Patreon Alternative SubscribeStar Disabled Paypal Payouts Following Activist Outrage
SubscribeStar Already Hit By Activist Outrage, Paypal Payouts FROZEN which means I likely will not be able to collect donations through SubscribeStar. The company said that they will get your money to you no matter what so we will see what happens.Following the banning of Sargon of Akkad, aka Carl Benjamin, a few dozen creators moved to SubscribeStar. Shortly after that activists began posting and calling groups to action to target the service. Following this SubscribeStar removed Paypal from its website and no longer allows payouts with the service, claiming that Paypal had requested its removal.Eventually all that will be left of these platforms
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This morning, when I logged into my Subscribestar account, I was greeted with this.
Essentially, I can't use PayPal to pay out the money that you guys have donated through Subscribestar.
The only other alternatives are, like, bank transactions, which doesn't work for me for a lot of different reasons.
Now.
I don't know what this means necessarily, but I do know that there are already activists targeting Subscribestar and we knew this was going to happen.
I don't know if this money will be paid out.
I have no idea.
Above the options for payouts, it says, if none of these options work for you, we will find a way to get you your money no matter what.
Basically, it seems like, what they're saying on Subscribestar, PayPal requested they no longer do payouts using their service, something having to do with the terms of service.
And I think this was pretty predictable to a lot of people.
And this is why, even though I set up the account, I did say almost as quickly as I could, I won't be using it, I won't be promoting it for the most part, because of the inherent risks, but The main reason I set it up is because it's better to have alternatives.
There are a lot of people who did it to me on Patreon who were going to leave no matter what.
And if that's the case, I should definitely have alternatives, because just saying I'm not going to set something up for you is a bad idea.
But for those that did move from Patreon to Subscribestar, Just know that there is a risk that the money you're donating doesn't come to me.
And this is going to affect a lot of people.
Admittedly, I have done really well with people donating on Subscribestar, but it's not the end of the world.
I would add that a lot of people went to my personal donate page with PayPal and have signed up there.
Where normally, in the beginning of videos, I do a shoutout to how you can donate to me, it's actually part of the video in this instance, so now I'll just show you.
You can go to TimCast.com slash donate if you would like to give monthly.
There's crypto options for those that like cryptocurrency, and there's an option for a P.O.
Box.
Admittedly, I don't live near Hoboken anymore, so this is checked relatively rarely.
Maybe not even once a month, but it's still my P.O.
Box.
It's still going to exist.
You can send stuff there.
I do get whatever you send.
If you want to support my work, there is a PayPal option.
And look, there's a reason why I didn't shut down PayPal overnight.
I know there are a lot of people who are really, really upset with Patreon.
I'm sorry.
There's a reason why I didn't shut down Patreon overnight.
There are a lot of people who are really upset with Patreon over the banning of Sargon of Akkad, the banning of Lauren Southern, and other actions that just show that, well, they're not being completely honest.
But most of the people who give to me, probably about 67% or so, have no idea what's going on, don't know what's happening, and I can't necessarily go through 1,300 emails to let everybody know for sure, and then try and move them somewhere else, and shutting down Patreon overnight would be really bad for me and make it... It would be bad for me.
Look, I want to make videos every day.
I want to talk about these issues.
The point of today's video isn't just going to be mentioning that Substar is under attack and may actually have... Well, it's possible that some people don't get paid out because PayPal's been frozen.
The point of this video is to talk about why this is happening.
There's a few different reasons.
One thing that was suggested to me is that these companies are protecting their corporate monopoly, the oligopoly.
It's funny that BitChute gets suspended from Patreon for hate speech or whatever.
And BitChute, I believe, they had their PayPal or I'm not entirely sure.
They've been affected in other ways because they apparently host hate speech or whatever.
Well, BitChute is a competitor to a lot of these companies, so it's interesting that even though there's no big outrage campaign against BitChute, there's been like one article, they get targeted.
Somehow, these companies seek people out and remove them before they can get negative press or before they can actually become a threat to these companies.
It would seem like, why PayPal wants, you know, Subscribestar to shut down paying out, at least that's what it says on the site, okay?
You know, Subscribestar said PayPal requested, they no longer do these payouts.
Well, some people suggest it's PayPal protecting their buddies.
You know, we heard Jack Conte say that the CEOs in Silicon Valley, they all talk to each other.
So either they all share the same ideology, which they probably do, or they request that, hey man, you know, get rid of those guys that are competing with us.
That's one theory.
