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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

#401

Post by nkurz »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #238
cambalache wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So would you agree with a new black listing in Hollywood for example?

A what?

The Hollywood blacklist—as the broader entertainment industry blacklist is generally known—was the practice of denying employment to screenwriters, actors, directors, musicians, and American entertainment professionals during the mid-20th century because they were accused of having Communist ties or sympathies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist

He's asking whether you think it would be reasonable to reinstate this policy, but directed against "racists" instead of communists.

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

#402

Post by DevoidSimo »

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…

IIRC someone high up in the daily stormer publicly claimed cloudflare supported their views due to not being taken down. That lead to a decision to stop hosting them which I think is more reasonable than just censorship.

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

#403

Post by [deleted] »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #371
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…

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 object…

[deleted]

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

#404

Post by coffeemug »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #371
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…

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 object…

The difference is that the internet has discontinuously more scalable network effects, so technology companies often find themselves in a winner-takes-all dynamic. If some publisher, newspaper, or literary magazine refused to publish Walt Whitman, he could always try and find another publisher. But if Twitter bans Titania McGrath, there is no other Twitter for her to join because the next best alternative has 1/10000th the number of users.

This effect is new. These platforms are private entities, but effectively they operate as public commons. So culturally we must treat them similar to public commons where it isn't acceptable to kick out quirky characters because some of us don't like what they have to say.

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

#405

Post by toofy »

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…

> If these norms continue to getting eroded, god help us all — it may set humanity and the western civilization back by hundreds of years.

Haven’t these norms already been well established? I mean, almost every business which deals in exposure to humans sensory inputs has always seemed to have standards. Concert venues, magazines, record companies, night clubs with stages, publishing outlets etc etc... all of these business owners have always been able to pick and choose what types of output they send to the humans consuming that output. Hasn’t this always been the norm?

I’m just curious why some insinuate this is an enormous step backward when from my perspective it would seem to be SOP for a society which idolizes private property.

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

#406

Post by jakelazaroff »

krapp wrote: post #389
zepto wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Bitcoin is failing and if that’s the best option for free speech, it proves that the mainstream actually doesn’t support it. Bitcoin is an anarcho-capitalist currency, and the mainstream aren't anarchists. The mainstream doesn't object to it because they object to free speech, they object to it because they like banks with their FDIC insurance and laws.

"Object" is even probably too strong a term! The mainstream is mostly indifferent to it, because normal banking is better for virtually every transaction they want to make.

Bitcoin is failing on its own (lack of) merits, not because people are mounting some campaign to destroy it.

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

#407

Post by aeternus »

reaperducer wrote: post #181
adventured wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

When has this happened in the past? This would be an impressive accomplishment to get all those entities to both agree on what to censor and succeed in the coordination required to apply that censorship, especially without government support.

Even when there is overwhelming international, corporate, and government support, internet censorship has not been effective. Look at the resiliency of the pirate bay and darknet markets.

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

#409

Post by coffeemug »

toofy wrote: post #405
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…

> If these norms continue to getting eroded, god help us all — it may set humanity and the western civilization back by hundreds of years. Haven’t these norms already been well established? I mean, almost every business which deals in exposure to humans sensory inputs has always seemed to have standards. Concert venues, magazines, record companies, night clubs with stages, publishing outlets etc etc... all of these b…

I just made an argument about that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18765494.

> The difference is that the internet has discontinuously more scalable network effects, so technology companies often find themselves in a winner-takes-all dynamic. If some publisher, newspaper, or literary magazine refused to publish Walt Whitman, he could always try and find another publisher. But if Twitter bans Titania McGrath, there is no other Twitter for her to join because the next best alternative has 1/10000th the number of users.

> This effect is new. These platforms are private entities, but effectively they operate as public commons. So culturally we must treat them similar to public commons where it isn't acceptable to kick out quirky characters because some of us don't like what they have to say.

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

#410

Post by darkpuma »

microcolonel wrote: post #296
darkpuma wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's plausible but ambiguous.

It's about as ambiguous as whether you are a secret racist. This guy is arguing directly against out-and-out unabashed racists in the conversation. How much more anti-racist does one have to be in order to make it not "ambiguous" in your eyes?

I think that particular sentence out of context is objectively ambiguous, since that particular sentence isn't qualified with some sort of arguendo disclaimer... In context, it seems much less ambiguous.

There are a lot of people in this thread who are reading that comment as unambiguously racist. Maybe some of them are being intellectually dishonest, but I think at least some of them aren't. Generally speaking when multiple people read the same sentence and walk away with wildly different notions about what the speaker's intent was, that's an indication that ambiguous language is present.

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