I tried out Voat when it was new. It's a truly creepy place.
the idea behind voat is good but the execution is average. When there's no cencorship it opens the door for low-quality content to thrive
I'm from the Usenet generation. No user accounts, no way to ban anyone and no way to block anyone, only client-side message filters. The alt.* hierarchy was an early iteration of the "censorship free" concept and this is why we can never speak of Usenet again.
It's baffling to me how SV, which created USENET, likely the freest forum for speech in history, now cheers on censorship. Free-thinking and wide exchange of heterodox views strike me as a necessary accompaniment to creativity in the tech world.