Kickstarter Censored My Abortion Documentary

Kickstarter's founder has claimed the crowdfunding site is a place where "very diverse ideas" can come to life—but in Phelim McAleer's experience, that's far from true. McAleer, as he relates in the New York Post, wants to make a documentary about abortion doctor and convicted murderer Kermit Gosnell, who "probably killed thousands of infants during his 40-year killing spree," McAleer writes. But when he tried to put the project on Kickstarter, the site refused to post it because it was unhappy with "our (utterly factual) descriptions of 'thousands of babies murdered.'"

It seems the post violated the site's community guidelines—but McAleer looked at other projects posted on the site and found 43 about rape, 28 that had the f-word either in the title or the description, one that had the c-word, and one that even featured a picture of a dead body. After McAleer started making noise about the censorship—and posted his project on rival site Indiegogo—Kickstarter offered to host the project with the understanding that it could be pulled at any time if any updates were deemed unsuitable. "It’s clear that 'community guidelines' are just a cover to allow the Kickstarter insiders to censor and ban opinions they don’t like," McAleer writes. "The first time they actually encountered a truly different viewpoint, their instinct was to censor and threaten." Click for his full column.