Patreon Bars Anti-Feminist for Racist Speech, Inciting Revolt

Patreon, like Facebook, has a de facto monopoly. The outstanding question is what is to be done about it.

And? Even saying it reduced the behavior site-wide is not an effective measurement to conclude that deplatforming works in reducing the prevalence of those views in society. Again, "Deplatforming X views from platform Y resulted in less of X on platform Y" is effectively stating the obvious. To demonstrate the effectiveness of deplatforming, one would have to determine whether deplatforming actually results in fewer people believing in the views that are being deplatformed. I have not encountered any instance of this occurring. Ask yourself this: when you are banned from a forum for views you believe in, or you witness someone banned for views you agree with do you tend to turn around agree with the censor? Or do you become more enthusiastic for that view and lose respect for the censor

> 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.

We're seeing trust in media and tech companies plummet. While the fact that a rise in extremist views is correlated with increases in deplatforming is not hard evidence of causation, it's extremely difficult to claim that deplatforming works to reduce said views in the face of that positive correlation between the two. That's trying to claim a causal relationship in the face of evidence of the opposite correlation.

In other words, if we see A rise alongside B it is indeed jumping the gun to say that A certainly causes B. But it's even more dubious to say that A reduces B in the face of that correlation.

We generally expect provider/customer relationships to be in good faith, and the generally expect free speech to happen in good faith, aka "I'm not relying on dirty tricks to persuade people." DS dropped their end, so I would feel no obligation to hold up my end.

I would oppose banning what they are saying in general, but I think it's entirely reasonable to no longer provide any services to them once they misuse the provider/customer relationship.

Yes, but they should also be free not to, so we really just need some companies with guts to make a payment processor that to the law, nothing more, and related platforms that do the same thing.

> there's not much anyone can do in the current framework of things other than encourage decentralization

But that is ultimately at odds with "hardened policies that aren't selectively enforced". A giant platform, like paypal + patreon without ANY meddling, or a giant payment processor and a bunch of big platforms that use it, that might not just be cheaper to run, it would solve the issue more or less (until they in turn get kicked off the net by cloudflare or something, but why assume that would happen at this point, seem prematurely pessimistic). Decentralization is like "Linux on the desktop", whereas a payment processor that only respects the law really just requires money and people who can do it.

There is no meaningful semantic difference between the statements "Jamaicans are on average more homicidal than Japanese" and "Jamaicans have a higher homicide rate than the Japanese". Your outrage is exactly the kind of behaviour that so many in this thread are decrying: the OP said something that is indisputably real and you reacted by saying "you can and should be banned from platforms".

You are literally trying to expel someone from the internet for saying something true, because you feel a statement of statistical fact implies things you don't like or can't accept (but which weren't actually stated anyway).

You're mis-using facts to represent one culture as more violent than another, and implying that it's a trait of the people, not a much more complicated result of economic and legal differences. It's an incredibly racist and insidious thing to say.

Maybe it's easier on you if the example only discusses white people?

If I said the homicide rate amongst Americans is much higher than amongst the Swiss, I'd be making a negative but true generalisation about Americans (it's 5.35 vs 0.54 murders per 100,000 inhabitants). What is it that causes such a difference in rate? Is it economic differences? Surely not. Legal differences? Perhaps, but there are plenty of guns in Switzerland and violence is equally illegal in both countries. If anything the USA has much harsher punishments so it stands to reason it should have a lower rate.

If you insist on refusing to consider the huge bundle of intuitively defined and often nameless attributes we collectively call "culture" then not only are you wilfully blinding yourself, but you are finding yourself literally attacking and trying to silence people who are less intellectually limited. This sort of behaviour is not a good thing to practice.