Jordan Peterson Announces Free Speech Social Media And Patreon Alternative 'Thinkspot'

Chris Menahan
InformationLiberation
Jun. 13, 2019

"An upcoming free speech platform promises to provide users the best features of other social media, but without the censorship," NewsBusters reports.
The subscription based “anti-censorship” platform “Thinkspot” is being created by popular psychologist Dr. Jordan B. Peterson. It’s being marketed as a free speech alternative to payment processors like Patreon in that it will “monetize creators” and also provide a social media alternative to platforms like Facebook and YouTube.

Peterson discussed Thinkspot with podcaster Joe Rogan on June 9, emphasizing a radically pro-free speech Terms of Service. He described that freedom as the “central” aspect saying, “once you're on our platform we won't take you down unless we’re ordered to by a US court of law.”

That will be a profound contrast to platforms that ban users for “misgendering” people who identify as trans, or for tweeting “learn to code” at fired journalists.

The only other major rule on comments he mentioned was that they need to be thoughtful. Rather than suggesting that some opinions are “off limits,” Peterson said they will have a minimum required length so one has to put thought into what they write.

“If minimum comment length is 50 words, you’re gonna have to put a little thought into it,” Peterson said. “Even if you’re being a troll, you’ll be a quasi-witty troll.”

All comments on the website will have a voting feature “and if your ratio of upvotes to downvotes falls below 50/50 then your comments will be hidden, people will still be able to see them, if they click, but you'll disappear.” He later added a caveat saying that was still being mulled over and that “We don't know if 50/50 is right.”

The platform, with its subscription-based service, will also directly subsidize content creators.

Peterson said that a handful of major free speech proponents including Dave Rubin, Michael Shermer, and Carl Benjamin are on board to be beta testers for Thinkspot.
You can sign up for beta access on his site:


Saying they're not going to take down anyone's posts without a court order is quite bold, though it's not clear if the site will be completely open to the public.


Though the specifics definitely need to be worked out and tested, this sounds like it has the potential for greatness if Peterson follows through. Around two years ago Peterson had another great idea for a site which would rate Cultural Marxist professors but he backed off it under pressure.

Recently, Peterson met with Viktor Orban and got attacked by Intellectual Dark Web founder Eric Weinstein as a result, but Peterson doesn't appear to have backed down.

If he can get a payment processor committed to free speech, that's a very big deal. Same goes for all the other infrastructure, as we've seen with Gab, it's quite difficult but not entirely impossible.

Big Tech is currently operating as a potentially criminal cartel blocking competitors out through made up "hate speech" rules (which none of these companies had to deal with when they were established).


Breaking the back of this cartel is absolutely necessary if we're to preserve any sort of free speech online.

Tim Pool noted Thursday that Peterson is already being smeared by the media even though the site hasn't even come out yet:



Peterson's going to face a trial by fire.

[Header image by Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0.]

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