Patreon’s inability to protect free speech is giving rise to Bitcoin solutions

How an innovative start-up is developing a Bitcoin-based, censorship-free alternative

BitPatron Team
BitPatron
3 min readJan 15, 2019

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The rise of social media has changed the way we consume news and debate politics. New voices and independent TV shows have risen, be it on Youtube, Twitter or other channels.

This increased competition on how we consume news and inform ourselves has as well led to a shift in how mainstream media is reporting. Many would agree that media has become more controversial, probably in an attempt for attention, clicks and ultimately revenue. The election of President Trump has furthermore accelerated this trend and has coined new terms such as “fake news”, or “hate speech”.

As a reaction to rising independent voices and a more heated political landscape, the call for censoring and control didn’t take long to arrive. Platforms such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook were swift in addressing the “problem” by demonetizing and even censoring individuals who broke their newly updated ‘terms of service’.

Other platforms such as Patreon, Memberful or Podia were quick at filling the void and helping content creators to keep monetizing their content.

However, it didn’t take long until even those platforms showed first signs of unreliability when it comes to free speech.

The ban of ‘Sargon of Akkad’ by Patreon sent the first shockwave through the community and led other users such as Jordan Peterson and Dave Rubin leave the platform.

Building up a Youtube channel, Twitter or Patreon following takes hard work and dedication, not being able to rely on a revenue model and having to constantly change gateways is costly and ultimately hurts not only content creators, but the entire ecosystem.

It’s therefore time for seismic change. A new setup that won’t be under threat by big corporates and big politics, a setup that can withhold any sort of political and corporate pressure.

This is where Bitcoin and BitPatron come in. Bitcoin is censorship-resistant free speech money and BitPatron is taking a leading role at building a Bitcoin-based, censorship-free platform that gives the power back to the community where it belongs.

To follow the latest news on free speech and BitPatron, sign-up at: https://bitpatron.co

“Many people fixate on the price of Bitcoin. What’s important is censorship-resistant free speech money and payment processing. As long as you own Bitcoin, you can support any person, business, or cause that you wish without permission from any bank, government, or corporation.” — Gab.com

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BitPatron Team
BitPatron

Building the Bitcoin censorship-free Patreon alternative