My thoughts on potential ATS shutdown

I’m sorry to say it, but I saw this coming.

ATS has some serious issues that make using the site insanely frustrating.

First of all, the ads, I know sites need ads to function but ATS is the only one of the 20+ sites I frequent that I NEED an ad blocker to use. I voiced this many times and each time I was brushed off and told it was my browsers fault, and my threads were often deleted to prevent others from voicing similar issues. It was not a problem that ATS should have ignored as it forced many users to make a hard choice:

1.Don’t use ATS because you literally can’t use the site with the pop up and redirect ads, in which case ATS receives no revenue because your not visiting the site.

Or 2. Use an ad blocker with the same end result of ATS receiving no ad revenue from you.

My second major issue was that ATS really needs an update to make mobil use easier. Do you know how you post a picture from a phone on literally every other site on the dam internet?
1. Click the icon
2. Select picture from camera roll
and that’s it

Do you know how you post a picture from a phone on ATS? It’s an insanely useless upload process that never works even when done in the correct way, I constantly get an error message that my photo isn’t formatted or isn’t the right size or bla bla bla bull$nip

Why can every single other site do this so easily but not ATS? I joined a brand new gaming forum created from scratch and crowdfunded, and guess what, I could post a picture or video straight from the camera roll.

I mean dam, we are 4 years into the Trump presidency and Obama’s face is still on the People&Politicians forum, probably because staff can’t figure out how to upload a new icon picture for it.

Over the YEARS I’ve made multiple threads suggesting these simple things but my threads always get ignored, then deleted.

Well, are these problems still capable of being ignored? Or has site growth become stagnant and more and more people are using ad blockers just to view the site?

Listen to your freaking members for once and save this site from the trash can.

a reply to: Quantumgamer1776
Tell it to the new owners, provided they can sell it.

They have already made it clear they are looking to sell, not save.

a reply to: Quantumgamer1776

So you made a thread just to say you were right?

You obviously haven’t been paying attention. Skeptic Overlord said its mostly a time factor.

Read between the lines dude. A time factor means they lost interest. And it happened years ago. How often do you see owners post?

Crying that they needed to upgrade the site when they clearly lost interest and FUNDS is — beating a dead horse.

Everything you mentioned requires more money. Which is clearly not there.

I forget who it was, but just after Obama was elected someone called the end of ATS.

The height of ATS was during George W Bush's presidency when people could be civil and discuss politics with open minds and all possibilities were explored.

When Obama was elected a lot of users lost their minds in a fit of rage. This lead to the first mass exodus when long time members left the forum during the beginning of the right wing takeover

As with everything that radical close minded people touch , they have ruined yet another experiment in civil discourse in what used to be ATS

a reply to: KKLOCO

Fixing the ads issue would CREATE revenue because people wouldn’t need ad blocker to visit the site, this would also make their metrics look better because they would better reflect ATS true traffic.

Fixing the photo upload issue would attract more users, which creates more ad revenue.

But I guess your point of view is that if the pilot is suicidal we should all just sit down, shut up, and wait for the ground to rush at us all at 400 mph.

a reply to: 3sixand9
I would say the real climax of ATS was 2012.
After the failure of that expectation, the ferquency of additions to the Recent Posts page went down rapidly. From the other side of the Atlantic, I used to be able to witness the new posts speed up when the Americans woke up, but that stopped happening.
Also the ferquency of new threads went down. I used to record my weekly thread numbers to help wiith cross-linking. In 2012, the difference between the numbers was running at more than 1000 per week. In mid 2013, it was more like 500.
The switch to politics was only a symptom of the fact that people had found disappointment in the "strange things" side of conspiracy.

Voat.co would be the perfect place for us to move if ATS shuts down. It's basically the same style as Reddit, but there is absolutely no censorship or violation of free speech. You can say whatever you want. We'd actually be able to talk about MORE there than we can here, as ATS does prohibit talking about a few select things.

a reply to: trollz
Maybe...Voat has been under scrutiny of the U.S. government since last year for death threats from what I've read/heard. The censorship free motto may disappear at some point. Here's one of the articles addressing it...
Source

“We always err on the side of not removing any content (don't even remember when I last did) but things are getting hot and it's important we understand this as a community,” Chastain replied to another user.

The future of Voat has been hanging on tenterhooks for several years now. In 2017, Chastain told members that licensing and hosting costs were unsustainable without outside funding which the site was struggling to secure; no longer relying on PayPal donations since the payments platform cut ties with Voat over “obscenity.”

