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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

#491

Post by slededit »

notafraudster wrote: post #468
slededit wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

News organizations used to be much more interested in presenting the “other” side. Sometimes referring to outsider writings when they felt their own biases prevented them from doing justice to the ideas they disagreed with. My favorite example is Edward R. Murrow giving an entire episode to McCarthy (unedited) to explain why he felt black listing communists was necessary. Letters to the editor are vestigial examples…

Murrow devoted an episode to McCarthy because at the time Murrow was one of three people who had an episode to devote to McCarthy. Now McCarthy has a network that will have him on any time he wants, and if he didn't he'd have a hundred online venues, including the one he runs, and most of them spend time talking about how Murrow is a "Jew Communist" or an "SJW" or whatever people say now, so it should probably not be…

Referencing McCarthy’s “friendly” networks and TV shows misses the point. “Disgusting” viewpoints can today be had on Drudge Report and numerous other places friendly to that viewpoint.

Murrow had spent much of the previous year criticizing McCarthy’s attacks on freedom of speech and association.

The equivalent today would be Rachel Maddow giving an entire episode to Trump to do with as he wished.

Murrow did not have to do this - in fact he was under great pressure to just drop the thing entirely by his network. He did so because he thought it right to expose his audience to ideas other than his own. Many in the news business felt the same at the time.

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

#492

Post by eesmith »

furgooswft13 wrote: post #263
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…

It's so hard to trust anything these days, much less the SPLC... > Mike Peinovich, hosted a poll asking users who their biggest influence was in coming to the alt-right. Multiple respondents named Sargon of Akkad. I can't find the actual poll in question, but from the SPLC's own analysis, Sargon was mentioned a grand total of 3 times in a thread about what brought people to "the movement" on The Right Stuff forum. I…

You write "he's no racist".

The SPLC did not say he is a racist, did they? I didn't see that in the text I mentioned, but perhaps they said it elsewhere? If not, then you don't need to take their word for something they didn't say.

They did make an association between him and racism, so let's examine that connection.

This thread exists because of an NYT article about an action by Patreon where Patreon, at https://patreonhq.com/hate-speech-on-patreon-a9026e52c2cf and mentioned elsewhere in this thread - says he "used racial slurs to insult others and specifically linked those slurs with negative generalizations of behavior, in contrast to how people of other races act." You can confirm that those are some pretty racist statements.

Now, I know that some people demur stating that someone is a racist for doing racist things. Are you making that distinction?

Even if you don't think he's a racist for making those comment, it is enough to support the SPLC association of him with racism, yes? If not, why not?

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

#493

Post by darawk »

manfredo wrote: post #420
darawk wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Largely because the opposition did exactly that: they started deplatforming and attempting to more coercively prevent right wing views from speaking. Deplatforming grew in popularity around 2013 or 2014. Students at Brown shut down Ray Kelly's speech in 2014 [1]. We did prevent these groups from going out into the sunlight. That gave them the chance to grow in the shadows. I'm not a fan of de-platforming, but there…

That deplatforming deprives the person being deplatformed of a platform is obvious, to the point that it's effectively a tautology. However, concluding that this means deplatforming is effective is extremely naive. When tech companies engage in acts of censorship like deplatforming, it causes many do lose trust in the perceived lack of partiality of these platforms. So while individual people getting censored may see…

> That deplatforming deprives the person being deplatformed of a platform is obvious, to the point that it's effectively a tautology. However, concluding that this means deplatforming is effective is extremely naive. When tech companies engage in acts of censorship like deplatforming, it causes many do lose trust in the perceived lack of partiality of these platforms. So while individual people getting censored may see their audiences diminish, support for the views they espouse and distrust of the authority carrying out the censorship often increase. In case it wasn't clear, the lack of efficacy in deplatforming I referred to in my previous comment was in reference to attempts to curb ideas and political movements - not individuals within those.

It didn't just impact the individuals, it reduced the behavior site-wide.

> Again, deplatforming gained traction in the early to mid 2010s. It coincides more or less directly with the rise of the Alt Right. Increases in deplatforming is correlated with support for the far right, not against it.

This is a pretty clear correlation/causality confusion. If factor A is on the rise and triggers reaction B, you cannot use the rise of B to prove that B caused A. Now, your narrative may be correct, but the narrative story you've provided does not demonstrate it.

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

#494

Post by repolfx »

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.

That would be a good argument if Gab didn't also keep getting shut down, deplatformed and generally targeted by lots of activists who would love to erase it from the net entirely.

The goal of the sort of people doing this is that there are no alternatives. Not competing platforms, not self hosting, nothing. They want to erase all such thought from all public spaces and will not stop until they do.

That is the problem.

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

#495

Post by beokop »

krapp wrote: post #442
beokop wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The cure to racism isn’t isolation.

