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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

#181

Post by reaperducer »

adventured wrote: post #174
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…

> These individuals are free to create their own businesses and websites which facilitate whatever kind of discourse they please, nobody can take that away from them That's very clearly not true at all. Just a dozen or so major companies or orgs can work together to shut you out of having nearly any reach at all. For practical purposes, you'll have zero reach. Any combined small group of them can easily be enough to…

Just a dozen or so major companies or orgs can work together to shut you out of having nearly any reach at all.

Yep. And it's happened in the past. That's why so many tinfoil hat types ended up on shortwave radio, or sticking flyers to lampposts.

Desperate people desperately trying to get a message out, with no means to do so.

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

#182

Post by orthecreedence »

helen___keller wrote: post #136
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…

I argue that by your own ideal state of decentralization, the current system should be working perfectly fine for you regardless of private companies censoring X, Y, and Z. The "fully decentralized" internet can (does?) already currently exist today alongside our usual youtube/facebook/cloudflare/etc centralized internet. The state of centralization is entirely by user choice, not by force. Literally the only necessa…

Thanks, that's a great deconstruction of my argument. It seems one of the problems I have is cultural (censorship being increasingly thought of as acceptable) and the other a proposed solution to the problem as it exists solely on the internet. And you're right, the internet is already decentralized...it's just the things built on top of it that are mostly centralized.

I guess my viewpoint is that decentralized services (accessible enough that they don't require someone to run a server in their basement) can somewhat curtail the problem of cultural censorship. In other words, I think the average person should be able to publish what they want (no matter how stupid) without specialized knowledge and without being censored. That is what I envision.

Will this help the problem with cultural censorship? I really don't know. I just believe in the free exchange of ideas.

That said, and as others have brought up in the discussion, the banking system (Visa et al) engage in censorship fairly often as well...so the problem is certainly not limited to internet.

I guess my post is more of a general observation and complaint than a coherent idea of what should be done. But it's good to at least separate out the parts that aren't really related and argue them as separate pieces =].

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

#183

Post by darkpuma »

fucking_tragedy wrote: post #179
darkpuma wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I've said numerous times elsewhere in this discussion, I find him to be an offensive and unlikable person. In this immediate thread of conversation, I was responding to the suggestion that a line should be drawn at the advocacy of genocide by pointing out that he doesn't seem to cross that line, at least as far as I've seen. I fear people are getting the wrong idea by not noticing the full context of my above comm…

> I fear people are getting the wrong idea by not noticing the full context of my above comments. Truthfully, I believe people might take issue with the fact that the distinction you're trying to make is near-meaningless. He's 90% of the way there. He just isn't using his highly-monetized platform to advocate for genocide. However, he's happy to rub shoulders with, and repeat the talking points of, people who do.

It wasn't my suggestion that advocating for genocide is where to draw the line. I only responded to that suggestion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18763948

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

#184

Post by whatshisface »

zamalek wrote: post #120
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…

> 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…

>If you don't like what someone is doing in your place of business, you can also throw them out.

Although we all agree that this is legal to do (and nobody is thinking about taking Patreon to court), there is a second, more subtle social issue at play. Taking it to the extreme, if you live in a company town earning company scrip to spend at the company store, when the company decides that they don't like what you're doing in their place of business (organizing a union, perhaps), getting kicked out is functionally identical to a governmental sanction. As a result, even though the law permits companies to engage in heavy-handed social hedge-trimming, in some cases it can have the same problems as the government censorship that we have already agreed is bad. It would be going too far to say that corporations have an inalienable moral right to police whatever they control.

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

#185

Post by nkurz »

jmull wrote: post #145
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…

I wouldn't be too torn about this case. First of all, unless you're a free speech absolutist (who believes that literally nothing supercedes free speech) then recognize and accept that someone, somewhere has to draw a line across a continuum of grey. So we're already in the morass, whether you like it or not. You're right to worry about this question: > But then, who decides what's bad? But in this case, it's Patreon…

But in this case, it's Patreon, trying to look out for its own best business interests. It's almost ideal.

I agree with most of your comment, but is Patreon really free to make the decision? Assume a hypothetical "free speech absolutist" version of Patreon, who decided they wouldn't bow to outside pressure. It seems likely that that as with their short-lived free-speech-embracing competitors, the outside forces are strong enough that they would soon convince the credit card processors to refuse to continue serving them. Patreon isn't exactly forced to acquiesce, but they would have to decide that it's a hill worth dying on. Do you still view this larger picture as "almost ideal"?

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

#186

Post by microcolonel »

"racist speech" is a bit tenuous in this case. He was using the N word, but not against black people (telling people he perceived to be white supremacists that they are acting in precisely the ways they criticize black people for).

I think the New York Times was very lazy with this piece, and basically reprinted Patreon's corporate opinions as fact. I basically agree with Tim Pool's reading of the situation [0].

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8c1ng0N_h0

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

#188

Post by xamuel »

PopeDotNinja wrote: post #167
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…

I wonder if there's a way to create a "no assholes" rule that almost everyone could get behind. It'd be hard to come up with for sure.

The answer is "No".

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

#189

Post by Lkjhmnbv »

zimpenfish wrote: post #158
Lkjhmnbv wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we should do away with them? Your comment is illogical.

> So we should do away with them? With some unpopular opinions, yes. > Your comment is illogical. Could you explain why?

How do you do away with unpopular opinions when people decide they disagree with you?

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

#190

Post by jeremyw »

Misreported here is what more reasonable creators objected to:

- Account shutdown without notice

- Lack of appeals process until publicity and a wave of de-subscribes hit the platform

- Reversal of Conte's promise to only police content directly supported by patrons

- Surprise morality stance and language, "reforming" and requiring a "full-throated apology"

While one cannot condone Benjamin's behavior, Patreon is not being honest about its mercurial behavior, shifting policies, and repositioning as a scold. So creators who ethically address controversial topics (i.e. not Benjamin) become nervous.

I love what Patreon does for creators. But this deeply disturbs me.

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