My AlternativeTo entry for Phuks was approved. Get in here and vote.

A combination of things. Most of them popped up around the same time, and the insane traffic that came from Reddit between 3.5-2.5 years ago was not directed at Phuks because it didn't exist. That also lead to them getting way more mentions than us, the only people who mention us are users here or users on Voat, and I rarely see us mentioned anywhere outside of Voat. The more a site is mentioned, the more "established" it is. If I see a list of sites and Phuks is on it, I'm going to take a look at another site I've heard of before instead. I'd also add another factor or two, and I hate to bring it up but it always seems to come to the surface; Reddit hate sub bans and the 2016 US election. The polarising impact that it had on US users, who I think make up a majority of our userbase over all other nationalities combined, has put a political spin on the attraction of aggregators. We haven't thrown our lot in with either camp. In the long run I think this is for the best, as there are surely a lot of Reddit users, for example, who are not that interested in US politics and just want content/a community. I am not just talking about Voat in relation to the hate sub stuff and everything either. Take Imzy as an example. The site (somehow) tanked after a multi million dollar investment and it isn't around now, but they were trying to create an anti-Voat when they were still afloat. It is a conundrum for us in a lot of ways, not just because of traffic, it also means we are probably going to take a lot of criticism from Redditors and from people on Voat for different reasons. Perhaps that's the way it should be.