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Avoiding politics online is nearly impossible. But what happens when your quest to remain neutral draws you deep into a firestorm between two of the most aggressive political factions of the Trump era?

Late last month, fundraising platform Patreon found out.

Patreon markets itself as the prime way for independent creators to come get paid, as its website reads. Its users span the full gamut of disciplines, from video makers to educators to podcasters and everyone in between. If you like a certain writer, for example, Patreon enables you to kick her a few bucks for her efforts. For some successful Patreon users, the platform provides a substantial income.

The concept of Patreon is noncontroversial in the era of crowdfunding. But that all changes when you mix money and take-no-prisoners politics.

The company found itself in the middle of a hyperpartisan showdown between warring entities in thealt-right and the far left anti-fascist movement known as Antifa. However, it wasPatreons efforts to remain outside the fray of politics that brought the fighting to a head.

The events that followed serve as either a warning to any company that attempts to navigate the murky, shark-filled waters of internet politicsor a model for how to use transparency as a weapon.

On July 20, without explanation, the company banned conservative provocateur Lauren Southern from the platform, cutting off valuable monthly donations from supporters and sparking a fierce backlash from mainly right-wing circles and alternative media outlets.

Hundreds of patrons and several creators abandoned the platform as a result, including scientist and podcaster Sam Harris, one of the most popular creators on the service.

One week later, on July 28, the company abruptly shut down the account offar-left news website Its Going Down (IGD). The outlet, which has become loosely associated with the re-emergent Antifa movement since PresidentDonald Trumps inauguration, had publishedarticlescovering Southerns activities amid its usual content, which is regularly re-posted anonymously from a range of anarchist and anti-capitalist groups.

In a 10-minute long video, published just hours after IGD was notified of its ban, Patreons chief executive defended Southerns account shutdownover which there had already been considerable falloutand explained the companys evaluation method called manifest observable behavior.

The purpose of using manifest observable behavior is to remove personal values and beliefs when the team is reviewing content. Its a review method thats based entirely on observable facts, Jack Conte, Patreons CEO, said.

Southerns ban, Conte said, came through her involvement with right-wing youth organization Gnration Identitaires Defend Europe project. Defend Europe was a crowdfunded mission to intercept boats filled with migrants journeying across the Mediterranean to Europe and to transport migrants back to their home countries in North Africa.

We removed [Southern and Defend Europes] pages because they directly obstructed a search-and-rescue ship in the Mediterranean, and they made a variety of statements and outlined plans to obstruct similar rescue ships in the future, Conte said, reasoning that this could endanger the lives.

Following the ban, Southern denied she was personally involved in the mission. In his response video above, Conte listed the observable facts that his evaluation team had cited. These included using some of Southerns own footage, in which she can be heard directing the Defend Europe boat operator to block the NGO rescue ship, and quoted statements Southern made in which she appears to speak and identify as part of the Defend Europe team.

None of these details were apparent in Southerns original response to Patreon banning her. Conte, in other words, decided to call her out.

You cant use manifest observable behavior to say who someone is you can use manifest observable behavior to say what someone did or didnt do and whether or not those things are or are not against your content policy, Conte concluded, reiterating that it was Southerns observable actions, not her politics, that had landed her in trouble with the platform.

Conte then broke the news that, hours earlier, Patreon had taken the same action against IGD, an organization at the opposite end of the political spectrum from Southernone that has also been actively critical of her work and politics.

Again, Conte pointed to observable and available content as violations of the companys content policy. The evidence against IGD consisted of two articles that were reposted on the leftist website, which unapologetically states its mission is the promotion of both revolutionary theory and action. One article featured an instance of doxxingthe publishing of an individuals personally identifiable informationand another instructed readers on how to sabotage a railway line.

Likely anticipating accusations of cutting off IGD as a way to appear politically neutral, Conte said the website had been flagged for review before Patreon banned Southern.

We dont batch pages together and take down opposing pages at exactly the same time to proactively seem like were being fair, Conte said. He added: When we removed Southerns page, IGDs page had already come to our attention from a number of inbound reports and was already in our queue.

Contes attempts to pull Patreon out of the snake pit of politics failed. After IGDs ban, some on the far left, who cheered at Southerns banning, accused Patreon of pandering to and working with the alt-right.

