Through good and bad times, this place has been like a 3rd home for me (behind real home and work)
I have to admit though that the political threads have turned me away more than once. Being English, American politics are not my thing. The odd great thread pops up about a different topic, but gets eaten up very quickly. This place was magic a few years ago.

Imagine someone new comes in and sees a front page like that? Straight out the door.

I don't usually donate to things, but I will if it means keeping the ligts on around here, even for a few months more.

a reply to: MindBodySpiritComplex

ATS "can't even talk about sex" thing

Or Psychedelics. Thats a budding world that would have guaranteed fresh users with imaginative and creative ideas... CBD companies would have loved to have been splattered in ads all over the place. Never mind that the interplay between psychedelics and conspiracy theories is blatantly obvious and has always been ignored/denied here and the mods and user base was stuck in an old school "Reefer Madness" mindset.

That was always a real drag and felt that this site was held back by square, old-school thinking.

I think the OP is right on about this place becoming toxic, and we are all guilty... including the mods.

Hopefully things will come through and things will work out... changes will need to be made in order for any of this to be viable... if only fanning the flames of paranoia and sowing seeds of distrust was profitable. I feel like some other companies are making a killing at this... why can't we?

a reply to: BoneSay

And adding to that. I know people will think that there are many angles to politics. How about a political forum, with different internal sub-forums that allow a diversity of political discussions, but all confined. This part is key: only one of the current top threads from the political forums makes it onto the home page. It means that people can still discuss a range of political angles, but if people don't want politics, its very easy to avoid. Other conspiratorial topics will not be drowned out and will feature much more heavily on the home page, making the site appear a lot less political to any newcomers. Just a thought?

I’ve been a member since 2005 (I thought it was earlier!), and I’ll be sorry to see the place go.

It seems that a lot of my history is passing into memory these days.

And maybe that is because of “these days”?

So much has changed, in ways that I struggle to understand, and ways that I understand all too well.

I would like to have contributed more to the various discourses that carried and grew this site into the what it has become. Perhaps I might have made a difference. Perhaps we humans are just no more than we ever were.

Perhaps there really is “No escaping Destiny” as the young Dr. Franken-steen! lamented.

Perhaps ATS has just grown too big not to fail?

Never thought, when I joined all those years ago, that I would become one of the “Left” left to close up this fine old “rabbit hole”.