Yeah I agree. I think perhaps his subtext here is "I don't want to run this anymore because I'm tired of doing it even though I love the place, so I'm going to give you all responsibility as a final experiment so I can walk away from this hate site that will soon become flaming wreckage and then be able to blame its failure entirely on the users."

At least, that's the vibe I get from it. He seems to be considering "success" this ever-higher thing. If saidit was #6k, I would be happy leaving it as-is. But it seems he doesn't like how toxic the site is (who would) so he's just handing control over to the toxic users to let them drive the car in to a wall because he's sick of driving it, and sick of what it's become.

It's a very odd announcement, that's for sure. If he follows through, it'll be a big change for voat. For better or for worse. And unless he has some trick up his sleeve, it seems inevitable that handing control to a largely-toxic userbase is going to result in toxic mods and admins very quickly. I think then it'll literally just become a stormfront page, and any sane users will leave.

I really have trouble imaging this going any other way, but perhaps he's figured out some clever system that will preserve the status quo for a while. I have trouble imaging things improving though.