The producers of the conspiratorial film Hold Up have raised more than 100,000 euros for their new project on the crowdfunding platform. Everything suggests that Tipeee should once again help them finance themselves.
111,242 euros: this is the amount collected in a few months by the Citizen Light project on Tipeee, the French collaborative funding platform. The funding period ended on September 30, and it was a success that exceeded the basic objective, set at 100,000 euros. More than 2,700 people made a donation.
Citizen Light, which is presented as a press agency, is not a project like the others: it was launched by Armel Joubert des Ouches, a former TF1 journalist who has since made a passage through the far-right site Reinformation .tv, and Pierre Barnérias, known for having directed the conspiratorial film on covid Hold Up.
Just watch the video presentation of the project on its Tipeee page to understand the themes addressed by Citizen Light : covid and vaccines.
What is the Citizen Light project?
On Twitter, the two founders of the project, Pierre Barnérias and Armel Joubert des Ouches, were already congratulating themselves on September 18 for having achieved their goal. They have since further increased their earnings, which will allow them to bring the project to life. for at least 6 months, to hire 3 journalists and to produce articles and videos as explained on their Tipeee page.
The Citizen Light project would aim “ to provide accurate information “, and “ to avoid censorship ”, according to its site. More specifically, Citizen Light will offer its contributors to become ” citizen reporters “: the editorial staff will base themselves on information sent by readers, and will check them before publishing them.
There are already reports published on the site, which set the tone for the next articles to come: a video tribute to Luc Montagnier, a very controversial anti-vaccine activist; and a report on recent food shortages, which the director says are “ the new weapon of the globalists “.
Citizen Light also allows viewing on its website hold-on and hold-outthe two sequences of Hold Upwho continue to speak of a “ skillfully orchestrated pandemic” and to deny the effectiveness of vaccines in the fight against Covid.
Contacted and relaunched several times, the Tipeee company never responded to our emails, nor to our questions concerning the payment of the money. Pierre Barnérias, whom we also contacted by telephone, did not wish to answer our questions. ” I don’t talk to journalists anymore “, he told us. “ Today, there are no more journalists anyway. »
Will Tipeee fund anti-vaccine remarks again?
Everything suggests that the future content of Citizen Light would resemble those already produced, and would take up conspiracy theories on the vaccine and the covid pandemic. It would also seem that Tipeee is preparing, again, to donate money to a conspiracy project.
The company has never made a statement that might suggest otherwise, nor posted a warning message on Citizen Light’s page — which it has done in the past. According to Tipeee’s terms of use, the creators ” Tips are paid to the creator 14 days after the collection end date [du projet]. The fundraising campaign having ended on September 30, the producers should receive the money at the end of October.
How Tipeee helped Hold Up finance itself in 2020
In 2020, when the release of Hold Up, the crowdfunding platforms that allowed the film to exist found themselves in serious trouble. Ulule, thanks to whom Hold Up had received more than 182,000 euros, had chosen to donate the commission received to “ an association for the defense of information “. On Tipeee, where Hold Up had collected 150,000 euros, the discourse had been different: for a time, the platform was not sure of donating the money collected.
Shortly after the film’s release, Tipeee announced that it was expecting feedback from the ” government ” and ” several competent bodies to find out what to do. ” Depending on this feedback, we could close the page and refund contributions. “, had explained the platform, which had even posted a warning message on the project page.
Finally, Tipeee had indeed donated the funds to Hold Upas revealed by Numerama – a decision that the founder of the platform ” assumed “, but which caused controversy. He has since been hired by TF1 to be the director of Star Academy, the cult reality TV show that the channel has decided to revive this fall 2022.