Dave Rubin and Jordan Peterson announced they will leave Patreon on January 15th, ending their relationship with the platform that has become central to how independent creators fund their work. The t
Dave Rubin and Jordan Peterson announced they will leave Patreon on January 15th, ending their relationship with the platform that has become central to how independent creators fund their work. The two made the announcement in a 30-minute video posted to Rubin's YouTube channel, The Rubin Report, where they explored the mechanics of deplatforming and outlined plans for their own alternative service.
Their exit follows Patreon's decision to remove Carl Benjamin, better known online as Sargon of Akkad. Benjamin had built an audience of 1.5 million subscribers spread across multiple YouTube channels and was earning over $12,000 monthly from Patreon patrons before the platform banned him. Patreon attributed the removal to Benjamin's use of a racial slur on another creator's channel. Philosopher and neuroscientist Sam Harris countered that the decision appeared motivated by politics rather than principle.
The move reflected broader tensions surrounding content moderation. Over the past couple of years, platforms have grown more aggressive about removing or demonetizing creators. YouTube's advertising collapse — colloquially termed the Adpocalypse — forced many independent creators to seek alternative revenue sources. Patreon became their refuge, which made the Benjamin removal significant: if creators couldn't rely on Patreon, where else could they turn?
Rubin positioned the exodus as a stand against institutional control. "This is about making a stand against this ever-moving encroachment on free speech, free expression, and the rest of it," he said during the video. Peterson elaborated on the fundamental problem: "It's not obvious to me that corporations can run platforms for untrammeled communication successfully on the net in today's climate."
But the real leverage sits elsewhere. Payment processors — Visa and Mastercard chief among them — control whether creators can accept money. These companies can blacklist creators they deem inappropriate or immoral. Organized campaigns like Change the Terms have successfully pressured these processors to cut off creators their members oppose.
This dynamic became acute after a recent New York Times piece by Andrew Ross Sorkin. Sorkin proposed that credit card companies should monitor spending patterns to identify potential mass shooters. Peterson seized on the example to illustrate how far institutional control could extend. "The idea is that the companies to whom we have entrusted our monetary system in large part (that'd be the credit card companies) get to review our spending patterns to determine if what we purchased is in accordance with what they regard as morally acceptable," he explained. "I just can't believe that any sensible person would think that through and then want to live in a society where your spending habits are being monitored by the company that basically produces your money. I can't think of anything more totalitarian than that."
Rubin extended that logic to what already exists elsewhere. China's nascent social credit system links access to travel, government services, and other necessities to government-assigned scores. A parallel system could emerge in the U.S., Rubin suggested, where demonetization escalates into broader financial exclusion — loss of food stamps, for instance, handed down by automated systems checking previous purchase histories.
Both men turned to cryptocurrency as a potential escape hatch. Bitcoin, after all, emerged specifically to sidestep financial gatekeepers. During the Wikileaks blockade, Bitcoin provided one of the only pathways for supporters to send money. It proved the concept: digital currency could move outside institutional channels.
Yet neither man saw Bitcoin as a current solution. Rubin and Peterson plan to launch their Patreon alternative with multiple payment gateways to give creators options beyond any single processor. Bitcoin enters the picture as those payment processors themselves face mounting pressure.
Peterson offered qualified support for the direction cryptocurrency developers were pursuing. "I have some real and increasing sympathy for the cryptocurrency types," he said. But obstacles remain: "The problem there is that, as far as I can tell, their solution is still sufficiently technically complex to keep it out of mainstream use — and also not sufficiently liquid to actually constitute a realistic, current replacement even for credit cards."
Rubin acknowledged the gap. "Maybe crypto is the ultimate answer, but it's not the answer tomorrow," he said.
Until their platform launches, the two will accept donations directly on their personal websites. Rubin closed by framing the moment as a decision point for his audience and internet users broadly. "Maybe this will be the defining idea of 2019," he said. "I think we're basically at the point where people have to decide what sort of internet they want. And it's not only what sort of internet, it's what sort of freedom do you want in a digital world?"
