Transparency On The Future of ATS

I agree BFFT. I joined in March of 2003. I remember a lot of great things. I remember many conversations with Zorgon (Ron Schmidt) who recently passed (was awful news that day) and reading your thread about Doctor Ling (I still reference frequently).

I've sent paypal donations through the years because I loved this site and how it opened my eyes on technology facets.

As IAMTAT asked, I would gladly pay a subscription to keep the lights on or act as a partial owner in a pool of others.

I'm grateful for the people I met, the environment the owners have provided and for the content from which I've learned.

a reply to: bigfatfurrytexan

originally posted by: numberjuggler
1) I do not believe it costs 25k a month to host a forum.

I never said it did.

2) This site is filled with servile left/right political bull# which should never have been allowed.

So to have survived, we should have censored opinions you don't like. Got it.

Speaking of old videos... remember these?



or


Caution: language.

a reply to: Kangaruex4Ewe

Kanga...please check your PMs

SO is the registration fixed? I see people saying they cant register

a reply to: jedi_hamster

I tottaly agree with you on this!!

a reply to: DontTreadOnMe

Done and done.

They say when there is a Will there is a Way - I detect a lack of Will

a reply to: SkepticOverlord

I have to say, I miss the old ATS-sponsored vids. Conspiracy Chicks, stuff like that, those were great.

originally posted by: SkepticOverlord
So to have survived, we should have censored opinions you don't like. Got it.

Perhaps it's a lot simpler than that....

Don't get involved in politics in the first place.

I don't blame you, you can't go into debt. Powers beyond your control have destroyed the free and open Internet and deliberately targeted free speech forums and non-conformist sites with an ever increasing spiral of fees and annoyances so they can eliminate free thinking. You are swept up in this, and you will go away, but you fought the good fight for a long, long time. For that we thank you.

And now the rest of us must fight the good fight in the real world against the tyranny to come. Or we can kneel.

I do not kneel. Don't tread on me.

I am under no obligation to post but I am not gonna read anything regarding USA politics as I simply dont give a toss. Sorry

originally posted by: eletheia

originally posted by: devilhunter

Its very sad news but as a few others have mentioned, the amount of USA politics threads is now ridiculous. When I first started coming here, it was mainly all about UFO's, paranormal and general mysteries and conspiracies.
As UK citizen, I have zero interest in US politics unless its something along the lines of the Kennedy assassination.

No wonder people dont stay or advertisers have willies when half the new threads are "I hate Trump" or "I love Trump".
I hardly ever read the politics stuff and I am sure I aint the only one.

Gosh!! ..... I have to applaud your temerity

You've been a member for

14 years

and you have managed in all that time THREE posts!!

Have to wonder the attraction that kept you here in view of the fact not

much on the site was of any interest to you. /SMH

I'll unblock ads for you for now, if it makes any difference, but level with me for a moment.

I never wanted to block ads here, except I got a really bad sour taste in my mouth, from some of your ad partners in the past.

I explicitly had some experiences with the most annoying types of advertisements imaginable, on this website.

The perpetually REPEATING, FULL REDIRECTion advertisement, preventing me from fully reading a post or watching any in post content.
(Not literally the worst, not yet.)

Nope, the worst was that exact thing happening, but then when I try to go back, there was a REDIRECTION REFRESH CHAIN.

I had to hit the back button, like 80 million times, to get the original post I was ATTEMPTING TO READ.

AND IF I MISSED IT?????

Fine, I go reopen it.

But... sometimes...

Even if I hit back like 100 times, and I manage to go allllll the way back...

The post was gone from my back history, because the advertisement page redirection had filled the slot.



Seems awful crazy, that I can remember this experience, right?

Because it happened to me constantly, for multiple months, and I experienced this, dozens, if not hundreds of times.

I was on a specific phone at the time, with no ad block capability.

I later learn that this phone existed at a cheap price because of advertiser dealers and back door shady stuff.

Like, when certain advertiser URL's or trigger code is present, the phone would trigger these redirections.

So, not 100% ATS's fault, part my fault for buying a fire saled cheap cell phone...

BUT ATS was using an ad partner involved with this BS.

Take with that what you will, I made posts about my experience more than once, when it was happening, and ranted heavily at the time.

I have a different phone now.

I would have never explicitly gone out of my way to ad block ATS though, if the partner choice had been different.

Hindsight is this year.

UK here.
Been here in a variety of guises since dialup.

Relentless US politics, basically.
It’s killing the site.

a reply to: TheShippingForecast

You got it right UK guy

I have no idea whether it was the politics that hurt ATS as the main reason for the decline it may be one of the reasons. They should know better than us having overall experience with the site and its history.


We only get a shot of the picture.


I also felt the political RW loud voice, was a passing fancy and wouldn’t last. I still believe that.


But the days of Jim Mars and those things AM mentions were great.


My belief, which is only a theory, is that conspiracy and deep politics has gone down after the Bush-era. The REAL deep state, those behind the neocon 911 era, just waited us out.

The Obama era brought out racial politics, then just as all civil rights era does, you had a right-wing backlash that brought us to this very day.
Racial politics ALWAYS allow the secret boys to hide in the shadows and do their thing, unmolested.

The Trump era I still say was a deliberate job like 911 to get the neocon’s cred back. And it has worked like a charm. Trump’s antics have allowed the scumbag neocons back into the limelight based on the ANYBODY BUT TRUMP SYNDROME.


That’s no one fault but the dark dynamics of American politics--hidden and open.

a reply to: Willtell
The inrush of politics actually filled the gap which arose when all the "2012" excitement collapsed into disappointment (reflected in a visible reduction in new posts and threads).

a reply to: DISRAELI

I think this is the best opportunity to show something I have been doing for years, my personal ATS statistics, in this case with data automatically gathered daily from the Stats page on ATS, up to 2020-04-30.





It's clear that the decline isn't something new, and that we even had a "plateau" between 2014 and 2016, but things started to get worse after 2016.

Politics? Maybe, maybe not.

a reply to: ArMaP
Thank you for giving us the accurate statistics.
I must admit that my impression of a sudden 2013 drop (which your stats seem to confirm) was based on two very rough measurements;
a) The time taken for a new post to drop to the bottom of the Recent Posts page, and how quickly that was speeding up when the Americans got out of bed.
b) The interval between the thread numbers of threads posted on a regular weekly basis at the same time each week.

P..S. I wonder if a post-2016 drop might be explained as follows; up to that point, pro-Obama and anti-Obama factions had been slugging it out. After that point, the pro-Obama side of the fight began dropping out (or returning to complain about the "right-wing echo-chamber" effect created by their absence). In other words, not so much disgust at politics, as disgust at the apparent triumph of Trump.

a reply to: DISRAELI

The inrush of politics actually filled the gap which arose when all the "2012" excitement collapsed into disappointment (reflected in a visible reduction in new posts and threads).

I actually returned here; I had been a member years ago when it was less politically charged, during the Trayvon Martin mess. I don’t recall it being that bad then.

But you make a good point about 2012!