Jordan Peterson and Dave Rubin announced via a joint YouTube video on New Year’s Day they were leaving Patreon on Jan. 15, due to what Peterson says is “Patreon’s proclivity to censor.” Rubin and Peterson had been mulling this over in the wake of Patreon’s decision to ban Carl Benjamin, otherwise known online as Sargon of Akkad. They are hoping to create and release a competitor to Patreon soon.
In the 30-minute video, Peterson and Rubin laid out their thought processes regarding both what they believe to be happening online in terms of censorship, especially the intersection of credit card companies and platforms like Patreon, as well as the alternative they are working on.
Patreon banned Carl Benjamin for using the N-word on another person’s YouTube account, during a conversation with another host.
Patreon published the transcript of the video, and said it contained hate speech, which is a violation of the platform’s terms. In the profanity-laced rant, Benjamin explains why he doesn’t like the alt-right crowd and compares them to “white N—–.”
Patreon explained their ban and said, in part: “As a funding platform, we don’t host much content, but we help fund creations across the Internet. As a result, we review creations posted on other platforms that are funded through Patreon. Sargon is well known for his collaborations with other creators and so we apply our community guidelines to those collaborations, including this interview.”
Even though Peterson and Rubin may or may not agree with Benjamin — I certainly don’t care for his rantings, personally — they felt strongly that he represented Patreon’s decision to censor people mostly on the Right, in terms of political ideology, which is why they decided to leave the site and hope to create another.
Even though both men profit from Patreon and still enjoy the site themselves, Peterson said he thought it was unethical to continue to be on the platform. Rubin called Patreon the “backbone of my show” and said “somewhere between 60-70 percent of my funding comes from Patreon.” Peterson seemed somewhat saddened in his announcement, mentioning that Patreon supported him financially at a time when he really needed it.
Still, Peterson and Rubin believe so strongly, as Rubin said, “in the making a stand against the ever-moving encroachment on free speech, on free expression” that they are taking financial risks leaving the site, and hoping to move forward with a different platform, to be released in the near future.
Rubin and Peterson both mentioned how hard it has been to identify their main rub of Patreon (censoring free speech) with ever-increasing censorship from major credit card companies. Rubin said engineers, “people from Google, Facebook, and Yahoo,” were reaching out to them to try to see if there is a way to create a platform that wouldn’t simply run into the same issues Patreon has. How can a platform allow creativity and the monetization of that without eventually supporting groups that actively fund, for example, the Islamic State. Where is that line?
Peterson brought up the trend of major credit card companies monitoring spending and who have partnered with companies like Patreon to squelch platforms that they believe to be “hate speech,” or a threat. He mentioned specifically the case of the best-selling author Robert Spencer, of Jihad Watch, who had an account on Patreon. Mastercard required Patreon to deplatform him because they disagreed with him morally.
Initially I was not quite as concerned as Peterson and Rubin about Patreon and censorship. I don’t personally care for Benjamin, but squelching any free speech is a dangerous pathway to walk. However, it’s obvious the two men have a knack for forseeing societal problems at least a year or more before they manifest — canaries in the societal coal mine of free speech, if you will. There are no doubt layers of free speech and finances that are intertwined with platforms like Patreon — solving these issues will be harder than it sounds.
Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.
