These Canadians are helping white supremacists profit from hateful livestreams

< warm>WARNING: The followers story contains maturate guinea pig affair, including racist and hateful imagery.

It boasts that it’s a "safe haven for monetization." 

But a quick scroll through the website created by three tech-savvy Canadians reveals not everyone is welcome on the platform.

An investigation by the fifth estate has found the website known as Entropy, which launched in Calgary, is in fact a safe haven for white supremacists and other extremists seeking to monetize the hateful content they livestream to online audiences.

Within two years after it launched in 2019, Entropy processed more than $3 million in transactions and experts say it has since grown to become an essential service for dozens of neo-Nazis and white supremacists.

Many creators have found a home on the Canadian platform after being kicked off and blocked from making money on mainstream platforms such as YouTube for posting antisemitic and racist content that violates the streaming giant’s terms of service. 

Jeff Tischauser, an analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center, a U.S-based civil rights non-profit organization, is responsible for monitoring 160 of the hundreds of hate groups across the U.S. And says about half of them use Entropy to fundraise and solicit donations.

"They're making money off of intimidating people. They're making money off trying to provoke and harass people," said Tischauser. "They've travelled abroad to bring their hatred to Holocaust sites. They're able to do that because of the money that they are making off Entropy."

Journalists at the fifth estate have discovered one of the groups he monitors, the Goyim Defense League, was able to collect online donations during the group’s 2024 visit to Nashville, Tenn., because of Entropy. During that visit, a member of the group assaulted a Jewish man and a biracial man.

Six months later, one of GDL’s flyers was found inside the manifesto of a school shooter who was radicalized online before committing a deadly attack. 

More than a year after those incidents, members of GDL continue to make money from their hateful content through Entropy. 

The fifth estate has also learned that the three Canadians behind Entropy — Emmanuel and Rachel Constantinidis and David Bell — have been in Tbilisi, Georgia, since 2022, while maintaining a registered corporation in Alberta.

Dozens of Entropy users feature swastikas and other Nazi symbology in their usernames and profile pictures, including the numbers 88, a white supremacist numerical code for Heil Hitler, and 14, a reference to a white supremacist slogan known as the "14 Words."

Many of those livestreams are overrun with offensive and derogatory comments ranging from misogynistic slurs to uncensored use of the N-word.

The fifth estate has seen commenters routinely pay $5 to $50 US to post remarks riddled with racist slurs.

How white supremacists make money on Entropy

Tischauser said funds GDL collected via Entropy make it possible for members of the group to travel across the U.S.

"It does not take too much money to rent a house and then rent a van, then go to Nashville and harass and intimidate people," said Tischauser. "Entropy provides the money that they need."

GDL’s leader, Jon Minadeo, livestreams several times a week, each time asking viewers to contribute to his $488 US donation goal — the amount a reference to Nazi symbology. Tischauser said the neo-Nazi often surpasses that goal to reach more than $1,000 US in donations for a livestream.

It was July 2024 when the Goyim Defense League arrived in Nashville to carry out an antisemitic harassment campaign starting on Broadway Street, one of the main tourist attractions downtown and home to historic country music venues.

For several days, more than a dozen members of the group paraded through town with flags with swastikas and flyers, shouting racist and antisemitic slurs and slogans.

One of GDL’s members, Ryan McCann of Ontario, was later convicted of assault and civil rights intimidation in two separate attacks on a biracial bar employee and a Jewish man.

Tischauser’s organization, the Southern Poverty Law Center, has filed a lawsuit against GDL members on behalf of the bar employee seeking compensation and taking aim at how the group monetizes its activities, referring to the group as a "hate-for-profit enterprise."

Throughout their visit to Nashville, GDL members filmed and livestreamed the harassment and assaults to online audiences, urging viewers to donate money through Entropy to support their activities.

Tennessee Democratic state Rep. Justin Jones says livestreaming the hate campaign was strategic. 

"They wanted an instigation," said Jones. "They're trying to incite terror and fear and they're also trying to recruit and profit."

The fifth estate has looked at video footage saved from the GDL livestream from Broadway. Throughout the stream, GIFs can be seen appearing in the left-hand corner of the video indicating a viewer has donated to GDL’s cause.

Phil Williams, a senior investigative journalist at Nashville’s NewsChannel 5, was watching the GDL livestreams when leader Minadeo celebrated that the group had 1,500 viewers.

"It's not an insignificant number of people who are engaging with his content and also providing finances for his operations," said Williams. "It's business for them. It's a way for them to make money in addition to potentially recruiting followers."

Neo-Nazi hate groups livestreamed 2024 visit to Nashville

The idea for the Entropy website started in Alberta, with three graduates from the University of Calgary. 

