I was a transplant from Digg, ages ago. I never liked the cross-sub political undercurrent that always left you getting dogpiled on by idiots for expressing you opinions. I’ve wanted to jump ship for awhile but not a lot of good alternatives existed. Voat essentially became the social media platform for Stormfront. Ruqqus became a low-tier, low-effort meme board with little information discussion. Hopefully this lasts and has some promise to it.

Going public is just business speak for selling out your userbase for shareholder money. It's never a good thing for the users.