Gathering for Connection, Expression, and Change

More than 10 years ago Eventbrite was created to bring the world together through live experiences. Today, as we power millions of events across 180 countries every year, this core mission remains.

Now more than ever, people are gathering for change. We’re particularly encouraged by the many groups and individuals leveraging Eventbrite to promote positive change — the January Women’s March on Washington alone attracted more than one million registered participants and we’re thrilled they have chosen Eventbrite to power their Inaugural Women’s Convention coming up in October.

At Eventbrite, we believe in the fundamental right to free speech and assembly, even when we may not agree with the views and opinions expressed through all events hosted on our platform. Diversity of thought is not only essential to our vibrant community, but vital to our mission.

But what about when people gather for the sole purpose of spreading hate, intolerance, and violence?

Along with the rest of the country, we’re still trying to make sense of the horrific events that recently occurred in Charlottesville. Our thoughts go out to the victims and their families and it’s with a heavy heart that we recognize, even more clearly, the unprecedented times we’re living in. While the rally there was not hosted on Eventbrite, we have grown increasingly aware of divisive events and organizers on our platform over the past year. This has spurred even deeper, productive discourse around how and when we should step in and take action, whether it’s educating people on appropriate use of our platform, removing hateful content, or in the most extreme cases: banning access for organizers we deem in violation of our Terms of Service or Community Guidelines.

We consider our role here very thoughtfully. At Eventbrite, we power a platform that offers an open opportunity for anyone to gather for their chosen purpose. However, we want to be explicitly clear that Eventbrite does not support, condone or tolerate white supremacy groups, Neo-Nazis, or fringe groups who promote hate and violence. Period. Behaviors including direct and indirect threats of violence, promotion of terrorism, targeted harassment, prejudicial treatment of a category of people, promotion of self-harm, or sexual exploitation, are absolutely not welcome on Eventbrite and we have and will continue to take action against groups and individuals who abuse our platform.

More specifically, our Community Guidelines prohibit hate speech including violent or racist speech, and we actively remove event listings that contain or promote this type of horrific content. We review our events using various resources, including the Southern Poverty Law Center list of recognized hate groups, and if we learn after the fact that an event on our platform involved racist or violent conduct or hate speech, we ban all future events by that organizer. Our community also plays an important role in helping us identify concerning content on the platform and we review every individual report we receive (click here for how to report). Our review process is rigorous and as a result, we have taken appropriate action to prohibit public figures, such as Richard Spencer, President and Director of the National Policy Institute, from benefiting from our platform in any way.

We know firsthand the incredible power of community and actively partner with trusted advocacy groups. We’ve had productive conversations with organizations including the ACLU, Anti Defamation League, and Color of Change and also engage with peer technology companies facing similar challenges to broaden our perspective and ensure we continue to evolve our approach.

This conversation is hard. But it’s increasingly important given our current social and political environment and something that simply cannot be ignored. There have been — and will continue to be — instances where the best course of action is not immediately or completely clear to us. As both an organization and a platform, we are committed to pushing ourselves and our community to maintain a productive and open dialogue while working together to stop the spread of hate and intolerance.