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Patreon Bars Anti-Feminist for Racist Speech, Inciting Revolt

nytimes.com

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Re: Patreon Bars Anti-Feminist for Racist Speech, Inciting Revolt

#341

Post by zepto »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #335
ggreer wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Freedom of Speech is not the right to be heard. If people don't like what you have to say, or how you are saying it, they are free to walk away. That's technically correct, but it doesn't get at the core of the concept. If you read the original arguments in favor of freedom of speech, you'll see they don't focus on the rights of the speaker as much as the rights of the listener. John Milton, Thomas Paine, and John…

Listeners are perfectly free to go elsewhere to hear racist speech — Gab exists, 4chan exists, and there are plenty of smaller sites dedicated to this as well. Insofar as they want to support someone monetarily, no one can prevent them from using Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is failing and if that’s the best option for free speech, it proves that the mainstream actually doesn’t support it.

Re: Patreon Bars Anti-Feminist for Racist Speech, Inciting Revolt

#342

Post by zepto »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #254
CM30 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is; where does it end? Sure, I guess you could say Patreon has the right to ban people from its service. But people have found its not easy or practical to compete with them. They've found everyone from their domain registrar to their website host to their payment processor refusing to do business with them. And at some point, that means it becomes virtually impossible to express yourself if your views a…

> And at some point, that means it becomes virtually impossible to express yourself if your views are unpopular enough. This is how free speech has always worked, though. You could always get on a soapbox in a public plaza and rant, but the potential engaged audience there is pretty small. If you wanted a real audience, even in older times you would've needed a newspaper to print your thoughts, or a publisher to help…

Except that they aren’t necessarily highly unpopular. They are just outside of the political norms that happen to be popular within a small class in control of the platforms.

Re: Patreon Bars Anti-Feminist for Racist Speech, Inciting Revolt

#343

Post by smrtinsert »

orthecreedence wrote: post #33

I'm torn about this. On the one hand, Patreon shouldn't have to do business with people they don't like. On the other hand, at what point do we accept that we have different viewpoints and live and let live? The biggest one for me in recent history was Cloudflare arbitrarily deciding to stop hosting the Daily Stormer. Sure, DS is vile, but at the point we start enforcing censorship on a whim instead of hardened polic…

At racism. Easy call for me.

Re: Patreon Bars Anti-Feminist for Racist Speech, Inciting Revolt

#344

Post by zamalek »

coffeemug wrote: post #338
zamalek wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the other hand, at what point do we accept that we have different viewpoints and live and let live? The government, soapboxes, homes and places of business that are happy to have them. Freedom of Speech is not the right to be heard. If people don't like what you have to say, or how you are saying it, they are free to walk away. If you don't like what someone is doing in your place of business, you can also throw…

> Freedom of Speech is not the right to be heard. People keep saying this and repeating it, but as far as I can tell this meme is destructive and wrong. Freedom of speech isn't just a legal assurance that congress shall make no law abridging it. It is also a set of cultural norms rooted deeply in a long lineage of hard won ideas. It is Evelyn Hall's principle "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the de…

Thanks for that, it's the first reply that's given me food for thought.

Re: Patreon Bars Anti-Feminist for Racist Speech, Inciting Revolt

#345

Post by ptero »

fzeroracer wrote: post #313
ptero wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying to prevent people from arguing for an evil (E) never stops E long term. It should be fought with reason and counter-arguments, not with silencing the speaker. Suppressing the speaker can indicate, especially to those wavering, that there are no reasonable counter-arguments and there must be something true in the message that controlling powers are trying to suppress. There are different modes: I do not have to…

You cannot argue against people that believe an entire race or an entire people should be systematically eradicated. There is no rational argument to be had against them because they specifically argue on an entirely different level. They want you to treat them at equal in the world of debate because that's how their views are legitimized and given power. I find it honestly disturbing that people are more willing to…

> You cannot argue against people that believe an entire race or an entire people should be systematically eradicated.

I think we can, and indeed should argue against such ideas. The goal is not to convince a zealot that his views are wrong, but rather convince the majority of those on the sidelines that those ideas are stupid and will lead to no good. If the ideas are outlandish, arguing against them on merits is easier, not harder. As long as the vast majority of the society sees those ideas as crazy, arguing them stays pretty harmless.

And what is the alternative to arguing on merits? It is tempting to be able to silence unpopular views, but that can backfire -- tomorrow control could change and someone might deny us the ability to speak. "I know the world is flat" needs a better answer than "No! It is round, end of discussion".

