The remarks made by the founders of Tipeee in the Complément d’Enquête program on France TV were the last straw for some creators present on the crowdfunding platform. Facing the camera, co-founder Michael Goldman declares: “I assume everything on this site, from the most anti-Semitic to the least anti-Semitic, and from the most conspiratorial to the least conspiratorial. If a small part of the creators shocked by the declaration immediately closed their account and thus put a cross, at least temporarily, on regular income, others preferred a softer method of opposition.

On their Tipeee page, they openly invite their supporters to avoid Tipeee and to donate to uTip, its main French competitor. This is the case for example of StupidEconomics, displayed at more than 1600 euros collected per month on the platform. Valentin Levetti, one of the two co-founders of the channel, told us on Friday that he could not abruptly cut ties with Tipeee, because the loss of income would have the consequence of stopping a project led by an employee. So he is content for the moment to post a message to his community: “Hey! Donate on uTip Instead: Tipeee refuses to remove creator pages that promote racism, anti-Semitism, hatred and violence and refuses to comply with the law against hateful content and disinformation . As journalists and creators, we cannot tolerate this. »

Mr. Phi, for his part, receives monthly income estimated at more than 2,200 euros. On his page, he writes: “If you hesitate, donate to uTip instead”, while recalling that “you can of course continue to donate to Tipeee. He recalls in detail the facts and positions he criticizes the platform. "Participating in the financing of discourse that clearly stirs up hatred and misinformation while remaining at the limit of legality is to set the ethical bar as low as legally possible", he judges. . Cat Skeptic, a creator who receives almost 1,000 euros in income on Tipeee, copied the exhaustive message from his counterpart on his page, and several other videographers refer to it. All the creators mentioned have as their main activity the production of videos on YouTube, where they each have between 150,000 and 250,000 subscribers, and they are gradually joined by others in their protest. For the moment, Tipeee allows this highlighting of its competitor to be done on its own platform.

"It is not possible to do less ethically"

Reached by Numerama on the telephone, Mr. Phi develops his bias: "We have known for a long time that there are problems with Tipeee. In the description of my videos, I already suggested to my subscribers to favor uTip over Tipeee since the Hold Up affair. The problem is that the donations that pass through the platform account for more than 50% of its regular income, its “safety cushion”. As a result, Mr. Phi concedes that he simply could not financially afford to close his account, and moreover, he has no intention of doing so: "I have more than 1,000 regular supporters on Tipeee, I know that by radically changing the platform, I would lose a significant part of it. »

In a delicate position like most creators, the videographer reminds us that he does not necessarily need to close his account for a change to take place: "It is also up to the donors to make their choice, if they want to use a more ethical platform. I brief them on the details of the situation, which many were unaware of, but it is up to them. »

Mr. Phi presents uTip as a “more ethical Tipeee”, without praising it. "It's simple, for uTip, it's not possible to do less ethically than Tipeee", he asserts, before adding, "on these platforms, there will always be borderline cases, since there will always be an ethical line. On the other hand, we can ask that this line be at least a little higher. »

Léo Grasset from the DirtyBiology channel, one of the biggest creators of Tipeee (with more than 1500 supporters) is one of the videographers who refer to Mr. Phi's text on his Twitter account. He calls on his supporters to favor uTip, but does not display it on his Tipeee account. "It's very risky (and hard) to move a support community from one platform to another (...), it's not done like that. Tipeee was there first so out of caution many people avoid moving there, ”he develops in response to his tweet.

"There is never a miraculous solution"

To understand in part the hesitation of some to leave the platform despite their ethical opposition to the recent positions taken by the founders of Tipeee, it suffices to consider the reverse case. ExServ, creator specializing in video games, decided on the spot. Saturday, September 4 in the morning, as soon as he learned about the context around the words of the founders of Tipeee, he closed his account and sent an explanatory message to his supporters via the platform. "In my content and on a daily basis, I try to highlight values ​​and I do not find myself in the comments made by the leaders of Tipeee", he justifies. With more than 1,300 euros collected per month, it is, according to our observations, the largest account to have closed to date. “Tipeee represents a little over 40% of my income”, confides the videographer to Numerama. He now expects to have to dig into his savings, provided for this kind of hazard, for a few months, the time that his more than 200 supporters transfer their donations to the Patreon account he opened in stride.

“In the 11 years that I have been doing this job, I have learned not to put my eggs in one basket. Between YouTube, which changes its algorithm several times and can cause advertising revenues to drop from one day to the next, and Twitch, which lowers the price of subscriptions, we get used to it, ”he grumbles.

For creators, addiction to platforms is a latent problem, and parting with one can mean calling into question their entire activity. “There is never a miraculous solution. I am on YouTube and yet it is the paradise of the extreme right. In fact, I can't know my absolute tolerance limit every time. But in the case of Tipeee I can see it concretely, and so I decided that I do not want to be associated with these people, ”he elaborates.

ExServ signed up for the crowdfunding platform in 2019: “At the time, I was really in trouble. I chose Tipeee because they were French, it was in euros, and therefore there was no form to fill out like on American platforms. uTip then only offered to fund by watching ads, and my audience has already had enough of that on YouTube. Since then, uTip has evolved into a model very close to Tipeee, and communicates on the recent controversial statements of its competitor to present itself as the number 1 alternative. But in the hope of not repeating the same scenario, ExServ preferred turn to Patreon: “They are more square and procedural: their terms of use are much more specific than Tipeee and uTip, especially on fake news. »

Far from blaming creators who have taken a position different from its own, ExServ is aware of its advantage: "If I were a big chain with employees and structural costs, maybe I would ask myself more questions. But within the framework of my activity, I have, roughly, only an internet connection to pay. »

He concludes: “3 or 4 years ago, I might not have reacted like that. But right now, with the rise of hate speech and conspiracies, I don't think that, as a creator, I can claim to be apolitical and ignore what is tolerated on the platforms. »

Article updated on September 4 at 3:45 p.m. with quotes from Mr. Phi.