Bullshit. You can go on voat right now just fine and there are people using it just fine. It hasn't failed, it's just not a big deal because it's an almost exact replica of a site that already exists and has traction. The difference being one allows you to hate on fat people all the time and the other only lets you hate on fat people most of the time. It's just too niche of a USP for most people.

I don't think that's a fair analysis of what happened. Though it seems obvious that they have lost some potencial users by being down so many times, ultimately what has obstructed Voat’s success is its core community: the fringe of the fringe of reddit.

It's still going and they post about the scaling issues being due to lack of funding available that would allow them to continue their business model.

http://voat.co

But is that a true scaling problem like "2x servers can't handle 2x users" or is it a business model problem like "every user means losing money and we can't afford more even if the cost was O(n^0.9)"?

I can't find the posts you're talking about.