IGD was banned as an act of appeasement to the alt-right, IGDs editors asserted in a comprehensive post, which points to a sustained and coordinated call by alt-right media outlets and personalities to have its funding cut off. Behind the gimmicks and wonky terms about manifest observable behavior, the entirety of Contes video is an attempt to pacify the trolls.

On the right, disgruntled Southern supporters had taken to calling out Patreon on social media and blogs for what they believed to be a politically biased judgment.

To Southerns supporters, Patreon had stifled free speech in the name of the left; to IGD supporters, the company had sought to placate angry alt-right trolls in banning their outlet.

Although motivated by transparency over its decisions and ethical boundaries, the company had become a villain to both the extreme left and right. In fact, parties on both sides made Patreon a political battleground for its attempts to remain politically neutral.

Both Southern and IGD came to Patreons attention because of a number of inbound reports, according to Conte, which activists on both left and right utilized as a way of attacking one another. While left-wing activists ran a#DefundDefendEuropecampaign targeting Southern, alt-right activists were pushing a #DefundAntifa campaign aimed at IGD.

Self-described Antifa organization Hope Not Hate celebrated the closure of Southerns account as its own victory. In ablog articleonits websitedated July 21, theorganization states that it lobbied forSoutherns account to be removed from the platform.

The banning, it said, came after several weeks of lobbying by Hope Not Hate, which contacted Patreon to raise concerns about far-right activists making money via the service. Hope Not Hate also claimed that the sustained and effective#DefundDefendEuropecampaign resulted in the shutdown of Defend Europes bank and PayPal accounts.

Southerna 22-year-old Canadian who regularlycovers or discusses issues like the nightmare of mass immigration and condemns liberal versions of feminismseems an obvious target for her political opponents on the left.When Conte was asked on a recent episode of theRubin Reportabout Hope Not Hate taking creditfor Southern beingkicked out, however, heexplained that the only lobbying process was via the reporting system.

We dont actively policethecommunity, Conte said. The reason that a page gets taken down is becausewe get reports through an official reporting system If they sent in a report, then we evaluated that report.

Hate Not Hope did not respond to the Daily Dots request to clarify whether it used this reporting process tobring Southern to Patreons attention.

Just as Hate Not Hope was gunning for Southern, however, an undergroundalt-rightcampaign to have IGDs account shutdown began in earnest.

The anti-IGD effort appears to have started back in June, onemonth afterthe outletjoined the platform.

Alt-right activists on social aggregator Voat, a Reddit alternative offering no moderation and unbridled free speech, were called upon to bombard Patreonin a coordinated mass reporting of the IGD profile page.

Amysterious Voat user, a87d7sasa97h9, laid out in detail the plan in Voats Antifa subverse.

Explain that Its Going Down is an Antifa website, the instigating userwrote at the time. Include evidence of Antifas violent crimes to convince Patreon that Antifa is a terrorist organization. If enough people report this page, Patreon may shut it down and cut off some of Antifas funding. Every bit helps.

An email template that would-be participants could simply copy and submit to Patreon pitsIGD content against specific creator obligations stipulated in the Patreon content policy. Their most substantial weapon against IGD wasFox News negative coverage of IGD, which it said calls for violence against Trump supporters.

Fox News has exposed Its Going Down, a87d7sasa97h9 wrote in an update, use this as your primary evidence when reporting the Patreon page.

The account behind the effort, which was used exclusively to push other users to participate, has since fallen inactive. Its impossible to tell who was behind the seemingly random string of letters and numbers, whose mostimpassioned and lengthy postis suitably on the topic of maintaining online anonymity and security.

As the narrative consolidated in the Voat post was parroted byalt-right media outlets, alt-right activists were hard at work stacking up complaints and reports against IGD with Patreon when Contes video went live on July 28.

On discovery of the campaign, the Daily Dot contacted Patreon to request data relating to how and when the company was made aware of the IGD content, but a spokesperson refused to share the information.

The team at Patreon strongly believes in building a platform that prioritizes free speech and celebrates diverse viewpoints, a spokesperson told the Daily Dot. We do not take the possibility of removing creators lightly. We have a thorough content policy and evaluation process, and removing a creator is something we only consider after very careful review.

In the end, Patreon stands by its assessment in both cases, judging that the content of each creator had clearly fallen outside its boundary of mainstream acceptability. So, while its unclear just how much impact the spamming had, the subversive tactics employed by each group to quell the other ended in both being banished back to the fringes.

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How Patreon stepped into a war between Antifa and the alt-right - The Daily Dot