GoFundMe has shut down yet another conservative donation campaign on its popular crowdfunding site.
As donations for the “Freedom Convoy” trucker protest in Ottawa, Ontario, reached $10 million on Feb. 4, GoFundMe pulled the plug on it and took the page down, alleging violence and unlawful activity as an excuse.
To add insult to injury, the company wasn’t originally planning on returning the donated funds from the canceled page unless asked. GoFundMe stated that it intended to distribute the money the truckers chose to charities. After massive public pushback—especially from a number of states’ attorneys general—the platform relented and said it would automatically return the funds.
GoFundMe’s excuse for closing the donations page down doesn’t pass the smell test, because it has a long history of deplatforming conservative causes while conspicuously leaving leftist crowdfunding efforts alone.
Consider this case, which was from November 2020. It was a case where the site cancelled a campaign to erect an advertisement in California for a book that criticizes puberty blockers. Local parents tried to get a sign erected that would have read “Puberty is not a medical condition,” along with a photo of the book “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters” by Abigail Shrier.
GoFundMe offered no explanation beyond claiming the campaign went against the site’s user rules.
In March of last year, it censored another cause for purely political reasons: A women’s rape crisis center in Vancouver, British Columbia, had crowdfunded $7,000 before GoFundMe killed the page. The page was started by a short-lived internet community called “Super Straight” that wanted to support the one rape crisis center in the city explicitly for biological women. That ran afoul of GoFundMe’s liberal sensibilities regarding transgender people, so the page had to go.
While GoFundMe has ramped up its efforts against conservatives in recent years, the practice tracks back to the site’s early days.
The Daily Signal reported two stories in April 2015 on Aaron and Melissa Klein, a florist and baker, respectively. The stories were about their GoFundMe campaigns that were removed from the platform following their refusal to provide gay wedding service. The Kleins’ story is notable insofar as it ushered in a change in policy directly responsible for today’s problems.
Prior to the Kleins, GoFundMe’s terms of service prohibited “campaigns in defense of formal charges of heinous crimes, including violent, hateful, or sexual acts.” After they removed the Kleins’ page, the terms were updated to include “discriminatory acts.”
To the leftists in charge at GoFundMe, anything contrary to their narrative can be construed as “hateful” or “discriminatory,” and therefore, ripe for takedown.
GoFundMe’s bias in deciding what stays and what goes on its platform becomes even more evident when one looks at the types of violent leftist content that’s allowed to remain.
There are many funding campaigns available violent Antifa Black Lives Matter rioters have been allowed to remain up on the site while conservatives who have done nothing “wrong” except go against leftist dogma are frequently deleted.
Platforms like GoFundMe use a double standard to determine what is acceptable. This is dangerous. A system that supports only one political ideology is not good for American democracy.
There are many other options. As of the writing of this article, Canadian truckers have raised over $6 million via the Christian crowdfunding site. GiveSendGo.Although it would be better if GoFundMe dropped its ideological biases and accepted donations to non-leftist causes; conservatives should continue to financially support causes they agree on through any means necessary.
The left might try and stop us, but we’ll just keep on truckin’.
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