Researchers say the role of crowdfunding platforms in the spread of harmful ideologies is largely overlooked.
When members of Desi Community Against Racism noticed that some Irish influencers who post anti-Indian hate use BuyMeACoffee to raise funds, they decided to report it together, says Shashank Chakerwarti.
They were shaken and angry because of real-life violence against Indian immigrants in Dublin, and worried inflammatory online posts make things worse, says Chakerwarti, a member of the group.
BuyMeACoffee does have policies against hate on its own platform. “We do not tolerate hate in any form. We take this extremely seriously,” says its website.
But hateful or violent speech is often not directly expressed on these apps.
Influencers usually say those things on X or other social media platforms and then post a link to crowdfunding sites in their bios, so people who agree with them ideologically can support them financially, too.
“Crowdfunding platforms are unique in that they allow not simply for the expression of controversial ideas, but their material enactment,” says Matthew Wade, a lecturer in social inquiry at La Trobe University in Australia, who co-wrote an academic paper on the topic in 2023.
Chakerwarti says he thought the fact that the founders of BuyMeACoffee had an Indian background might make the company consider their reports with sympathy.
But reporting profiles of the likes of Mick O’Keeffe again and again didn’t go anywhere much, says Chakerwarti.
“Desi Community Against Racism has more than 1,000 people in it. We have all collectively reported at least 100 times to BuyMeACoffee,” he said, recently.
In December 2024, an article in the Times of India ran with the irony of pushing harmful tropes about Indian immigrants, then asking for donations on an app that Indian tech entrepreneurs had created.
Queries sent in August, and followed up on last week, to the co-founders of BuyMeACoffee, brothers Jijo and Joseph Sunny, including one asking why the company had ignored the reports, went unanswered. As did a DM to the company’s X account.
Aside from those who’ve at times focused their ire on Indians in particular, some influencers who are just generally anti-immigrant, and who have ended up in court and been convicted on related charges, remain on BuyMeACoffee too. People like Derek Blighe and Paul Nolan.
Researchers say the role of crowdfunders like BuyMeACoffee in the spread of harmful ideologies is largely overlooked.
That’s not just because harmful speech isn’t directly voiced on these apps, they say, but also because transferring money on “peer-to-peer fundraising platforms” is an ungoverned orbit, and so is the notion of sponsoring hate.
On Telegram this week, Justin Barrett, the leader of Clann Éireann, an Irish neo-nazi group, shared a direct link from the online payment service Stripe, asking for €20 a year in membership fee and a donation link to the conservative American crowdfunding site GiveSendGo, which has raised over €4,000 in a couple of weeks.
A spokesperson for the Central Bank of Ireland said it can’t discuss any matters it may have raised with banks about things like sponsoring hate or disinformation on crowdfunding and similar sites. “We are subject to supervisory confidentiality obligations,” they said.
The recent laidback approaches to content moderation and policy enforcement by mainstream social-media sites is another factor that puts crowdfunders in a tricky spot, making them nervous to take action, says Wade, of La Trobe University.
If a crowdfunder began suspending accounts of creators whose harmful content is widely available elsewhere, this “may be perceived as unjustly censorious” and self-sabotaging in a commercial sense, he says.
“I am sympathetic to this problem,” he said.
But in a way, Wade says, crowdfunders heighten the weight of responsibility on social media platforms to be more proactive in enforcing moderation policies.
Meanwhile, BuyMeACoffee has suspended accounts of sex workers, while leaving O’Keeffe, Nolan and others alone.
Gemma Rose, a sex worker and sex workers’ rights activist in the United Kingdom, said in an email last week that her account had been suspended in May without much notice.
“The only answer to why was ‘due to concerns regarding adult content’”, she said.
Some crowdfunders have emerged “with a specific religious or political mission”, says Stephanie Alice Baker, deputy head of the Department of Sociology and Criminology at City St George’s University of London, who co-wrote the crowdfunding academic paper.
