Author and clinical psychologist Dr. Jordan B. Peterson confirmed the beta testing of an upcoming free speech-friendly platform he’s created called Thinkspot, which he teased during a podcast last week.
“Per the Joe Rogan podcast this week, I’m backing a new platform called thinkspot, currently in Beta,” he announced via Twitter on Monday. “Get on the waitlist here, exciting announcements coming very soon.”
Thinkspot.com, the author revealed, will be a space where creators can monetize their work and users can engage in thoughtful debate without worrying about the ubiquitous Big Tech censorship plaguing conservative and right-of-center users on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.
Speaking to popular podcast host and comedian Joe Rogan last week, Peterson explained that Thinkspot’s terms of service will uphold free speech principles. “Once you’re on our platform, we wont take you down unless ordered to by a court of law,” he said.
The forthcoming platform, currently in beta testing, will be a subscription service where creators can monetize their work.
“We’re hoping we can really add dialogue to the podcast and YouTuber world,” explained Peterson. “We’re also gonna do the same things with books, so if you buy an e-book on the platform, you’ll be able to annotate publicly. … We can do that with books that are in the public domain, too.”
“We’re hoping that we’ll be able to pull people who are interested in intelligent conversation, specifically, into this platform, maybe start pulling them away from YouTube and some of the less specialized channels — that, plus our anti-censorship stance,” he added.
The platform will start as “invitation-only” during beta testing to work out the kinks, Peterson said, naming “Rubin Report” host David Rubin, Skeptic magazine Editor-in-Chief Michael Shermer, and popular YouTuber Sargon of Akkad (real name: Carl Benjamin) as some of the first confirmed “beta testers.”
In effort to avoid “trolling,” Peterson said the platform will have a 50-word minimum on comments and force people to have to click on comments that receive more downvotes than upvotes (though this provision is still being tested).
“If minimum comment length is 50 words, you’re gonna have to put a little thought into it. Even if you’re being a troll, you’ll be a quasi-witty troll,” said Peterson, adding, “If your ratio of upvotes to downvotes falls below 50/50 then your comments will be hidden, people will still be able to see them, if they click, but you’ll disappear … We don’t know if 50/50 is right.”
Voices outside of the far-left’s acceptable thought have been censored by Big Tech with increasing pace. In the most recent form of uncovered censorship, social media platform Pinterest has reportedly been cracking down on conservatives, Christians, and pro-lifers. Project Veritas’ James O’Keefe showed internal documents provided by a whistleblower “showing what appear to be various means of censoring content, including a ‘porn site block list’ that includes pro-life site LiveAction.org,” The Daily Wire reported this week. “Among the conservatives whose content has been censored by the site is Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro and some content produced by conservative outlets, including PJ Media.”