In 2018, recently married couple Emmanuel and Rachel Constantinidis and their friend, David Bell, launched a tech startup called Chthonic Software. The following year, the company announced its main product was going live: a streaming website called Entropy that was marketed as a "censorship-free space" and "safe haven for monetization." 

In a 2019 "getting started" video, the company described Entropy as a place where "streamers enhance interaction, avoid censorship, cut payment processing fees in half and give viewers a more memorable experience." 

In a podcast interview that same year, Rachel Constantinidis said "in a lot of ways, the very existence of our platform is because YouTube and Twitch and other such platforms have made the mistake of censoring their users."

"We're under the full belief that whether your idea is good or bad, you deserve a platform to share that idea, and I think that if you have a bad idea, it's all the better that people know about it," Bell said in the same interview with a small Alberta-based podcaster.

Livestreams on Entropy feature viewpoints of white supremacists and their supporters. The website also accepts donations for recognizable figures like far-right American political commentator Nick Fuentes, British neo-Nazi Mark Collett and Canadian conspiracy theorist Jeremy MacKenzie, who founded the white nationalist group Second Sons and anti-government group Diagolon.

Entropy also promises users can keep a greater share of their donations because the company keeps only 15 per cent. YouTube, for example, takes up to 30 per cent of donations.

Tischauser said hate groups flock to Entropy "because these groups have been kicked off of mainstream platforms, because they can't use other applications, because these applications say they have violated the terms of service by the activity that they're engaged in."

Many online video platforms like YouTube, Twitch and Vimeo specifically prohibit hateful speech in their terms of service, while Entropy’s terms of service do not.

In an email to the fifth estate, a spokesperson for YouTube said it had terminated more than 32,000 channels and removed 151,000 videos for violating its hate speech policy in the last three months of 2025 alone. 

The spokesperson also confirmed that channels associated with the Goyim Defense League and Minadeo have been terminated.

By 2021, Entropy founders claimed on their LinkedIn profiles to have processed $3 million in transactions. But despite Entropy’s initial financial growth, the company was concerned about its future in Canada. 

"My work is political and if you know anything about Canada and politics right now [...] I didn't think it was the safest place to be running when my living was based off of donations to right-wing causes," Emmanuel Constantinidis said in a 2024 interview on a niche podcast. "So that certainly helped us get out the door."

The trio left Canada to travel the world. The fifth estate tracked social media posts and travel vlogs documenting their journey to Turkey and then on to Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, in 2022. 

The fifth estate obtained Georgian corporate records that show the three Canadians have registered at least four companies in the country, including one with the same name as their original Alberta business — Chthonic Software. Emmanuel Constantinidis is the sole shareholder for Chthonic Software in Georgia. 

The fifth estate travelled to Tbilisi to speak with the founders, but when journalists arrived at the Constantinidis home, they learned the couple had recently packed up their belongings and moved out with their children. 

The fifth estate sent emails to Rachel and Emmanuel Constantinidis and David Bell detailing the findings of its investigation. None of them responded to questions about their work.

When reached by phone, Bell told fifth estate cohost Ioanna Roumeliotis: "I think it's [the Constantinidis’s] policy that they don't speak to journalists, but you can try reaching out to them." 

The fifth estate visited addresses where the Constantinidis couple and Bell had registered companies in their names and found a construction site, an abandoned shop and a vacant residential building.

Sandro Kevkhishvili, an analyst with Transparency International Georgia, a non-profit that promotes accountability of government and business in the country, isn’t surprised the trio chose to settle in Tbilisi. 

"If you want to fund far-right influencers and not be on anyone's radar, Georgia could be a very good candidate for that," Kevkhishvili told the fifth estate. "The country is small, and it is relatively conservative."

According to Kevkhishvili, the transactions processed through Entropy are likely too small to alert financial regulators in Georgia.

"They are essentially just doing money transfers. They are receiving money transfers, they are pooling them and then sending them somewhere to the West," Kevkhishvili said. "If you take away the content of the transactions and what they are for, then it's just money transactions, which would not raise any red flags."

One of the hate groups making money on Entropy has been linked to real-world violence in the U.S., including a deadly school shooting. 

In January 2025, 16-year-old Josselin Dayana Escalante Correa was shot and killed in her high school cafeteria in Antioch, a suburb of Nashville. The shooter was another student — a Black 17-year-old who had been radicalized online and had written lengthy manifestos filled with antisemitic and racist ideas. 

Included in one of the shooter’s manifestos was an antisemitic pamphlet created and distributed by the Goyim Defense League. Six months before the school shooting, GDL had displayed a banner featuring an enlarged version of that same pamphlet in front of a Nashville synagogue. 

