Action against Eventbrite - The Story so Far

A company can operate in the UK, make money off those who live here and yet duck our laws in order to discriminate. How can this be right?

Quick recap - I organised a book launch for 2nd December 2022 with my co-editor Al Peters of ‘Transpositions: a personal journey into gender criticism’. We invited men and women to send us their stories about how they came to join the debate about sex versus gender.

I set up a page with Eventbrite UK to sell tickets for the event – we needed to raise some money to pay for the room hire and catering. Eventbrite pulled the event on 27th October citing violation of its policy on Hateful, Dangerous, or Violent Content and Events. They ignored all my emails and I suspect I would have got no reply at all had not the UK media shown some interest and published articles about what had happened. ‘Legal counsel’ met with me over Zoom on 3rd November, reviewed my event and concluded that it remained hateful. A freedom of information request discovered some interesting internal communications, conceding that ‘hate’ probably wouldn’t fly here but luckily for them, Eventbrite had a very wide definition of ‘hate’ which included disparagement, and that probably would.

I thought and still think that this is wrong. It is discriminatory against my protected belief, that sex is real and it matters. Nothing about this is ‘hateful’. Further, it raises really significant issues of public interest. Platforms such as this claim to be operating as a ‘public good’ – Eventbrite relied on breach of its ‘community standards’ to remove my event. However, Eventbrite creates its own guidelines, with no public consultation or public scrutiny. The boundaries between private interests and efforts to impose an organisation’s own moral code on the wider public is becoming blurred. This has serious implications for the health of our democracy.

I set up a crowdfunder which to date has raised £19,878. I am very grateful to everyone who has donated and I think its very important to be transparent about what your money has been used to do, and where this case is going. So I propose to set it out in this post.

Legal framework

I will make it clear at the outset that Eventbrite could be any one of the US centric organisations that operate in the UK but which attempt to impose their own restrictions on our freedom of speech and discrimination law. So I will refer from no on to Any International Discriminator [AID].

The immediate problem here is jurisdiction and the terms and conditions. I missed the opt out for arbitration by a couple of days. On 26th January 2023 my solicitors sent a letter before action, relying on unfair contract terms and section 29 of the Equality Act 2010 which states that a “service-provider” must not discriminate against a person requiring the service by not providing that person with the service, by termination the provision of the service or by subjecting B to any other detriment.

The AID replied to say that it wasn’t a service provider and I wasn’t a consumer, therefore the Equality Act couldn’t apply. In any event I could not now opt out of arbitration as I first signed up to the AID in April 2011 which was my ‘first use of services’ . Therefore I must issue proceedings in San Francisco.

I had until 26th April 2023 to issue a claim in discrimination under the Equality Act. A further four months is allowed to serve the claim form on the respondent which has not yet been done. The sealed claim form has not yet been returned and I am considering the risk of costs if the AID fights the jurisdiction issue, which I assume it will and hard.

So far 13,498.80 of the money raised has been spent - on conference with counsel, drafting the letter before action, various emails and issuing the claim form. I do not want to see this go to waste. Part of the rationale for this action was not merely to take it to court and win (although that would be lovely) but to encourage conversation about what is happening here. If it is the reality that an AID can operate in this country, make a profit off its citizens, but dodge its laws and smear those with a protected belief as ‘hateful’, then we all need to know and understand the implications of this.

But equally I have to be realistic about the risks and benefits. If I issue in an English court and lose on jurisdiction, then the costs bill could be much higher than I can afford and much higher than I have any right to ask other people to pay via crowdfunding.

Next Steps

But I am not ready to throw the towel in just yet. There is a second book launch of ‘Transpositions’ in Manchester on July 22nd, 7pm. We will announce the venue and speakers nearer the time. I will set up an Eventbrite page to sell tickets and this time immediately opt out of their arbitration clause. Let’s see what happens. I assume they will pull the event; I also risk being banned from the platform itself as this will be on their analysis, a repeat ‘violation’ of their terms and conditions.

I accept that what happened to me, on a superficial level doesn’t look that serious at all - the book launch will go ahead, there are other providers I can use to sell tickets. But I think that is a short sighted and dangerous approach. The wider problem is much more serious. If an AID can operate in a country without needing to follow or respect its laws and deny services to those it unfairly deems ‘hateful’, then we all need to know, particularly if there are no obvious competitors to that AID or if it operates in provision of financial services.