Re: Patreon Bars Anti-Feminist for Racist Speech, Inciting Revolt

#346

Post by elif »

ggreer wrote: post #312
zamalek wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the other hand, at what point do we accept that we have different viewpoints and live and let live? The government, soapboxes, homes and places of business that are happy to have them. Freedom of Speech is not the right to be heard. If people don't like what you have to say, or how you are saying it, they are free to walk away. If you don't like what someone is doing in your place of business, you can also throw…

> Freedom of Speech is not the right to be heard. If people don't like what you have to say, or how you are saying it, they are free to walk away. That's technically correct, but it doesn't get at the core of the concept. If you read the original arguments in favor of freedom of speech, you'll see they don't focus on the rights of the speaker as much as the rights of the listener. John Milton, Thomas Paine, and John…

The platform is not a neutral third party arbitrarily interfering with 2 legitimate parties' desire for speech.

The platform, in this case and many, has its own reputation and business interests to consider primarily.

Are the people in charge of these platforms doing the right thing for society at large? no. Are they doing what is best for their businesses health? There are definitely arguments for both sides in that case...

If their largest demographic is liberal-ish millennials, they have a business interest to take a partisan view, which in the case of a public company can be argued as a legal obligation.

Re: Patreon Bars Anti-Feminist for Racist Speech, Inciting Revolt

#347

Post by dkersten »

zamalek wrote: post #316
dkersten wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theres a fine line between “being allowed to throw a loud ranting racist out of a pub” because the pub is your business and you should be allowed to choose who to do business with and you don’t like racists... and throwing out a person of a different race because it’s your business and you should be allowed to choose who to do business with and don’t like that race... That is, we want businesses to have the right to…

> who to do business with and don’t like that race... Although not the historical reason, a far simpler one is: you can change your mind and ideas but can't change your race. In addition, it is that behavior and not that belief that gets the racist removed from the premises. You can choose to be quiet about your ideas where they are not welcome, but you can't choose to not be your race where it is not welcome.

Yes, this makes sense.

Re: Patreon Bars Anti-Feminist for Racist Speech, Inciting Revolt

#348

Post by darawk »

manfredo wrote: post #320
darawk wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an interesting problem. Speech has never truly been free, sometimes and in some places its been regulated by government, but in modern liberal democracies its been regulated by culture . Polite society regulates speech by rejecting people who engage in whatever that society views as harmful speech. Social media platforms and the internet generally, substantially weaken the power of culture to regulate speech in…

> Social media platforms and the internet generally, substantially weaken the power of culture to regulate speech in the way that it used to. I fail to see how this is the case. It does absolutely grant the power to regulate speech. What Social media platforms have changes is that the people who are carrying out the informal regulation of speech have shifted to being a very narrow subset of the population, and one th…

> I fail to see how this is the case. It does absolutely grant the power to regulate speech.

I didn't say it prevented speech regulation in general. I said that it attenuated the previous regime of speech regulation. It does so by replacing it with a new one, where speech norms are determined by a tiny group of people in unelected, unreviewable positions at private companies.

> The evidence really does indicate that sunlight is the best disinfectant. Despite the constant concern over Trump's comments on immigrants, for example, support for immigration in the US is at record levels.[1][2] Despite the concern over explicitly fascist rallies at Charlottesville and DC, these rallies actually cased a significant drop in support for far-right.[3] And lastly, while the Republican has become a party of Trump and has adopted much of his rhetoric the result has been largely bad for the party. They lost over a dozen seats in the midterm election - surprising given that the midterms are when the Republicans tend to do well.

You may be right. But the story is far more complex than you're letting on. If sunlight is always the best disinfectant, then why did these movements gain steam in the first place? Sure, after an adverse event like Charlottesville, support may drop. But these movements just elected a president. Where was the disinfectant then?

Re: Patreon Bars Anti-Feminist for Racist Speech, Inciting Revolt

#349

Post by Farradfahren »

40acres wrote: post #239
jstarfish wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Centralization isn't the problem here, if you look back at history there are more platforms for people to speak their mind than ever before. But there aren't. It's an illusion of diversity. They're all owned or being bought up by the same centralized handful of outfits-turned-conglomerates that have always controlled the means of distribution. Haven't you noticed the flurry of mergers (successful or not) in the las…

There is literally no barrier preventing a company from creating its own platform from scratch. If you want to enable an infrastructure that supports no holds barred speech online you can start today, you may not be able to Stripe or Cloudfare, but the internet at it's core is still open.

Those trying to set up their own local networks - torpedod on every step of the way by the monopolists beg to differ.
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