CODY WILSON

Cody Wilson, a former Arkansan who now lives in Texas, is grabbing press attention again — this time for a website, Hatreon, to raise money to support people who’ve been banned from other social media platforms for what was deemed hate speech.

From a mention in the New York Times about the growing might of the alt-right network:’

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In an attempt to build a buffer against censorship, some alt-right activists have begun creating their own services. Cody Wilson, who describes himself as a “techno-anarchist,” recently opened Hatreon, a crowdfunding site that bills itself as a free-speech alternative to Patreon. Gab, a Twitter clone, was started last year after Twitter barred several conservative users. RootBocks, a right-wing Kickstarter knockoff, bills itself as “a crowdfunding site that won’t shut you down because of your beliefs.”

These companies are still tiny by Silicon Valley standards, but their supporters say that one day they could serve as the foundation for a kind of parallel right-wing internet where all speech is allowed, no matter how noxious or incendiary.

We’ve written about Wilson before, when he drew wide attention for using a 3D printer to make guns. David Koon spoke at length with Wilson, who was born in Little Rock, grew up in Cabo and, graduated from UCA.

Newsweek did an article on Hatreon. In it, Wilson says he doesn’t consider himself of the alt-right.

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In an interview with Newsweek, Hatreon’s founder, Cody Wilson, said he is not alt-right but does not necessarily object to anyone calling Hatreon an “alt-right version of Patreon,” adding that the name of his site was tongue-in-cheek. “It’s a delightful pun,” he says. “It’s meant to make fun of Patreon’s investigations of people for hate speech.”

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