FreeStartr

FreeStartr was a crowdfunding website started by Charles C. Johnson and Peter Duke to help projects raise funds without the fear of being deplatformed.

Notable projects and creators

In 2017, the Alt-Hero comic book project raised more than $235,000 on FreeStartr.

Censorship

In June 2018, Stripe withdrew their payment processing facilities from FreeStartr.

[FreeStartr co-founder] Johnson says Stripe accused him of “obfuscating funds”, although the company did not respond to a request to comment asking them to elaborate on the allegation.

Johnson also says Stripe changed their story. He says he was initially contacted by senior Stripe employee Edwin Wee, a former Democrat operative who previously worked for Joe Sestak and Mike Bloomberg, who informed him that the presence of a legal defense fund for white supremacist Richard Spencer meant that Stripe could no longer do business with him. Because of one objectionable fund, the entire platform had to go.

“Everyone will think like, ‘oh it’s Richard Spencer, he can go f*** himself’ — but they shut down my entire business over his account,” said Johnson, who claims his goal is to build an open, neutral platform, and not to personally endorse the people who use it.

The FreeStartr URL was https://freestartr.com.

On June 21, 2018, the site displayed a "Free Speech crowdfunding is temporarily suspended" message. The business never resumed operations.

As of November 2019, the web site no longer exists. The Wayback Machine (archive.org) does not show any captures after May 16, 2019.