First I will mention some good things about Voat. It's nice to truly have a platform where you can say anything you want and not have to worry about site admins deleting your stuff when it is not warranted.
While much of Voat was toxic I did like some of the subverses and met some nice people.
I was able to learn a good deal about why some people are racist, and occasionally I'd learn a new truth or see something from a certain perspective (though there was more bad content than redeeming content).
As for the negative, just not having rules is not enough. Even while protecting free speech there is a responsibility for the site administrators to moderate certain things and to build features to censor some types of content. A forum like Voat or Phuks should not allow someone to post light CP or to photoshop news articles and post them in order to push an agenda. Such posts should be removed transparently.
Voat users claim people who even read the mainstream media are brainwashed sheep, yet if you post something obviously false that agrees with the hive mind (one of my alts claimed Mexicans drove up form Mexico to bring Biden votes right in front of an auditor) then you will get many upvoats. I also would occasionally do a test by posting some random newspaper article with a fake title and as long as the title attacked Jews or gays it would get mostly upvoats.
While Voat claims to be free-speech, it is mostly the admin/owner who is really free speech. If most of the users there had the power they would pass discriminatory laws against blacks and LGBT and use force against them.
One reason why I see the shutdown as inevitable is while the site owner was generous, they did a very poor job delegating work to make the website maintainable. When there is too much work you have to delegate to trusted users. There also did not make a very clear request to use bitcoin or other currency that couldn't be censored in a way that was maintainable. So while I see the extreme sacrifice, it was a big mistake.
Finally, I really like that the voat admin can now have a normal life, play some more golf, etc.
I think forums like Voat or Phuks do better with a neat but small userbase. When they get big they seem to fall apart. Here at Phuks we have some room but I don't think we want to be too big. That's just my opinion.
Voat was never great, but it did allow me to meet some exceptional individuals(mostly my SBBH brethren) and for that I'm forever grateful. Coincidentally they were also the only one that believed me when I suggested Voat might have lost its 'Angel'. I might share some truly fucked up screenshots of how accurately we predicted what was going on from around New Year last year.
But yeah.. The next platform that chose to advertise itself as 'Free Speech' deserve the audience it's getting. That is an unfortunate brutal lesson learned.