Patreon Account Deletion

Hi everyone! It's January 15th. A few weeks ago, in a discussion with Dave Rubin, I announced that I would be closing my Patreon account as of today. So I am doing so, as Dave has or will shortly. I'm not pleased about this in any way, and Patreon's innovative service helped me a lot when I was first in trouble because of the videos I made criticizing the Canadian compelled speech bill C-16 and the University of Toronto's forced anti-bias training policy.

But I don't think what Patreon has decided to do in the case of Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - was right, and I think it sets a bad precedent. So that's that! I'm actively working on an alternative platform as a competitor to Patreon. In the meantime, I've set up a simple, rather featureless alternative, which is now where the support bar on the lower left-hand side of my videos points.

This is for those who would like to continue their patronage, or begin as new supporters. My financial situation has stabilized substantially since I originally set up a Patreon account, and I did it then, in March of 2016, to see if I could fund further development of my YouTube channel, which is not, and has never been, ad-supported.

However, it seems that a substantial number of people want to indicate and provide their support on a continued basis, feeling inclined by all appearances to provide something reciprocal in return for the content they have been provided with. Although I would likely continue to generate video content in any case, seeing all that support definitely incentivizes me on an ongoing basis to make generating YouTube content a top priority, as well as allowing me to continue to fund the small team I have working on an online education project I've discussed a bit in various interviews in the past.

About 5,000 of my patrons have already left the platform in protest, so I'm already down to about half the number of subscribers I once had. Approximately 2,500 of these have transferred their support to the alternative I spoke of earlier, although an unknowable proportion of this 2,500 have newly signed on. Thank you very much to all my patrons and all my viewers and listeners and readers for their past support, and to all of those who have transferred their contributions to the alternative system.

So, let's see how this goes. Think I have it set up here to delete. We'll see right here. Disable my account. Well, here goes. Fingers crossed!

All right, well, I have to withdraw $11.21. It looks like that happened, so let's see now if I can do this. One more step by the looks of things! That's it, ladies and gentlemen (we got 'em).

Hi there, it's nighttime in Switzerland where I am now. Anyways, um, I've tried to sign in, and it's definitely gone, so I just thought I'd let you know that. Thanks again! I'll talk to you soon. I've got a couple of new YouTube videos that'll be up in the next week, and I'll see those of you who are coming to my shows in California, New Zealand, and Australia over the next month. Bye bye all!