Patreon will continue to serve customers in Russia. The head of the company voiced his position

Despite US sanctions, Jack Conte, CEO of the American Patreon platform, decided to continue the company's work in Russia, allowing people to earn money on the service. This is reported by Business Insider.

Conte said he didn't want to punish users for a political decision they didn't have the right to make.

"I don't think individual users should pay for the misdeeds of their authoritarian leader. I don't want to pass it on to creative people. They may disagree with the war, and I don't want to punish them for their geographical location," Conte said.

Conte acknowledged that the decision may be more symbolic than practical, because most US banks, as well as financial services companies such as Visa and Mastercard, no longer provide services in Russia, so it is likely that many users of the platform were affected.

At the same time, the CEO of Patreon spoke out against Russian President Vladimir Putin and said that he does not feel sympathy for him.

According to Conte, if his company could punish Putin, it would do so.

At the same time, he claims that his decision to continue working in Russia did not cause controversy within Patreon, which, according to him, has a deep-rooted culture of prioritizing users.

In addition, as Conte noted, the platform has done everything possible to support Ukraine, refusing to pay for the services of users in the country, of which there are thousands.

Earlier, Patreon deleted the page of the charity foundation "come back alive", along with which it is not known where more than 2 250 thousand went/blocked.

Recall that during Russia's war in Ukraine, technology companies played a key role in supporting US government sanctions. Apple, Google and Slack have disabled services for Russian users in an attempt to isolate the country.

Facebook Instagrammed services such as Facebook and Instagram, claiming that social media platforms spread misinformation.