Jordan Peterson’s new platform, Thinkspot, billed as a haven for free speech in an internet full of censorship, has entered the beta-testing phase.
MRC TechWatch, a conservative tech project of the nonprofit Media Research Centre, said it has been selected as one of the beta-testers.
It received an email from Thinkspot on Monday, in which the platform was described as “a community built around a curated collection of content” that aims to promote “meaningful and respectful discourse.”
Thinkspot is designed as a censorship-free alternative to mainstream platforms – such as the video-sharing service YouTube, the tweet-posting social media Twitter, and the crowdfunding platform Patreon – and at the same time a combination of all of them.
Peterson announced the creation of Thinkspot in June, half a year after leaving Patreon, which has banned several conservative content creators for violating its content policy.
On Thinkspot, users will be able to view and share video, audio, and eBook content, as well as append their own written or audio comments to a specific part of this content to create a running conversation.
However central the idea of free speech is to the platform, there will be some form of quality control. According to MRC TechWatch, Thinkspot moderators promise not to “modify any content or comments” but will reserve the right to remove statements that are illegal, so that Thinkspot doesn’t become a refuge for extremists.
Thinkspot’s main page is said to feature a menu of intellectual commentators and podcasts to listen to, and articles to read.
Unlike Twitter and YouTube, which tend to snub controversial statements, Thinkspot users will get to decide on who deserves to be heard and who doesn’t. It was previously announced that all comments will have upvotes and downvotes, and if that ratio falls below 50-50, the comment will be hidden but still available on click.
However, the beta-version apparently enables users to add reactions to comments such as “disagree,” “provocative,” “insightful,” “agree,” “like,” and “recommend” – much like with Facebook’s reaction emojis, albeit perhaps in a more insightful way.
