Vaccine skeptics who have been demonetized on YouTube are now raising money on crowdfunding platforms, including the Christian-oriented GiveSendGo and GoFundMe
Context & Ripple Effects
This story sits at the end of a multi-year squeeze. GoFundMe declared anti-vaccine campaigns a Terms of Service violation back in March 2019, and Indiegogo followed weeks later with a blanket ban on fundraisers making unbacked health claims. On the video side, The Verge had already argued in mid-2019 that YouTube's demonetization punishes without removing — leaving big creators alive but cutting their ad income.
What Slate reports now is where those two pressure campaigns converged: creators pushed off ad revenue and out of mainstream crowdfunding have found financing on GiveSendGo, a Christian-oriented platform built outside that enforcement perimeter — echoing how, per CNET's 2017 reporting, fringe movements previously responded to being deplatformed by building their own financing rails.
First-order effects
- Demonetized vaccine-skeptic YouTubers replace lost ad income with direct audience donations routed through GiveSendGo and GoFundMe, decoupling their funding from YouTube's policies.
Second-order effects
- GoFundMe's continued presence in this mix sits awkwardly against its 2019 misinformation ban, creating enforcement pressure either to remove these campaigns or to explain why the rule isn't holding; mainstream platforms' bans effectively function as marketing for ideologically aligned alternatives like GiveSendGo.
Third-order effects
- The pattern CNET documented among hate groups generalizes: each mainstream-platform crackdown splits crowdfunding further between regulated mass-market services and niche, values-aligned financiers beyond their reach — and demonetization accelerates a shift toward creator-controlled revenue streams no video platform can switch off.
The trend: Platform moderation crackdowns on misinformation are fragmenting online fundraising, pushing deplatformed creators toward ideologically aligned payment rails that operate outside mainstream enforcement.