More Glitches in the ATS Matrix

[l0st]

Where did the $10k per month come from?  I scanned back a few pages and didn't see that, and I don't recall it from any discussions we were ever involved in.  Not saying it's not real, I'm just wondering where this monthly fee number comes from and if it's from a factual source or just rumor (?).

The reason for asking is, if this number is even remotely close to correct, then it just ups the possibility of whomever is paying the bill is up to something nefarious.  It's one thing to have a couple hundred bucks automatically charged to some credit card every 5 years, but it's a whole other thing to be forking out $10 grand every month to keep something running (regardless if the back end is overkill now or not).  $10k per month is not some trivial charge on your credit card statement every month...unless you're someone with a metric shit-ton of money, and how many people have those kinds of monetary resources (and why would they continue to pay)??? Answer - Not many.

If the $10k per month is even 50% percent accurate, then this just reinforces my thoughts about something less than above board going on!  There's no 'innocent' way to describe that kind of coin every month.  No 'silent partner' is going to put up that kind of cash without a motivation to do so without something in it for them, especially not a recurring cost like that every month.  Clearly there's no serious advertising, so it's not advertising revenue coming in, and it's not just some generous benefactor who wishes to remain in the shadows (if this was the case, then at least one or more of the Mods would at least know, and that doesn't seem to be the case unless someone is fibbing).

Sooooo...what else is left????  Well, there IS one thing...the user content.  The user content is the only remaining thing of value, and who might want that?  Hmmmmm...

It's that, or the site, the hardware, and it's internet connections are valuable for some other (non-ATS) purpose.

What other explanation could there be????

I seem to recall this being stated by SO in one of the several threads on ATS about the sale. He also had some not-so-nice things to say about his users who did not like the advertising methodology he used when the users blocked ads.

I'm of two minds about that given I understand a business needs to make money, but calling out your users for disliking your advertising methodology is not a way to retain them IMHO. He also stated that the site made no money post 2018(I believe), and he had to find an alternate source of income and stopped putting any effort into the site at that point, and this tracks with my observations over time.

Someone could have easily bought the forum and moved it to a VPS or something way cheaper. I believe he or someone stated the message DB was 160GB excluding images. Judging by my personal assessment of the posting traffic I see there, I doubt the site breaks 1TB data transfer a month. Commodity VPS hosting for this with a couple CPUs and 2GB RAM is probably about $5/mth in 2024, ask me how I know. Lol.

Honestly with some of the off responses I've gotten as of late I'm beginning to think the whole damn thing is a ruse ergo "you got trolled".