It's a conspiracy theory, so I'm not a big fan of it.
I think for the most part, you've got activists and media who are smearing people and this causes these companies to panic because they don't want negative press.
So then they're going to say, hey man, I don't want anything to do with whatever it is you're doing.
I have no idea what you're doing.
I'm just scared.
Activists, they really do scare these companies.
Some people have asked me, why is it that people are so scared of these activists?
Well, it's actually really simple.
My favorite analogy, maybe not, I don't know if it's an analogy, but my favorite way to explain this is, do you think Sargon of Akkad is going to rally a group of liberalists to show up to the headquarters of a Silicon Valley company and smash windows and throw Molotov cocktails?
Of course not.
Well, I mean, aside from the fact that Sargon lives in the UK, no.
The liberalists, the intellectual dark web types, conservatives, will never do that.
There is absolutely zero threat from these activists for any kind of street violence.
But let me ask you this.
Do you think the regressive left will?
Well, of course they will.
We see them do it all the time.
And then, of course, the media will lie about it.
What ends up happening is these companies get scared of potential violence, harassment campaigns, targeting themselves and their families.
Look what, you know, Antifa showed up to the home of Tucker Carlson.
Do you think any of these CEOs want to deal with that?
No way.
So they will absolutely purge whoever they can.
But, there is, you know, whenever, what's the saying, when God closes a door, he opens a window?
In that, In the movie The Incredibles, one of the themes of part one is that everyone is special, therefore no one is.
We see the kid, I can't remember the kid's name, the son, say, you know, I'm special, I should be able to run fast and play sports, and his mom says, everybody's special, and he says, that's a fancy way of saying nobody is.
Then you have the villain Syndrome.
He says, I'm gonna sell this new technology so it makes everyone super powered, because when everyone's super, no one will be.
Here's the light at the end of the tunnel.
When they ban everyone, eventually nobody will be banned.
If nobody is using these platforms because they've banned everyone interesting, well then they've effectively shut themselves down, right?
If you have an app, And only 50 people use it.
It's not a very successful app, depending on what you do.
If you're a social media site and only 50 people use your platform, it's not super successful.
In fact, if only 1,000 or 2,000 people who are activists use your platform, well, then you're basically an activist organizing company.
Which means, the more they ban people, the more the activists freak out.
They're actually removing themselves from the mainstream, right?
These companies are scared of the actions that activists will take, and thus, they will fall back.
But eventually, they'll have to ban everyone interesting.
And then what?
Let's say someone who's banned today, who's not even that bad.
Like, I mean, look, there are people who don't like Sargon of Akkad, but he's certainly a centrist, leaning either to the slightly left or slightly to the right, depending on what time of day it is.
I mean, there's various issues that various people have different perspectives on, so they'll accuse Sargon of being to the left or to the right, and that's the point I'm trying to make.
Dude's obviously a centrist.
What if at some point someone like this becomes particularly important, and what they say is important, maybe it's politics.
Maybe they become, in 10 or 12 years, they're a successful CEO of a company, maybe they're a professor, maybe they've got some position where we want to know what they're talking about.
Let's say Twitter bans someone today who's 15 years old for hate speech, but by the time they're in their 20s, they're one of the most famous sports players in the world.
Well, Twitter is removing themselves by banning too many people.
Like, they're literally banning dark comedy, like, things that are actually acceptable in the mainstream.
What Sargon did to get banned from Patreon is not even that egregious.
Using a racial slur in an abstract way to make a point about racists and how they view minorities is much, much different from going on a racist tirade.
But now, I, you know, let's take a look at some examples that I have pulled up that I want to talk about something else to kind of round off this video.
I'll say this, I never really enjoy making videos like this where I talk about things affecting me because this channel is typically for things that are happening out there, but because of what's going on I kind of have no choice but to address it.
One of the other issues that I've brought up the other day is how the media is dying, they're desperate, they're grasping for straws.
If you don't know where that idiom comes from, it's the idea that someone is drowning, and they're so desperate to stay afloat, they will grab anything, even the straws floating on the surface.
Obviously, those won't keep you afloat.
And that's what's happening with media.
These media companies like, you know, the Vox companies, like Mike, like BuzzFeed, like Vice, they were supposed to disrupt the mainstream.
They were supposed to be the next wave that would wipe out the traditional media and become the new thing.
And they did for about 10 years.
And that was it.
And now they're all collapsing under their own weight.
They can't afford to pay these employees.
Not only that, technology has advanced so quickly, you can just watch me.
