Patreon, founded in 2013 by Jack Conte, a musician and disc jockey, is valued at $450 million and employs about 170 people in San Francisco. Fans donate to the content creators on the site whom they enjoy, and Patreon takes a 5 percent cut of the income.

While the site is relatively small, with a little over 100,000 creators and two million people donating monthly to those creators, it has become the de facto paycheck for a cohort of prominent self-styled internet philosophers who eschew or have been ousted from traditional bastions like universities or magazines.

Among Patreon’s hodgepodge of creators is the left-leaning podcast group Chapo Trap House, which makes more than $110,000 a month from the site, according to Graphtreon, which tracks Patreon activity. Mr. Peterson, a best-selling author, earns around $66,000 a month from the site. Sex-related content creators are also getting monthly subscribers on Patreon, and a Pokemon Go community is the top earner, making up to $500,000 a month, according to Graphetreon.

Patreon takes a highly personal approach to policing speech. While Google and Facebook use algorithms as a first line of defense for questionable content, Patreon has human moderators. They give warnings and reach out to talk to offenders, presenting options for “education” and “reform.” Some activists hope this will become a model for a better and kinder internet.

“There are no automated takedowns,” Mr. Conte said. “As a creator myself dealing with these big tech platforms and getting an automated takedown notice, there’s no appeals process. You can’t talk to a human. And I never want to do that.”

Jaqueline Hart, Patreon’s head of trust and safety, said her team watches for and will investigate complaints about any content posted on Patreon and on other sites like YouTube and Facebook that violates what it defines as hate speech. That includes “serious attacks, or even negative generalizations, of people based on their race [and] sexual orientation,” she has said.