In December 2018, Carl Benjamin—an anti-feminist YouTuber known as "Sargon of Akkad"—was suspended by the membership platform Patreon, a website on which internet creators can receive money from fans who subscribe to their feed for a regular fee. Benjamin was later banned from the service, which reported that he used "racial and homophobic slurs to degrade another individual". This became the impetus for Canadian clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson and conservative political commentator Dave Rubin to announce the founding of Thinkspot. Shortly after Benjamin was banned, Jordan Peterson announced his intent to create what they called a "free speech platform", hoping it would be launched by Christmas. Prior to leaving Patreon, Peterson was receiving donations of $30,000 a month through the website. By July 2019, an expected release date of August was announced. By the end of July, a beta test for the site was underway in which both user and content creators were allowed on to the site. The first small collection of contributors included entrepreneur Dave Rubin, CarlBenjamin, James Altucher, retired U.S. officer Jocko Willink and science writer Michael Shermer. On the user side, beta-testers were allowed on the platform in limited numbers, and a wait list was developed to allow on additional users. An article by Gizmodo from December 2019, at which point the beta phase and waiting list were still in effect, estimated that a few thousand users were allowed on the platform.
Product details
Thinkspot is billed as a "free speech alternative" to Patreon with additional hosting functionality for leader- and user-generated content. Peterson said that the site would only remove content or ban users if required by court, in service of the free-speech goal. To counterbalance the possibility for abuse, he says that a minimum word count on posts should mean that simple trolling is rendered more difficult. In addition, voting on comments is used. Comments that fall below a 20% approval rating are submitted for review to the site's moderators, wherein confirmed "spam" comments are hidden behind a label noting the comment's spam status and "click to view comment" button. The product allows a wide variety of interaction options, including feeds, forums, comments, a "discourse button", and reference annotations similar to those of the website Genius. Though emoji reactions are part of the website's functionality, an FAQ on the website reports that they "do not allow the use of emojis". Memes and profile pictures are also prohibited.
Payments and funding
Access to Thinkspot is free, while the ability to contribute media requires a subscription fee of $2.50 per month, and the service has different levels of access plans. There exists a lower-tier plan which only allows access to content, while a higher-fee plan allows "contributor" capabilities. In addition, paywalled content exists on the site, such as premium subscription items for individual contributors. For instance, access to Peterson's premium materials cost $240 per year, as of December 2019.
Reception
The site's beta version received largely negative critical reception. John Semley of The Guardian wrote that the website "feels very much like a pay-to-play Jordan Peterson fan site". Brian Feldman of Intelligencer criticized Peterson for the website's mechanic of hiding comments which receive downvotes, calling it "ironic given the professor's stance as a free-speech absolutist". Tom McKay of Gizmodo found the website's design "headache-inducing". McKay reported being charged for subscription immediately despite the displayed message saying that the billing cycle would not start until January 1, 2020. Semley, Matthew Kassel of The Forward, Benjamin Goggin of Business Insider, and Ignacio Martinez of The Daily Dot express concern at the interest by white nationalists and other extremists in the site, noting parallels to other 'free speech'-oriented platforms such as Gab that became used almost exclusively by such demographics. Tyler Curtis of the libertarian think-tank Foundation for Economic Education suggested in July 2019 that the site "could apply competitive pressure" to platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to turn them away from what he described as their increasing "censorship policies" and "willingness to silence and ban users who express opinions deemed offensive".
