Patreon Bars Anti-Feminist for Racist Speech, Inciting Revolt • Hacker News Board

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

#431

Post by fzeroracer » Wed, Dec 26, 2018, 10:54 PM UTC

ptero wrote: post #345

fzeroracer wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ea…

If this was honestly the case, then can you explain why we see the rise of neo-nazis as well as the rise in scientific distrust with regards to things like vaccines?

If arguing against those beliefs worked then by your own arguments we should see the amount of believers dwindling over time. Yet as they gain exposure even when people attempt to debate them in good faith, their numbers grow.

How do you explain this?

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

#432

Post by notahacker » Wed, Dec 26, 2018, 10:56 PM UTC

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…

> By banning these people platforms like Twitter and Patreon are eroding free speech not in the legal sense, but in the cultural norms sense. If these norms continue getting eroded, god help us all -- it may set humanity and the western civilization back by hundreds of years.

I have a feeling that Western civilization which has for most of its existence censored people across nearly all media for offences as mild as saying "damn", displaying a naked person or drawing a particular shape of mouse without permission is not about to collapse because the management of a particular web platform decides that Carl Benjamin arguing with other white supremacists about whether they're behaving like "niggers" or "white people" isn't the sort of thing they wish to financially support. This really is the reductio ad absurdum freedom of speech argument.

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

#433

Post by coldtea » Wed, Dec 26, 2018, 10:56 PM UTC

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…

>Freedom of Speech is not the right to be heard

Then this limited "freedom of speech", a provincial americanism based on a historical accident (the first amendment), is not the full freedom of speech the philosophers of enlightenment, artists, activists, etc., described.

>If people don't like what you have to say, or how you are saying it, they are free to walk away

In this case, they weren't free to walk away, they were thrown out, regardless of whether what was said was popular or not.

If we allow those with internet platforms to decide what's ok to be written, we're regressing before the enlightenment.

It doesn't matter if someone can "create their own platform". A right to free speech should include the ability to talk in the popular platforms of the day, the "marketplace of ideas". Nobody should be guaranteed an audience, but nobody should be denied a place to speak and potentially gather one.

(Of course big private interests have all the space they want in their own owned platforms, from TV channels and websites, to press and social media -- for them there's no "make your own website to spew your shit", they already have all of them -- and they get to pick who gets to participate in them).

Also note that just because the wind today is pro-progressive, and people you like (like the Patreon guy) get to dictate who says what and what's not to be said on their properties, it doesn't mean it will always be this way. The liberal twenties in Germany were followed by Nazism. The 60's and early 70's in the US were followed by Reagan. Consider freedom of speech practices that should apply now and later, when progressives don't have the same clout.

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

#434

Post by coffeemug » Wed, Dec 26, 2018, 10:57 PM UTC

peterwwillis wrote: post #428

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…

These "norms" are generalized and not always applicable to real life. If I disapprove of you yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, should I also have to defend your right to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater? We "erode freedom of speech" when it hurts people. This is not about "weird people with quirky ideas". This is about people who use speech to abuse, cause harm, intimidate, harass, or inspire others to commit su…

Nonsense! Yelling "fire!" in a crowded theater has a very high risk of getting hundreds of people instantly killed. It is not at all equivalent to verbally abusing someone. More so, verbal abuse is frequently socially desirable and useful! 2pac verbally abused people, many think of him as a great artist and social commentator. Many, many, many, many, many great artists did too -- Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Dostoevskiy, among countless others.

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

#435

Post by augustl » Wed, Dec 26, 2018, 10:58 PM UTC

nharada wrote: post #200

augustl wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Carl Benjamin himself, the comments were meant ironically. He was reacting to a chat stream, which is missing context in that video, and the chat used slurs like this. So Benjamin used the slurs back at them. Having said that, we have to assume Benjamin’s inner thoughts to know what he really meant, so I’m not arguing we should disregard it completely because of his alledged good intentions.

