My letter to Vimeo’s Parent Company

Hello, I was using vimeo for about six years. I sold videos through  their video on demand service. My name is Ryan Dawson and I have been a  victim of censorship and theft.

On  October 31 of 2018 all of my videos were removed and my account was  banned. All the sales that I had made for September as well as 30 days  worth of sales in October were withheld. My customers were told that  they could not be refunded if they did not purchase a product in the  last 30 days. However they purchased products with agreement that they  could view them at anytime.

The first reason I was  given for the overnight banning, with no due process or appeals, was the  generic accusation that I had broken a guideline. I had to fight tooth  and nail to get a response from Vimeo as to what guideline this was  supposed to be and what video or video had broken the rule.

The  reply I finally got was an accusation pointing to a guideline about  promoting violence defaming or harassment. None of my videos do any of  those things. I got Vimeo Trust and Safety to admit this point by point  in writing.

The new accusation was that  while I did not break any of the written guidelines, they simply felt  that my over all criticism of Israel was done with “a mean spirited  vibe” which by the way is not in the guidelines nor does this make any  sense. I was told that criticizing Israel crosses the line form  geopolitics to making inflammatory statements about the Jewish people.  This of course is an interpretation. For I have never made any  inflammatory statements about the Jewish People. In fact I have been  very clear in pointing out that Israel is a Country not an ethnic group  and that Zionism is a political ideology not a race. I had several  videos titled that in fact which were on Vimeo and were sent to Vimeo  again. This was ignored. The exact same videos are still on YouTube.

Completely  irrelevant to this, was a statement in an email, from someone named  Sean M at Vimeo where he expresses that they didn’t like the nasty mail  received that he assumes came from my fans about Vimeo deleting my account and the movies they had purchased.

I  have no control over what customers are going to say to Vimeo. There  will always be civil and uncivil emails when you anger tens of thousands  of people. It is the internet. Many of them I believe do not even know  me and are simply angry about the erosion of free speech in general.

I  do not wish to use Vimeo any longer after their treatment of me. I do  want the revenue I am owed and the ability to download my own work. The  best they offered on allowing me to download my own videos which  numbered 591 was to send me a broken cvs. And when I complained about  that they reduced the time form 7 days to 24hrs and did not send a fixed  csv.

I have not done this company any harm and I was  not doing what I was accused of either. I know that people were murdered  in PA at a synagogue shortly before my account was erased. I condemned  that shooting as I do all shootings. But that has zero relationship to  the Israeli state which was also engaged in shooting people in Gaza  including several children at the same period of time.   It is Vimeo not  me who is equating Israel to “the Jews”

My  Co-host is Jewish, I work with Jews, I defend Jews from actual  antisemitism all the time. None of this or these videos seemed to  matter. Vimeo is simply removing political speech that it doesn’t like.

I  want to be paid my ~$5k in sales so that I do not have to sue for $50k.  This has disrupted my children’s’ Christmas and forced me to work  overtime re-uploading over 590 videos worth of content and changing all  the links that went to Vimeo to a new platform. I cannot allow downloads  because of piracy and i cannot possibly contact every person who bought  a movie in the past half decade with some kind of code to watch it on a  new platform. 

I have been back and forth  with Vimeo Trust and Safety as have many of my upset customers, all  before contacting IAC. And this is Never going to go away. I have  written statements admitting that I was not in violation of the  subjective guidelines. I have written statements showing that it was  simply the opinion of an employee about political content that had my  income removed and two months of my profits confiscated. I would rather  correct this matter without going to court, but I will do whatever is  necessary. This has caused great stress for my family and myself. I want  to know several things.

What is the  normal appeal process at Vimeo. Why did they wait until the day before  payout to cancel my account. (And I am not the only who this has  happened to). Why after being on for 6 years did they suddenly decide  the content was bad and so they just removed all of it without even  contacting me. What justification in the world is this after years of  pay out to not pay me for my final months with the company when those  products had already been sold.

I want my  final payout for September 2018 and October 2018. I have attached a  letter below. note that these were not Vimeo’s rules and that I am not  violating them anyway. No where is it written that one can not report on  atrocities with “an overall mean spirited vibe” and again I am not  reporting on individuals or groups of people, I am reporting on the  actions of states and governments. I have not made ayny antisemitic  statements either. They claim that it is “underlying” which means THEY  think that Israel = the Jews. I have never said that and I have gone out  of my way to state the opposite, Jews are a ethnic/religious group and  Israel is a country. Just as Asians are a racial/ethnic group and North  Korea is a state.

I would like my payouts  to be made for September and October of 2018. And I would like Vimeo to  reconsider who it hires to police content on it platform based on a  political bias using racism as a canard.

Sincerely, Ry Dawson