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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

#441

Post by augustl »

agentdrtran wrote: post #206
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.

You see officer, I did all that hate speech _ironically_

Analogies are flawed, by their nature. In this case, we don't have a clear case of X, followed bu backtracking and claims of not really saying X. Instead, we have the same X, that some people interpret as malice and hate speech, and other people interpret as using alt-righters own bad language back at them.

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

#442

Post by krapp »

beokop wrote: post #391
smrtinsert wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At racism. Easy call for me.

Racism is pretty common across the world. Sure, we could just decide to not talk to anyone that posts racist thoughts, but would the world really be better off?

>Sure, we could just decide to not talk to anyone that posts racist thoughts, but would the world really be better off?

... yes?

I can't imagine the world would be better off by engaging even more with racists.

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

#443

Post by eesmith »

acqq wrote: post #281
eesmith wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Likewise, Benjamin has been called right wing and an alt-right sympathizer by multiple news outlets. He rejects those characterizations, calling himself a “classical liberal.” However, a recent Southern Poverty Law Center report revealed he has been a stepping stone for some white supremacists on the path to radicalization. The Right Stuff, an unapologetically racist, antisemitic blog founded by white supremacist M…

Do you think "Southern Poverty Law Center" has only valid evaluations of who is "racist", i.e. do you think that they can't be wrong? https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/04/19/the-splc-has-... "Ayaan Hirsi Ali" ... "is the Somali-born activist who was a victim of faith-based genital mutilation. Her friend, director Theo van Gogh, was murdered by a Muslim extremist who then stuck a knife in van Gogh’s body with a…

Of course not. One need not look further than https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Poverty_Law_Center#Co... to find examples where they were not only wrong, but said they were wrong.

Do you only take input from organizations which are perfect?

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

#444

Post by thoughtstheseus »

Patreon is not important or unique enough that exclusion would disadvantage people systematically. They can do what they want, it’s their business. If people don’t like it go build a competitor. It’s just a webpage and payment system.

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

#445

Post by wishinghand »

josteink wrote: post #162

While the article incorrectly conflates being anti-feminist with being against gender equality[1], it’s worth noting that the ban was not for anti-feminist content, but for other improper speech which may or may not be highly contextual. But somehow they decided to ban Milo too, making it much less clear what these bans are all about. Patreon might want to make it clear at this point whether their guidelines are poli…

> I’d rather argue modern day feminist oppose gender equality by constantly promoting special privileges for women. As such being anti-feminist means being pro gender equality.

Whenever I see this perception, I can't help but think it's due to the tweets and tumblrs of a few extreme voices being passed around as representations of the movement as a whole, especially when posted on various subreddits made to put those sorts of views on blast.

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

#446

Post by panorama »

coffeemug wrote: post #434
peterwwillis wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, am…

I've been reading your comments with a lot of interest, but I feel like you took the easy road out on this reply. I think it's clear the OP isn't talking about single instances where someone verbally abuses another person. I agree it's useful/fine to criticize political leaders or for a rapper to diss another rapper. What we're actually dealing with in practice are people instigating hate for other groups of people, in some cases often the same fascist rhetoric used to incite violence (and the acceptance thereof) in Nazi Germany (yes, Godwin's law, yada yada), where do you draw the line?

Do we philosophically want to live in a world where people can be incited to great amounts of violence just because we want to protect FoS on private platforms?

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

#447

Post by kristofferR »

bunderbunder wrote: post #438
coffeemug wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you are only allowed to speak freely when noone can hear you - are you then allowed freedom of speech?

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

#448

Post by sbuttgereit »

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…

I hate generic statements like, "if you use speech to try to hurt people". They tend to be made to let you say something and get many people agreeing with you who would not otherwise if they knew what you really were after. So I would ask you to define what constitutes "hurt" and define what constitutes "people" in your sentence.

I don't think you mean all people... because in the same sentence you advocate harm (or the de facto threat thereof) to some people based on what they might say. So is this hurt feelings? Actual physical harm (or the fear thereof)?

Or are you suggesting that people should be free only to say those things within some pre-approved range of ideas of which people like-minded to yourself are prepared to tolerate?

To be specific, if you're saying that any person that would advocate physical harm, or cause a reasonable person to be fearful of physical harm, should be prevented from speaking... then I'm likely with you. If you really mean more than that, then "hell no!" back at ya.

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

#449

Post by [deleted] »

TheDong wrote: post #396
username90 wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your statement implies that those two groups of people are somehow differing in temperament such that one has more violent tendencies than the other. I don't buy that, today many say things like "Men are on average more prone to violence than women" without intending it in an essentialist way. So then why would "Jamaicans are on average more prone to violence than Japanese" have to be essentialist? The interesting…

I do think that the statement 'Men are on average more prone to violence than women' can be sexist, depending on context. However, I think that it is possible to contextualize fact-based-generalizations to remove sexist/racism from them. If you say 'society conditions men to be less emotionally open, thus men end up being more violent, see these psych studies', that's all well and good. On a similar note, if you say…

[deleted]

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

#450

Post by drak0n1c »

As an aside - it's interesting that the New York Times uses the descriptor "left-leaning" for Chapo Trap House, a podcast by self-described Marxists who regularly advocate for mass property seizure and anti-social mischief. In the article there is no hesitation to use "right-wing", so why not use "left-wing"?

"Far-right" appears regularly in headlines about a variety of events, but I can't recall the last time "far-left" was used at all in headlines or body text, outside of a quote.

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