101–110 of 789 posts
These guys aren’t providing any value to society. Whether they make money or live on the dole is irrelevant to me.
The “no platform” argument has merit and I think it should occur by having ISPs be regulated as common carriers.
"And while many internet creators argue that Silicon Valley is trying to censor free speech, what the companies are doing is legal, said Vera Eidelman, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s speech, privacy and technology project. “The First Amendment right is on the side of the company,” she said." I think that sums up the matter. If people want to raise funds from their supporters, they should dis…
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I don't know if it's centralisation so much as personification. Patreon wants to be a a friendly brand, part of people's self-image. And having chosen this, perhaps they can't afford to live and let live. It's very difficult to imagine Bell Telephone (in their 100% monopoly days I mean) feeling responsible for what people discuss on their wires, or feeling a need to deny (say) pornographers service so that its other…
> Or Visa likewise today -- it's understood that other people will use the same plastic to pay for things you morally disapprove of, just as they could use cash. But it's positioned as a neutral carrier, and nobody cares (I think). Heh, well I hope so. But that recent NYTimes story[0] about how mass shootings used guns and ammo bought with a credit card makes me unsure about that. I'd have thought using cash vs credi…
Hellfire would rain down on any Network (Visa, MC, Amex, Discover) who thought about refusing to process firearm purchases. The NRA, any republican, and liberals like myself who support fundamental rights would be rightly pissed that a hard-to-avoid service such as the Visa network was making a decision on what I can or cannot do with my money. Because the minute you start making those decisions, it's a slippery sloap.
Their business prints them money, so why would they want to kick the hornets net? This is why I'm extremely weary of anyone who declares that Cash is Dead, or the future is Credit/Debit cards
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> taking away people's ability to earn money On a single platform. Nobody's preventing Mr. Benjamin from making money; they're just not allowing him to use one specific platform. He's welcome to sign up for Hatreon, or to use a payment processor directly.
And when the new payment company bans him, then what? And are you OK if Twitter bans all left leaning people just because of their beliefs? I tend to favor the smallest government possible, because I think private companies tend to do a better work in many areas (not all of them) so I dont like government intervening. But when you have an almost defacto monopoly in certain areas (google, facebook, twitter) banning pe…
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…
> On the other hand, at what point do we accept that we have different viewpoints and live and let live? How are Patreon's actions not an example of differing views and "live and let live"? It's not like Patreon is lobbying to have them exiled from society. They're simply not doing business with someone whose gimmick alienates a large swath of Patreon's paying, and potential, user base.
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> taking away people's ability to earn money On a single platform. Nobody's preventing Mr. Benjamin from making money; they're just not allowing him to use one specific platform. He's welcome to sign up for Hatreon, or to use a payment processor directly.
One does not simply use a payment processor directly. Stripe and PayPal both deplatformed within a week the Patreon alternative that the guy went to after being kicked off Patreon (SubscribeStar). Hatreon was also deplatformed by their payment processor, as noted below. In another recent instance, MasterCard demanded that Patreon kick off another person for political reasons [1]. Social network Gab is now accepting U…
This
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I don't know if it's centralisation so much as personification. Patreon wants to be a a friendly brand, part of people's self-image. And having chosen this, perhaps they can't afford to live and let live. It's very difficult to imagine Bell Telephone (in their 100% monopoly days I mean) feeling responsible for what people discuss on their wires, or feeling a need to deny (say) pornographers service so that its other…
Personification makes sense to me, at least in regards to Patreon. But then you get to Youtube...a stroll through the comment section of any video makes you realize you're in the digital version of Mos Eisley. There is no brand to protect, yet they wave their censorship wand quite often, including just this last week ( https://www.businessinsider.com/r-youtube-under-pressure-for... ). It seems a lot of these videos w…
I have an unpopular opinion. I believe people should be able to fly nazi and confederate flags on their private property. (Even if their private property overlooks yours.) I believe football players should be able to kneel during the national anthem.
And I believe private companies should be able to exercise their freedom of Association rights based on their beliefs or their bottom line.
All of these are just people having opinions. If you don't like their opinions, don't associate with them. That's the freedom that you have. I don't think any of this is a problem. Certainly none of it is censorship. The man flying a nazi or confederate flag in his yard alongside his JEB Stuart statue is not censoring MLK by refusing to put up an MLK statue as well.
The people who want an MLK statue should go put the MLK statue someplace else. The people tossed from Patreon should go raise money elsewhere. They're all perfectly free to do so.
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Our descendants are going to be seriously confused by our practice of limiting or taking away people's ability to earn money because they publicly used a wrong word. Or so I hope, at least.
I don’t think they will be. It’s pretty easy to parse: these users don’t own Patreon; therefore, users whose speech they disagree with are not entitled to their services. This is honestly pretty well established. Patreon does not owe anyone a platform.
And, by the way, although I'm more fond of thinking of Patreon as "just a guy, who sells a service" than as a necessity, there's not so much of an alternative for it either. AFAIK.
The article avoids the specifics of what Benjamin said, which makes it hard to judge whether Patreon is acting reasonably. The interview in question is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQ87Wf-0rZg . Here are some excerpts from the automatically generated transcript (click the 3 dots, then "Open transcript"): I just can't be bothered to deal with people who treat me like this it's really annoying like I you are a…
If you wrote what this guy wrote in an email at your job you would be fired on the spot, it doesn't matter who you worked for or what industry. No one would be able to get away with this kind of speech on a public forum because it's so outside of societies agreed realm of discourse and deliberately involves language used to justify literal genocide.
Too often online the actual details of controversy are overlooked so folks can get all high minded about free speech. In all honesty it seems like a form of appeasement to me. Take a bit here, take a bit there, and eventually you end up with a gunman shooting up a synagogue and a woman being run over at a white nationalist rally.