I don't think you should get to walk back your shitty comments by claiming you were just joking the whole time. Based on this guy's past behavior, I don't think anyone is giving him the benefit of the doubt here either.

Can we reliably read thoughts based on our imagining of his past thoughts?

When I imagine his inner thoughts when listening to the clip, it sounds clearly like joking to me. Without any backtracking.

We should not rely on imagining other people's inner thoughts... Not a very sound method.

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

#436

Post by krapp » Wed, Dec 26, 2018, 10:58 PM UTC

darkpuma wrote: post #424

krapp wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL, but as I understand it, the typical qualifiers for being a protected class tend to be immutable (sex, race, age, disability, color, creed, national origin, religion, or genetic information, per Wikipedia[0].) Obviously you can change your sex and religion, though, and disability status in some cases, though. Maybe a case could be made for political affiliation under "creed," since there appears to be no specif…

People can and do change their religion. I am proof of that.

True. I have to admit I'm having a hard time coming up with rationales that include religion and whatever "creed" is that would exclude political affiliation as well.

I personally think there's something fundamentally undemocratic about barring discrimination against political ideology because that comes too close to interfering with freedom of speech or freedom of association or the exercise of politics itself.

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

#437

Post by fzeroracer » Wed, Dec 26, 2018, 11:00 PM UTC

scruple wrote: post #381

fzeroracer wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How do you reconcile your world view with the story of someone like Daryl Davis, who verifiably contradicts what you think?

Because while it might persuade a few, the onus is not and should not be on the minorities to convince people who literally want them dead that no, their lives are worth living.

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

#438

Post by bunderbunder » Wed, Dec 26, 2018, 11:00 PM UTC

coffeemug wrote: post #425

bunderbunder wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting how this gets framed differently nowadays. 20 years ago, before social media, there was no assumption that everyone has a fundamental right to be able to broadcast their ideas using others' platforms. Since publication was more resource-intensive, the default for most media was to not publish things, and deciding that someone's ideas didn't merit publication wasn't seen as a violation of any great mo…

I just made an argument about that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18765494 , and here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18765509 . > 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…

The fact that Twitter is way more popular than Mastodon doesn't really change anything. It's freedom of speech, not freedom of venue.

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

#439

Post by remarkEon » Wed, Dec 26, 2018, 11:00 PM UTC

wsy wrote: post #378

zepto wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This “well it’s not really censorship if it’s not the government” point is useless, shallow, and ultimately meaningless. Your garbage analogy (no pun intended) fails on its face because in that case the government is explicitly telling you what is trash and what is recycling; what is compost and what requires special disposal.

This idea begets that we have agreed to outsource what is and isn’t “allowed” to be said in the public space (and these are public spaces) to private corporations that absolutely do have their own agenda and objectives. Are we as a society ready to do that? Who watches the Watchmen?

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

#440

Post by magduf » Wed, Dec 26, 2018, 11:01 PM UTC

manfredo wrote: post #236

magduf wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Then you see counter-arguments, like "well if you don't want to get banned, don't say bad things!" But then, who decides what's bad? That's easy: whoever owns the platform. If I own the platform, Daily Stormer isn't going to be using it. I don't want to be associated with those morons, so I'm not going to do business with them. If it's my platform and my business, I have every right to refuse to do business with tho…

No, we don't need to make a government service that doesn't discriminate. We just need to designate things like payment processors and hosting providers as utilities. Your electric company, plumbing company, or mail carrier can't just choose not to do business with someone because they dislike their political views.

A hosting company isn't a utility. A utility is a monopoly in almost every case (or sometimes a duopoly). There's countless hosting companies out there, and you can make your own too. If you don't like your hosting provider, find another, or set up your own service.

There's lots of payment processors out there too. However, Mastercard and VISA do have an oligopoly, and those deserve a lot more regulation than they currently get, for other reasons than discrimination.