Wemakeit.ch stops No-Billag crowdfunding after three days
The Wemakeit campaign, with which the No Billag initiators wanted to realize "the largest political crowdfunding campaign in Swiss history," has been stopped.
The platform Wemakeit.ch terminates the campaign after only three days and with immediate effect. In a statement distributed via social media, the founders write that they consider "the extreme thrust of the initiative to be dangerous in terms of state policy" and will therefore "under no circumstances offer it a platform.
Furthermore, media and culture professionals and the entire Wemakeit community are called upon to think about the consequences of an acceptance: "This would prohibit the state from any media engagement; we consider this devastating for the cohesion of our country and for regional media diversity".
The question naturally arises as to why Wemakeit, with such a clear stance, launched the campaign at all and did not stop it right at the beginning. As a result of an "extremely short submission deadline", it was unfortunately not possible to check the campaign in time, Wemakeit apologizes. And partner Johannes Gees clarifies to 20 minutes: "The person who set up the campaign on Friday did not realize the explosive nature of the issue." When the management learned about the No Billag crowdfunding, the decision was made to stop the campaign.
The initiators are not very happy about this procedure. Olivier Kessler speaks of an "act of arbitrariness" and an "affront". He criticizes that a Swiss company would have a better understanding of how direct democracy works. They are currently looking for a technical alternative for crowdfunding and in the meantime accept donations via PayPal and bank transfer. (hae)
