An alternative hypothesis is that Putt got spooked by years of warnings from feds over our genuine fedposting and knew they would not be lenient with him after what was obviously going to be some serious bullshit in the capitol, the outlook from before the 6th was that trump was trying intimidate both houses, or possible to have a physical support, literally a citizen militia crossing the Rubicon legally for him; frankly as disappointed as we are in trump trump could be disappointed in us that we listened to his call for peace, the amount of genuine fed posts were skyrocketing and putt didn't want to be left holding that bag, by his second or third warning they had likely threatened him with jail. Further, closing voat on his own terms for economic reasons may have given him leave to delete certain data which could be used to ID his users who had said some wild shit over 6 years without any reprise from feds. Alternatively it could just have been he saw a shitstorm brewing had another project in the works and thought about his options rationally accessing voat wasn't going to get any better, the community was a bunch of toxic schizos and retarded boomers that could no longer be corralled by a sane and increasingly... incensed minority, so he let out the life boats said his good byes and split the dysfunctional family up so that when his new project in similar spirits takes shape it isn't dragged into the mud by the same pissants and ingrates who kept calling him a a fucking fed traitor. I have my disagreements with putt and undermined his authority on voat so massively I was almost certainly a player in his retreat from the userbase after his banwave and unbanning of so many, his sloppy webdev let me continue messaging users who I had PM logs with prior to my ban, being 3 of his builders and a couple of honest folks and I lobbied them behind the scenes for a week or so until they gave putt an ultimatum of loosing their support and he reversed course and unbanned me and dozens of other legitimate users, apparently he had a very stringent and secret basis for what he called vote manipulation, apparently he was just banning users who some of his sycophantic clingers on(theoldones and possibly that attention whore from great awakening) had beef with. I don't think that sort of sloppy fraternization is the mark of a fed, I think it's a naïve person who hasn't had power like that before, such foolish drama plays out often in similar situations, Putt probably felt an obligation and resentment for us and just wanted to be free, moot was in a similar way, his dumpsterfire was holding him back professionally and in life, he didn't sign up to be an ascetic monk for free speech at the cost of himself ad wanted to unburden himself, webdevs aren't exactly known for being moral paragons with the force of will of warrior monks, they are frequently fragile and isolated men who develop an unhealthy co-dependence on their users perceptions or power over them.