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Patreon Bars Anti-Feminist for Racist Speech, Inciting Revolt

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

#371

Post by SolaceQuantum »

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…

I'm really confused, culturally we didn't really have freedom of speech the way is being described here (the freedom to be in private spaces and say disagreeable things without being ousted). Being bullied out of social circles, shunned for behaving in socially unacceptable ways (like women wearing pants, being gay, accepting interracial marriage) including speaking socially unacceptable things (like women are objects, I choose not to vaccinate my child) have always had consequences in the public space including being shunned broadly by friends, families, and business partners.

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

#372

Post by api »

c3534l wrote: post #97
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…

We live in a world where corporate entities have an extraordinary control over our lives, what opinions we see and hear, even if we actively seek out those opinions. At some point we need to stop thinking about free speech as simply a guarantee against government intrusion, but also a guarantee against our increasingly powerful corporate overlords.

So conservatives are rediscovering anti-trust laws and concepts like natural monopolies then?

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

#373

Post by humanrebar »

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.

> ...you can change your mind and ideas but can't change your race

So we can ban people for/against atheism because it's an idea one could theoretically change their minds on?

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

#374

Post by allemagne »

40acres wrote: post #63
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…

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. Before you the internet you had to deal with the three major networks to get on TV and most exterme speech, on either end of the spectrum, was relegated to the fringes. There has always been a realm of discourse that society agrees upon and that we use to set the boundaries of c…

You see a similar pattern every time Reddit bans a community. People wring their hands about free speech, how ideas should be "argued with, not silenced", how banning "controversial" subreddits will just be counterproductive in the long run, and how the community will suffer because the marketplace of ideas is stifled by censorship. The concerns may be worth discussing in good faith every time something like this happens, but reading what Sargon of Akkad actually said makes these concerns seem a little absurd in context. The pearl-clutching seems to get amplified and repeated by trolls who know that it represents a long-term defeat of them and their ideas.

If you want to talk about a "marketplace of ideas," this is just an example of how it works in practice. Alex Jones or users of /r/FatPeopleHate etc. are 100% legally allowed to spread their ideas in most countries and therefore still participate in this "marketplace". However, consumers themselves find certain actions and ideas repulsive and last year's young and vulnerable males have perhaps grown up a little, so websites are trying to read the market and get ahead of the curve before a smart competitor can pick up those consumers by advertising "we don't allow content like that on this platform, but you can find it on Patreon if you really want."

If the concerns about Patreon's censorship that we're seeing in this thread were really as valid as their prevalence should indicate then Reddit banning subs like /r/FatPeopleHate and /r/CoonTown might have led to Reddit's downfall a long time ago (like how very many redditors predicted), and Voat.co would be a flowering bastion of ideas and content from people drawn to its promise of unadulterated free speech. Instead Voat is a second-rate, hostile finge community while Reddit is only gaining prominence as a website. That doesn't seem to be changing anytime soon.

The same thing would happen to any "alternative" Patreon, so for very many powerful members of this "anti-feminist"/"new right"/"Intellectual Dark Web" I think they might see this as writing on the wall for them and their entire movement. Maybe what they're afraid of in the long run is that their ideas simply don't stand up to scrutiny and without access to a sufficiently large mainstream community where the law of averages would budget them a steady stream of converts they would steadily lose members and just fizzle out on some forgotten corner of the internet.

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

#375

Post by mancerayder »

smrtinsert wrote: post #358
coffeemug wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

This is total crap. That norm was long abandoned. Absolutely no one on the right defends freed of speech as a cultural norm. The modern right uses "freedom of speech" as a proxy to discriminate/marginalize and spread hate speech. Edit:Boohoo, I offended the snowflakes.

Discrimination and marginalization are actions. Patreon is a platform for media. Can you kindly show how the two are connected rather than leave us with 'This is total crap' ? You've made no effort to reply to the actual argument you called crap.

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

#376

Post by aeternus »

astura wrote: post #300
cc81 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anyone is saying that there should be a law that forces Patreon to allow everyone on their platform. More a lamenting that the consequences of large platforms acting like this might be bigger than people think. Reminds me a little of the whole Parental Advisory thing with rock music or Spotify's decisions around violent artists. How outraged should we be that artists that say very questionable things ar…

For decades Walmart, the largest retailer in the world, exclusively sold censored music albums, yet nobody rioted over that, we all just knew not to buy our CDs there. I don't understand why people all the sudden believe they have a God given right to spew their garbage all over every platform in existence.... that's something very new. EDIT: Source: https://corporate.walmart.com/_news_/news-archive/2008/04/29... >MU…

I have an issue with Patreon not following their stated policy, rather than with them not allowing everything.

Patreon, Youtube and Facebook all purport to be free and open platforms except for very well-defined exceptions like speech that endangers others.

People can and should hold them accountable to their own policies. If they want to become moderated sites that allow only a subset of content/ideas then by all means, they should be allowed to do so, but they should no longer be considered open platforms and their policies should outline what content they allow.

Walmart's policy was very clear and they actually followed it.

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

#378

Post by wsy »

zepto wrote: post #352
beat wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely you see the difference between the "sounds crazy" of predicting a market collapse, and the "sounds crazy" of saying we should deport or execute all Muslims (as a for example).

If the difference is so obvious, why do we need to censor?

The difference between food and waste is also obvious, still we bring the waste to the garbage can.

Also, nobody censors. A distributor decided not to distribute the stuff anymore.

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

#379

Post by ggreer »

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.

This comment doesn't address my points at all. First, none of those sites are Patreon competitors. Second, I never claimed alternatives didn't exist. Third, in context it's pretty clear that Sargon is trying to insult racists. I don't know much about him, but from that clip it seems like his shtick is to get attention by making points in controversial ways. Well, mission accomplished (in every sense of the phrase).

My points were 1. the parent's concept of free speech missed the mark and 2. Patreon has a double standard and a political bias, and that's not good for them or for society.

I'm also not saying there should be laws policing Patreon's behavior. I'm saying that while Patreon and other tech companies believe they are doing good by removing content and sanctioning its creators, they are making a mistake. If they branded themselves as a utility (similar to a power company or bank), they could guarantee themselves a larger platform in the long term. At the same time, they'd let everyone read and hear what they wanted to read and hear. They'd reduce political polarization (which seems to be creeping into every aspect of life), eliminate the Streisand effect (I'd never heard of the Daily Stormer or Gab before hosting providers refused to take their money), and make it much harder for extremists to get sympathy.

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

#380

Post by lykr0n »

snerbles wrote: post #326
lykr0n wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The takeaway from that article I got was that companies are handing out credit to anybody who wants it- and some people take advantage of that when they want to go out with a bang. 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 har…

This is already starting to happen. Where's the hellfire? https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/card-payment-gu... https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/19/business/banks-gun-sales.... https://nypost.com/2018/06/11/gun-businesses-scrambling-afte... https://www.marketwatch.com/story/could-credit-card-companie...

Those look like two isolated cases at the payment processors. But if that keeps up, it'll be a quick road to legislation
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