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Gab.com banned from PayPal

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Re: Gab.com banned from PayPal

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your virtue signalling is so cringeworthy

One of the members of our board of directors was almost killed there this morning, but she overslept and missed shul, and so was saved. We’ll stick with our virtue.

You may view one of my other responses on the matter - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18318492

People like you support freedom of speech or expression only for your views.

Democracy is underpinned by the principle, by the faith, that if people are given the right information they will make the right choices, no matter or learned or ignorant they are. This the reason why the votes of people who in less politcally correct times would be clinically labelled as idiots, morons, or simpletons carry as much power as those of members of the professions, respected academics, or even high court judges.

The antidote to hate speech is not censorship, it is well reasoned counterarguments. This implies that you have taken it upon yourself to judge that some people are not intelligent enough to understand the counterarguments, and that they should be denied access to those counterarguments since those counterarguments will never be made or heard, if the arguments that are being countered are not allowed to be made or heard in the first instance.

So can you, together with those others who believe freedom of speech should be curtailed, explain why you are the ones who are intellectualy competent to deny those you consider intellectually challenged the right to hear the viewpoints you disagree with?

This is nothing more than intellectual arrogance and superciliousness on the part of the likes of you, and it is time you and likeminded people recognize it for what it is.

Re: Gab.com banned from PayPal

#172

Financial censorship is still censorship

Deciding not to provide a platform for any particular view is not censorship. Also, hate speech specifically calling for violence is not protected speech.

> hate speech specifically calling for violence is not protected speech.

Yes, it is, for the most part. Per Brandenburg v. Ohio,

"The constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."

Re: Gab.com banned from PayPal

#173
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or in other words: "Entity believes that discretion can be misused, despite thinking discretion is important" Which is an extremely reasonable position. (I've never heard of Gab.)

Well, now you have. It's white supremacist Twitter.

That's like saying Twitter is a female-supremacist Gab. There sure are many open sexists who hate men on Twitter:

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/octavia-sheepshanks/feminis...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/ny-times-journalist...

Maybe the short format lends itself to people posting dumb, thought-free comments.

Re: Gab.com banned from PayPal

#174
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just a catch-all for "our house, our rules". Legal authority aside, it's political warfare and nothing more.

That's pretty dismissive and combative. From a neutral perspective, it looks like one of the intrinsic characteristics of Gab is that it is host to more hateful expression than other platforms. Can you give something in the way of an explanation as to why you're so confident that can't be the real reason?

Gab is just a clone of Twitter. I might well agree that Twitter-type services are more prone to "hateful expression" than longer form writing, but given the relative sizes of Twitter and Gab you can certainly find far more hate on Twitter. And no, Twitter certainly don't crack down on it systematically, not when it's the kind of hate fashionable on the west coast.

Re: Gab.com banned from PayPal

#175

Good. Now for Stripe. I already called their customer support this morning and told them I'd pull my organization's account unless they dropped Gab. I'm sure I'm not the only customer who has. They enable payments processing for Gab, which means that they also profit from Gab. They make money off the alt-right. They choose to make money off the alt-right. You want protests in front of your office, Stripe, raising hel…

I flagged this post, which I hardly ever do, both for its vitriolic and sexist tone ("TechBro" is clearly a sexist term of abuse), plus its explicitly threatening nature.

Re: Gab.com banned from PayPal

#176
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, now you have. It's white supremacist Twitter.

That's like saying Twitter is a female-supremacist Gab. There sure are many open sexists who hate men on Twitter: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/octavia-sheepshanks/feminis... https://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/ny-times-journalist... Maybe the short format lends itself to people posting dumb, thought-free comments.

>Maybe the short format lends itself to people posting dumb, thought-free comments.

It doesn't just lend itself, it exists for that express purpose.

The problem is people using Twitter as a primary venue for discourse which need more context or nuance than the platform allows.

Re: Gab.com banned from PayPal

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible to focus on free speech without encouraging white supremacists. That doesn't seem to be Gab's goal.

How, I would love to hear solutions. People like asparagirl will not join a free speech platform because her speech isn't really restricted from the non-free speech platforms. The people who have the biggest incentive to join these platforms are the one which are kicked out from all the other networks.

And oddly enough the ones that get kicked out from other networks are the ones repeatedly targeted by people like Asparagirl. Their mission is quite obviously to completely erase anyone who doesn't share their same set of hates and out-groups from the internet: first, get them kicked off the big platforms, then try to choke off payment processing to smaller platforms.

Then they sit back and wonder how they can get those people at the ballot box too.

I don't know how this ends, but people like Asparagirl are clearly the sort of people Trump means when he talks about mobs. They will presumably never stop trying to shut down anyone she identifies as an enemy. This probably ends with some sort of legislative solution, in the long run.

Re: Gab.com banned from PayPal

#178

To be fair Sam Altman violates the guidelines. > I am suspending my involvement with the NEOM advisory board until the facts regarding Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance are known. This is well out of my area of expertise, so I don’t plan to comment on the case until the investigation is finished. I remain a huge believer in the importance of building smart cities. He decided to step back because a heterosexual male was…

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18318477 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Gab.com banned from PayPal

#179
post #178

To be fair Sam Altman violates the guidelines. > I am suspending my involvement with the NEOM advisory board until the facts regarding Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance are known. This is well out of my area of expertise, so I don’t plan to comment on the case until the investigation is finished. I remain a huge believer in the importance of building smart cities. He decided to step back because a heterosexual male was…

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18318477 and marked it off-topic.

Great coverup for Sam's support of homophobic and sexist dictators.

Re: Gab.com banned from PayPal

#180
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just seem like a parody right now. (a) Why did you turn this into a left/right issue ? (b) How is Paypal left ? (c) Since when is the left the only one responsible for censorship or ToS enforcement. Because many examples exist today where centrists and the right do this as well.

Web platforms are censoring right wing conservatives. Which web platforms are censoring the left?

I regularly see complaints about Twitter suspending people from the left.
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