In a livestream posted months after the shooting, GDL didn't downplay any link. Minadeo celebrated it instead, laughing about the fact the shooter had killed himself as well. 

Investigative journalist Phil Williams was stunned by that reaction. 

"I expected that John Minadeo would deny any connection. And instead, he celebrated that he may have influenced Black people to kill Black people," said Williams. "And the fact that he would celebrate that says everything you need to know about Jon Minadeo and GDL."

Josselin Escalante, the mother of the 16-year-old victim, describes the reaction as heartless.

"These are people who don't have a conscience, don't have a heart," she said through a Spanish interpreter.

Jones, the Tennessee state representative, says supporters of the Goyim Defense League should be held accountable for the deadly incident.

"If you're funding these groups, you have that blood on your hands, too," said Jones, who represents the district where the shooting occurred. 

"You are no less accountable than the person who's committing physical violence if you are profiting and instigating and being the one cheering this on when you send a donation to them."

Cutting off the profits of racism

The fifth estate reached out to Minadeo for this story but did not get a response.

Entropy’s creators have stated publicly their mission is to fight against censorship and support free speech. In that 2019 podcast interview, Emmanuel Constantinidis said Entropy’s "censorship will be solely to meet whatever legal standards are required, but no more."

Canadian law has a very narrow definition of what qualifies as hate speech in the Criminal Code. 

A Canadian legal expert says much of the harmful online content on platforms like Entropy qualifies as "awful, but lawful."

"There's all kinds of expressions that we find distasteful and can be offensive and in fact incredibly harmful, and at a societal level incredibly harmful, but it doesn't rise to the level of being illegal expression," said Emily Laidlaw, associate professor of law at the University of Calgary.

In 2024, the federal government introduced Bill C-63, also known as the Online Harms Act, in an attempt to minimize the harm caused by problematic content online. Laidlaw was co-chair of the expert panel that advised the government on it.

Bill C-63 would have made social media companies accountable for reducing users’ exposure to harmful content such as child sexual exploitation, non-consensual intimate images and hate speech.

The bill died on the order paper when Parliament was prorogued before the 2025 federal election. The federal government has since indicated that it plans to take a "fresh" look at its online harms legislation.

"I think the money piece is central to all of this," Laidlaw said. "I think we need to be more direct about what the threat is here, that you have businesses that are essentially monetizing hate."

Laidlaw said even if the bill had become law, it could only have done so much.

"There wasn't an obligation to take down that kind of [harmful] content. There was an obligation to mitigate the risks of exposure to it," she said.

"We're always going to depend to a certain extent on these companies making decisions about the safety of users and the impact of providing that type of platform that will be outside of law."

The legal challenges of regulating online content

Documents obtained by the fifth estate through an access to information request reveal that in 2023, another Canadian streaming platform was lobbying the Ministry of Canadian Heritage with regards to the Online Harms Act. 

According to the memo, in May 2023 a representative from streaming website Rumble met with ministry staff to share "concern regarding the impact of the online safety bill on the freedom of expression for their user." 

The memo goes on to state that "Rumble was also concerned about regulatory burden/cost of implementing the online safety bill since they are a smaller player in the social media space."

Rumble has also emerged as a strong voice against regulation of online spaces south of the border.

In June 2022, the state of New York introduced legislation that would have required social media platforms to improve their response to and reporting of hateful content. The bill came on the heels of a mass shooting a month earlier when a man who had been radicalized online killed 10 people in a grocery store in a predominantly Black neighbourhood in Buffalo.

Less than a year later, Rumble and other free speech advocates won a court challenge against the state and were granted a preliminary injunction blocking the bill.

The fifth estate has found multiple examples of white supremacists who simultaneously livestream hateful content on Entropy and Rumble and solicit donations on both platforms. 

The fifth estate requested an interview with Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski but he declined.

In a statement, a spokesperson wrote that "content moderation is difficult" and that Rumble had taken down two videos flagged by the fifth estate.

The company also stated that similar content can be found on other social media sites, and said "because of some erroneous political perceptions, Rumble is held to a higher standard than YouTube or X ever face."

While Rumble says it is trying to limit harmful content, Entropy makes no such claim. There is no legislation in Canada, the U.S. Or Georgia that requires either platform to prevent users from profiting from harmful content.

Tischauser said the consequences of allowing people to make a living off of hate increase the risk to public safety. 

"We've seen members of GDL use the money that they make off of Entropy and go into the real world and assault people," he said. "They could come to your town next."

Investigative journalist, the fifth estate

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