This is just my experience on ATS, and it's what brought me to Voat. The first I heard of PizzaGate (before that label was popular), was in a thread about spirit cooking.

I'm more concerned with the fact that the many emails have repeatedly bizarre references to many specific words in particular (cheese, pasta, sauce, dominos), and that these could be legitimate references to nefarious activities that these people think they are protected from (maybe they even are protected); but if there is any evidence at all proving it I hope it comes into public view so those in the wrong can be held accountable

Over time conversation shifted from talking about disturbing taste in 'art', to speculating on code words and piecing together coincidences. Pizzagate became a hot topic; but despite its popularity, some saw it as nothing more than some cranks grasping at straws. Some forum members asked the staff to cut down on the PizzaGate threads, then ATS began shutting down every new discussion on PizzaGate and herding discussion into one of the older threads.

As censorship escalated without explanation, some members asked for clarification on why this topic was so heavily censored, and how much of it could be discussed without going into off limits territory. I saw no response from the staff for a while, other than haphazardly rubbing out comments on the topic and disappearing requests for explanations and guidelines.

After discussion on PizzaGate was mostly smothered out, a gunman was apreahended at Comet Ping Pong. ATS released a PSA .

We've been talking about this for weeks trying to figure out how to deal with it. We've gotten a lot of complaints from members and had to remove massive numbers of posts that rather flagrantly violated the T&C. A lot of us were not comfortable with how this has been playing out and where it's been going, not only on ATS, but on the Internet, in the media, and how people who have not been proven guilty of committing any crime are being affected by it. For me, the last straw was this: In Washington Pizzeria Attack, Fake News Brought Real Guns It's all fun and games until somebody starts shooting. We can debate questions of collective responsibility and point out that the overwhelming majority of people discussing "Pizzagate" aren't going to shoot anyone, but the truth is that anyone who promotes and perpetuates online harassment contributes to the outcome.

This sounds more reasonable than it looks from my perspective. The proper time for staff to voice these concerns would be before the incident they feared, not after (and they had membership pleading for them to do so, IkNOwSTuff put up a thread requesting something like their PSA, which was immediately erased).

There are a number of circumstances which have people calling this incident a false flag. I wish I could dismiss that as nonsense, but there are some remarkable coincidences and our government doesn't have a history of squeaky clean behavior. Regardless, the way ATS handled the situation wasn't helpful, and evokes suspicion.

I don't know what the truth behind PizzaGate is, but given the media response and the rampant censorship on the issue; what is clear to me is that our ability to check established stories and share the truth from our perspective, is under attack.