And I don't have high overhead.
Making this video costs me basically nothing.
Granted, I have a nice camera, I have a microphone.
For the most part, however, the overhead for producing this is ridiculously low.
And then you have to consider the fact that with smartphones becoming cheaper and cheaper, you can get a smartphone for like $20 now, and it's got a camera on it.
That means that these media companies, where they have to spend $30,000 a year for a low-level employee to write an article, to write several articles, you know, per week or per day, You're competing with the entire population of the world that has a smartphone, and they're producing content for free.
What ends up happening is these people, in their desperation, they reach the bottom of the barrel.
They need to find employees that are cheap.
Are they going to go for high-class, award-winning journalists?
No, of course not.
That's expensive.
I'm thinking I'll hire war correspondents who can actually go out on the ground and face these extreme risks.
Absolutely not.
Insurance is expensive, too.
And these people, well, look, they want better salaries when they take these risks.
Some people are now doing conflict stuff because they're passionate about it and, you know, bless their hearts, it's really dangerous, dangerous work.
I have much respect for that.
What these companies do, however, is they find New York-based, desperate college activist types because they can write the clickbait they need to generate traffic to stay afloat in these dire times.
What ends up happening?
Well, these people, right?
Let's pull up this example.
PewDiePie's ties to white supremacy spell serious trouble for the future of YouTube.
Yes.
They will accuse PewDiePie, who makes silly videos about memes, of having ties to white supremacy because they need me to click on it.
And the other reason is because the people who write these articles are just not very bright.
If they were, they wouldn't be making garbage wages working for a blog in New York City.
They'd be specialists, or doing something much more significant than just writing blogs about the latest celebrity gossip, which is effectively what this is.
This is panic bait.
They are taking someone who's famous, putting his name right in front, so it appears on Google, and they add something like white supremacy, because then people will click it, and then they can say, oh, you know, look everybody, look at what's going on, it's so bad, and then they'll make what little money they can.
It's not going to work.
But probably the craziest thing about this is that, sure, there are certainly some things you can criticize PewDiePie for.
He's made some mistakes in the past, nothing particularly egregious, just mistakes he should apologize for, and he has.
But they specifically highlight who he follows on Twitter.
The who's who of white supremacy apparently includes an Asian man, Ian Miles Chong, Paul Joseph Watson, alt-right philosopher Stephen Molyneux, alt-right Canadian blogger Lauren Southern, the recently red-pilled YouTube personality Lacey Green.
And they also include Dave Rubin and Ben Shapiro.
Now look, by all means, if you want to criticize Stephen Molyneux and Lauren Southern, I'm open to hearing more criticisms about them.
They are significantly different people in their political beliefs than Lacey Green, Dave Rubin, and even, to an extent, Ben Shapiro.
Ben Shapiro is a Jewish conservative, but more importantly, Dave Rubin is a gay Jewish man.
More importantly of all, Lacey Green is a literal intersectional feminist.
She is a liberal feminist who has very little in common politically with most, with pretty much everybody listed here.
The other thing that's really crazy about this article that shows it's just absolute nonsense is, look, PewDiePie follows almost 600 people, including John and Hank Green, who are lefties.
He follows Grace Helbig.
Why do they want to single out the small handful of people that have questionable political views in their mind, but ignore the people who actually agree with them?
Not that I think those people are particularly questionable, but some of them do have some questionable views.
Lacey Green, in my opinion, an intersectional feminist, not really that bad for someone to follow.
It's kind of weird.
What if the article was PewDiePie's ties to the far left are concerning, and we highlighted that he followed John and Hank Green?
What if we talk about how PewDiePie follows Rhett and Link and Jenna Marbles, and many other content creators who are really not that bad?
What if we talked about how he follows Tyler Oakley?
Is that strange?
What's strange is how these articles clearly omit the fact that PewDiePie follows a massive amount of people.
The goal, in my opinion, is entirely predictable.
They have to do this.
They have to.
Everything that we're seeing is on purpose.
We could have predicted this a long time ago.
Of course it'll get worse.
These are the death throes of a dying media.
They are so desperate, they are thrashing about violently.
And what do they teach you about trying to rescue a drowning person?
They might grab onto you and pull you down with them.
Because in their violent attempts to survive, they might just grab you and pull you in.
And there are appropriate ways to approach a situation.
Ultimately, what's going to happen is these companies are fading.
They're losing money.
The investments, they were a bad idea.
Mike.com, their massive evaluation, now nothing.