But her co-author, Wade, says that besides GiveSendGo – which has been defiant in allowing neo-nazi groups to raise funds on its website– most “perhaps naively” try to be “apolitical”, and that plays a role in why they leave hate preachers alone.
They’re nervous about losing a chunk of users who can just turn to a competitor, trapped within their own claims of unbiasedness and fairness, Wade says.
“As many researchers have long observed, there is no such thing as a neutral platform,” he says.
But “to permit dangerous causes and figures under the exculpatory logic of fair-minded neutrality is an excuse that is going to wear increasingly thin if they become willing intermediaries in significant societal harms”, he said.
BuyMeACoffee hosts over one million content creators and “millions of their fans”, according to its website. It charges a 5 percent transaction fee on every donation, it says.
“There are many creators earning a six-figure income on Buy Me a Coffee. We will grow with you,” its website says.
The BuyMeACoffee account of Nolan, the anti-immigrant convicted offender, says it’s to cover “court and legal fees”.
“If you value and appreciate my work and research, here is where you can donate to help the running costs to continue to do so and I thank you so so much!” it says.
He has 47 prior convictions, according to RTÉ. His recent jail term is for identifying some people seeking asylum, without their consent, which is illegal.
Judge John Hughes said his actions were “a disgraceful, glorious display of rudeness”, according to RTÉ.
The judge said this was the first prosecution under the law that protects the rights of asylum seekers to privacy. Though last October, Gardaí claimed there had been a handful since 2019.
Nolan’s back posting inflammatory divisive stuff on X – where people can also make money through their posts – and collecting donations on BuyMeACoffee as his appeal trudges through the court.
On Monday, he posted a video of himself harassing former Fine Gael Taoiseach Leo Varadkar on Parnell Street, calling him a “traitor” over and over.
“Never let these traitorous animals walk the streets in peace leo varadkar your days are numbered,” he captioned the video.
On Tuesday, a label pasted on the posted video by X said it had limited visibility because it might be violating its policies against “Violent Speech”.
Mick O’Keeffe, another BuyMeACoffee user, has posted about and denigrated Indian immigrants over and over on X, sometimes in deeply dehumanising language.
Chakerwarti, the member of Desi Community Against Racism, says the irony of using BuyMeACoffee when they hate Indian people so much bothers him.
“They’re targeting Indians, but they’re using a migrant platform,” he said.
Suryapratim Roy, assistant professor of law at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), points to the boundless global avenues of support these tools conjure up with little scrutiny.
“Irish influencers gain power through transnational support,” he said.
A donor’s comment on Blighe’s BuyMeACoffee says: “From this Irish abroad in America I salute you … Our blood is the indigenous blood of that land … Ireland belongs to the IRISH! You have global support.”
Roy says he sees a solution in establishing “digital constitutionalism”.
The idea that private agents must “protect rights in the same way a public authority would because they’re performing a similar function”, says Roy.
Alongside “social networks, content-sharing platforms, app stores, and online travel and accommodation platforms”, the EU’s current Digital Services Act (DSA) – which aims to regulate life online – covers “marketplaces” too.
But it’s unclear if donation sites count as such.
Aidan O’Brien, policy analyst and researcher at European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) Ireland, says he hopes to see the DSA evolve and expand to include them.
“There’s a need to bring crowdfunders integrated into this,” he said.
Wade, the social inquiry lecturer in Australia, says there is a legislative gap there and
ignoring real-life consequences of sponsoring hate are dangerous.
But “my preference is for platforms to be more proactive on these matters, rather than hoping that we can regulate our way out of these political and ethical quagmires”, he said.
Says Baker, at City St George’s, University of London: “For years, digital platforms have promised to self-regulate to avoid government oversight. Rarely is this successful."
“How this has been managed is an absolute joke,” said a frustrated Lord Mayor Ray McAdam.
But so far this year, Dublin City Council has only issued two fines for dog fouling, according to a council spokesperson.
But why are so many of them in the south-east area of Pembroke? asked one councillor.
“We are approaching the point (if we’re not already there) where we can justifiably claim that competition has failed,” says Labour energy spokesperson Ciarán Ahern.