Few things disgust me more than a person on a sinking ship who just has to take a few moments to point out how right they were in the middle of unfortunate & challenging circumstances. Screw your politics.

a reply to: Klassified

That and Voat is still a pain in the ass to use. I like the old school board style like what ATS and what chans use. The whole Reddit/Twitter style irritates the piss out of me.

I have to select to organize comments by time, because if it's organized by best it's 9 times out of 10 random crap that's not relevant to what the OP is.

And even when it's organized by time it's still a big mess of random crap going off on tangents.

originally posted by: Klassified
a reply to: Quantumgamer1776
Tell it to the new owners, provided they can sell it.

They have already made it clear they are looking to sell, not save.

They might want to sell but it’s not easy to sell a business that loses money.
The only value is in the potential to make revenue with the user base.

They gave up on this site years ago. No bug fixes. No refresh. Moderation gone amok. Remote management. No direction. Trying to be everything for everyone. You can blame ad revenue if you want, or ad blockers, or whatever. But the reason it is failing is because it is stale and uninviting. Nobody wants to buy a stale twinkie.

I'll admit i got tired of the party politics going out of control years ago. conspiracy theories are one thing but what is happening here is the same old political crap you can pretty much get anywhere. just look at any random reply section for that crap. I periodically still frequent the ufo forms and a few of the other mysterious forums but anything deeper and well thought out is now rarer. oh well

originally posted by: 3sixand9


I forget who it was, but just after Obama was elected someone called the end of ATS.

The height of ATS was during George W Bush's presidency when people could be civil and discuss politics with open minds and all possibilities were explored.

When Obama was elected a lot of users lost their minds in a fit of rage. This lead to the first mass exodus when long time members left the forum during the beginning of the right wing takeover

As with everything that radical close minded people touch , they have ruined yet another experiment in civil discourse in what used to be ATS

The times change as with topics and issues people are interested and deal with
Trump is president and the most popular topic in the West at the moment.ATS is just reflecting popular culture at the moment, as expected

Politics, pandemics and BLM, bound to be other issues arising in time. Numbers grow and reduce reflecting society. Not good or bad, just is

originally posted by: Quantumgamer1776
I’m sorry to say it, but I saw this coming.

ATS has some serious issues that make using the site insanely frustrating.

First of all, the ads, I
.

I posted this in another thread but, the owners of ATS are primarily an advertising business

Company Description

The Above Network LLC provides online advertising services. Its services include brand consultation, design, social media, advertising consulting and marketing consultation. The company is headquartered in New York City

The ads are where they make their money. The ads are the only reason this site still exists.

originally posted by: TzarChasm
Few things disgust me more than

You've got quite a chip on your shoulder ... boy.

a reply to: dug88

Did you not read past where you quoted me?

I do not and have never had an issue with ATS having ads, my issue is with the specific ads that cause unblockable page redirects, ads that pop up and cover the whole page and you can’t close them, literally have to close the page and start over again.

For weeks ATS had an ad for a town in Oregon, yes you read that right, an ad for a town. This ad would pop up and cover the entire screen and there was no way to close out, no way to get past it, just had to close the page. I brought this ad to the attention of staff in a thread and many others voiced that they had the same issues with the same as.

I was told it was “my problem” and my thread was deleted.

That’s the day I got an ad blocker, I had never needed one before for any other site but ATS was getting worse and worse with site breaking ads showing up every other week.

Again, ATS forced many hands into using an ad blocker just to be able to make the site useable In the most basic since.

I never would have gotten one if the ads were regular functioning ads.

originally posted by: TzarChasm
Few things disgust me more than a person on a sinking ship who just has to take a few moments to point out how right they were in the middle of unfortunate & challenging circumstances. Screw your politics.

That’s not what I’m doing, to piggy back your sinking ship metaphor.

We we’re all on a ship and multiple people shouted at the captain “hey there’s an iceberg out in front of us”

The captain does nothing

A few more people speak up “seriously captain there’s a large ice berg right freakin there!”

Again the captain does nothing and eventually smashes into the iceberg, then turns to the passengers and says “Gee sucks that that happened but hey, I havnt liked this ship much lately anyways”

What I’m doing now is saying “why tf didn’t you go around the iceberg when you had the chance or at least pass the helm to someone who as willing to before it was to late?”

a reply to: Quantumgamer1776 Why would they shut this down only one who will shut it down will be mods when it starts lossing all the ad revenue,then becomes a financial drain,this place looks like old farm league advertisement

originally posted by: TzarChasm
Few things disgust me more than a person on a sinking ship who just has to take a few moments to point out how right they were in the middle of unfortunate & challenging circumstances. Screw your politics.

Then sit down, shut up and wait for the site to go down! BYE