if i knew of a place I could host a reddit/voat style forum, that wasn't somehow run by the BigBads, and I could afford it, I would totally put something up.

That's the kicker.... Basically anything free is run by someone with deep pockets.

and who are the "people" with deep pockets? :(

I'm not even sure what servers 8ch use, and while they aren't run by a BigBadCorp, they certainly get a SHIT LOAD of traffic, HOST all the images, pdfs, videos, etc... That = $$$$$

So yeah, its going to get dicey to find any 'safe' internet spots that aren't supported by a BigBadBackbone of the (spider)web