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

#496

Post by repolfx »

aeternus wrote: post #357
zepto wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that they aren’t necessarily highly unpopular. They are just outside of the political norms that happen to be popular within a small class in control of the platforms.

If they aren't highly unpopular then there should be a demand and market for services/platforms that do allow those opinions. Even though not as large, another company/service should be able to fill the void.

There clearly is such demand. However, all such services require partnership with other services, that's the nature of a modern economy - there's always a supply chain. And the sort of liberals who are systematically trying to shut down all conservatives from the internet will also systematically attack those supply chains, from web hosting to DNS to bandwidth. They will never stop, they will never cease because their goal is totalitarian control over thought and ideas. They are not the majority, but they are significantly more vicious and the majority is largely passive.

We have seen this over and over. Any organisation that provides some sort of useful service will inevitably end up hiring activist employees that take extreme positions and threaten to cause as much chaos as they can if they don't get their way with regards to eliminating conservative customers.

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

#497

Post by ggreer »

nkurz wrote: post #412
ggreer wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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). M…

Patreon has ... a political bias, and that's not good for them What makes you think that their bias is not good for them as a business? To me, it seems quite possible that were they to take the "principled" stance you advocate, they would soon find themselves facing much larger problems. Either their payment processors would cut them off, or they would face a larger and better organized boycott by those who prefer th…

> What makes you think that their bias is not good for them as a business?

Well it caused me to cancel all of my subscriptions. It caused Sam Harris to cancel his account. It caused a lot of people to look for alternatives. I'm pretty sure this decision hurt Patreon's bottom line.

> Either their payment processors would cut them off, or they would face a larger and better organized boycott by those who prefer their current bias.

I don't think that's true, at least not with most of the Patreon bans. Nobody was organizing a boycott of Patreon for this, and Patreon's blog post didn't say they were pressured by payment processors. Another example: When Cloudflare stopped hosting The Daily Stormer, it was because Cloudflare's CEO didn't like them claiming that Cloudflare was a secret supporter of their racist ideology. And today Cloudflare seems to have no trouble with payment processors or boycotts despite hosting the Westboro Baptist Church's website.[1]

1. https://www.godhatesfags.com/

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

#498

Post by halbritt »

krapp wrote: post #466
SolaceQuantum wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m confused why patreons behavior is newly unacceptable in a way that sparks controversy. I agree that it is likely a problem overall, but I don’t understand what has occurred that has made it new to discuss.

>I don’t understand what has occurred that has made it new to discuss. A lot of people in the tech community and on HN sympathize with the ideology of people being deplatformed, particularly regarding alt-right and "anti-feminist" views.

I think one of the bigger complaints as I understand it, is that Patreon is a de facto monopoly in this space and their rules for these circumstances are arbitrary and capricious.

The outstanding question seems to be whether this merits a degree of outrage, not whether we as a society should pass some laws that would protect creators from Patreon.

I know very little about Sargon of Akkad, but as I understand it, his comments were made in a video in which he was being interviewed, not a video that was being funded by Patreon. There's some question about the context of the comments, as to whether he was making them as an example of something a nazi might say or whether they were directed at a particular group. I don't really know.

Patreon's response was that when one of their creators exhibited behavior they didn't approve of outside of their platform (i.e. videos funded through them) that they would demand contrition and be the sole arbiter as to whether that contrition was sufficient.

Sounds worthy of a little outrage to me.

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

#499

Post by [deleted] »

Fellshard wrote: post #469
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…

It is frustrating to see rising intolerance of speech in the culture. Yes, Patreon has the right to decline to do business with people they don't like. What they absolutely ought not do - and what Patreon might perhaps be held contractually responsible for, here - is to hide the ball and not be transparent about their reasons for removing people. This recurring theme is now showing up on a regular basis in social med…

[deleted]

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

#500

Post by bilbo0s »

joshuamorton wrote: post #329
bilbo0s wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But most football players are obviously not working for such an organization. And they are taking these actions on private property . Now, if a guy or gal is invited to perform on a military base during a national holiday commemoration, then sure, they should be compelled not to kneel. But if we're talking about things happening on private property as a part of a private gathering, those people can do whatever they p…

You're misunderstanding what GP is saying. A performer on a military base is constitutionally protected from punishment for kneeling during the national anthem, because that base is public and they're acting as a citizen. A member of the military may have other requirements, I'm not really sure. A professional (as opposed to high school or college, where this argument doesn't work) football player is playing on priva…

>who can set rules as they see fit...

Right.

Which is why I wrote:

>If the owners have the guts, let them all fire the football players...

But if the owners don't fire them, then whatever. Not our business. Watch them, or don't watch them. That's your choice. Nothing more.

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