A pittance laid off their staff, sold out.
Years ago, a couple of years ago, Shane Smith, the CEO of Vice, said there would be a bloodbath in digital media, and he was right.
We have seen it.
Even companies that work with YouTube and elsewhere are facing this problem and laying people off.
Effectively, people like me, we are taking the resources away from these people.
As more viewers come to my channel, and other channels like PewDiePie, these companies fade from existence.
And they're angry about it.
So, in their anger and frustration, they project onto us these smears, these lies, in an effort to try and save themselves.
I actually pity these companies.
I pity these writers.
They won't have jobs soon.
They struggle.
They're basically living in squalor, for the most part.
When I worked at some of these companies, these people live crammed in tiny apartments where they all share bedrooms, and it's just not fun.
They don't have the American dream.
And it's because their industry is dying, and they've made the wrong bet.
The investors made the wrong bet.
They made the wrong bet.
And this is why I left these companies.
I knew what the right bet was.
The right bet was going independent.
And so even though I started independent, Worked for some of these companies for a couple years.
I ultimately decided not to go and work for these companies after my contract ended with Fusion.
Full disclosure, well actually I should omit for the sake of the privacy of certain individuals, but I was offered jobs from a lot of these companies.
And I ultimately chose not to do it.
And I said at the time it's because they don't know what they're doing and they will not survive.
They can't see what's in front of their faces.
Most of these people can't see beyond the superficial.
And that means they will eventually fade from existence.
But, in their dying breath, they're looking up as they sink in the water, and they see us.
They see the independent creators, who are just chillin', with our heads back, you know, kickin' our feet, backstroke, no problem, we're not sinking.
We don't have to worry about massive overhead.
But they're angry about it.
So what they do is they tell the other drowning people, and they tell the people who are watching on shore that we're the reason they're drowning, and it doesn't work.
Then they say, we're actually evil.
We're evil demons.
They smear us, they lie about us.
Because if they can remove us, then they can get the eyes from those who are watching.
And that's why this all happens.
Why they target something like Subscribestar.
Why Subscribestar had PayPal shut down.
It's part of it.
These media companies, in their smears, are trying to strip our resources from us.
And if we can't make money from alternative platforms, if we can't make money on the internet, well then we can't produce content for the most part.
That's what they think, at least.
Because they don't seem to realize that even if I can't monetize what I do here, I'm still gonna do it.
People who produce content on YouTube and on social media platforms, they aren't doing it because it's a chance to be rich.
Some people, sure.
They do it because they want to.
And many people who do it actually have jobs, and they use those jobs to subsidize this type of content.
So it'll never work.
And I'll tell you what'll happen.
I will make another prediction that these people should have been paying attention to.
They will lose.
They will continue to lay themselves off.
The companies will continue to collapse and eventually the lies will evaporate and it won't matter anymore.
Because either these social media platforms are going to ban everyone into and thus make themselves niche activist organizing websites or people will just decide we'll make our own community.
We'll make our own platforms.
Now one thing that's interesting is they often talk about how You know, the activists say, if you don't like it, go make your own platform.
But then they certainly chase you to the ends of the earth to try to destroy you.
They don't really want you to make your own platform.
They will destroy that platform by any means necessary.
I mean, there are groups that call themselves that.
But eventually, when you push people away and you leave them no choice, they don't just roll over and die.
They don't beg for forgiveness.
They get angry.
Why does PewDiePie follow some people like Ian Miles Chong or Jordan Peterson or Dave Rubin?
Well, maybe it's because you lied about him so much, and he found other people who are lied about, too, and said, maybe they're onto something.
Maybe there's a reason they're lying about us.
The more they do this, the more they're just pushing people away.
And I certainly hope they do it more.
Push as many people away as possible.
Keep doing it.
Because there are people who are waiting with open arms saying, look, you don't have to live like this.
You don't have to be scared the media will lie about you.
Ultimately, It's going to keep happening until these companies cease to exist.
Until the investors say, maybe these companies are a bad idea.
How many people invested in Vice and are now regretting it?
How many people invested in Mike.com or these other digital platforms and regret it because they're shrinking?
They probably do.
And those investors are going to look for other means to make money.
And what are they going to see?
They're going to see independent creators who are starting small channels with low overhead that make a decent amount of money, and they're going to say, I would rather invest in something like that.
Perhaps.
Or at the very least, these companies won't exist and what they say just doesn't matter in the long run.
And what matters are creators like me and people like you who watch channels like me.
