Going public is just business speak for selling out your userbase for shareholder money. It's never a good thing for the users.

I was a transplant from Digg, ages ago. I never liked the cross-sub political undercurrent that always left you getting dogpiled on by idiots for expressing you opinions. I’ve wanted to jump ship for awhile but not a lot of good alternatives existed. Voat essentially became the social media platform for Stormfront. Ruqqus became a low-tier, low-effort meme board with little information discussion. Hopefully this lasts and has some promise to it.