So, look, I could rant on this issue for a long time.
I did want to make something more news-related, but it had to be talked about for the most part because I don't know if Subscribestar is viable in the long run, and that's why almost immediately after I launched it, I said, just go to PayPal.
Or nothing.
Because maybe there is nothing.
But I'll tell you what.
I'm not worried about it.
As a lefty libertarian type, what I see so often, when people make these memes about the political compass, is they don't seem to realize.
They accuse the lefty libertarian types of being Antifa.
No, no, no, no, no.
You're wrong.
Antifa is a statist, not libertarian type, okay?
Libertarians, either on the left or the right, believe that you can't force people to do things.
To an extent, right?
Depending on how far down you go on the libertarian spectrum.
Left libertarianism is about cooperation, and I've explained this, but basically it means the government I want believes in mutual aid and cooperation and less competition, but it can only be achieved through mutual aid, meaning I can't force you To live in a society where you pool your resources with mine to try and make everyone live more comfortably.
If you don't like it, well, then that's just too bad, unfortunately.
And this is the best part about the lefty libertarian types.
It tends to be pot-smoking hippies with their crystals laying on a beach saying, yeah, you know, whatever, man.
And they're chill.
And this is why it's hard mode.
For one, lefty libertarian types are just sitting back saying, you know, maybe, like, I can't make it do it, that's too bad.
So their dreams will never come to fruition.
And it's also really difficult to convince people through honesty and through, you know, maintaining your integrity, say, this is why I think we should live this way.
And if you can't, then you can't do it.
I think left libertarian is probably the hardest ideology to accomplish on the political spectrum.
Because we can't force people to do anything, and even among lefty libertarian types, they're pretty chill, laid back, saying, well, you know, there's no point in pushing too hard, just go with the flow.
So we're at a disadvantage.
Right libertarian types tend to be more about competition and free markets.
But the point is, Those who want to control you and tell you what you can or can't do are not left libertarian.
Those who want to smash windows and start fires, that is not left libertarian.
That is left authoritarian.
The idea that you can impose your rules on others without their consent.
And so the point I'm trying to make before I sign off for today's video is that If all else fails, you can find me chillin' in the woods with a dog, living off the land.
And it is what it is.
And I think it's a really important mentality to have, that you shouldn't, you know, don't feel like the world is ending and you have no choice, because there's some tides you can't, there are some things you can't control.
Sometimes it's a tsunami, and there's nothing you can do to stop it.
And the appropriate response is retreat.
Sometimes it's not, sometimes you need to go head-on and risk everything to sacrifice, but it's important to know where the line is.
It's important to know when to choose your battles.
And for now, my battle is here to make sure that we can maintain free expression and free speech, because my vision of a beautiful future is a centrist, center-left, cooperative, but with meritocracy involved, something where we want to take care of each other and we agree to do so.
And so long as these insane religious zealots who care only for power continue to maintain power, it's only gonna get worse.
And I'll end by saying this.
If I were to make a grand prediction... I've said I was gonna end a while now, but if I was gonna make a grand prediction...
I would predict that we are headed for an absolute nightmarish dystopia.
Because whatever is happening, I don't think it can be stopped.
I really don't.
Maybe these media companies will collapse, and that will end this tsunami of fear-mongering and violence and authoritarianism.
But it's also possible that these massive tech giants won't be stopped, and they hold these similar ideologies as well.
In which case, you can expect a future where ideas are suppressed, people are terrified, and it's not the government who does it.
It's your fellow citizens, scared of each other, scared of being reported.
Think about this.
I said I was going to end, but I got to say one more thing.
They want to de-platform people.
But what happens when they suspend the license?
What if they said, you know what, Alex Jones?
It's not just that we're going to ban you from iTunes.
We're going to revoke your phone license because it belongs to us.
And then his phone gets bricked.
Well, if people only use cell phones from now on, what's he supposed to do?
Go buy a landline?
That's where we're headed, unless something changes.
Now, I tend to be for regulation, and I think this is why we should have similar regulations.
Like, you know, a phone company can't ban you for your conversations.
Maybe it should be true that it's the same for an iPhone, it's the same for how Twitter works, but I don't know.
Anyway.
I'm gonna rant too much on this issue.
Just something I had to get, you know, I don't know, whatever.
You can follow me on Twitter at TimCast.
I'll have more videos up on my second channel, youtube.com slash TimCastNews starting at 6 p.m.
Thanks for hanging out for this extended open conversation video, and I will see you at 6 p.m.
