Live data from Hacker News

Patreon Bars Anti-Feminist for Racist Speech, Inciting Revolt

nytimes.com

521–530 of 789 posts

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

#521
Patreon has been on a spree to ban people that think the wrong way. Matt Christiansen had a call [1] with Patreon to discuss their banning of Sargon of Akkad. Sargon was notified of the banning by his patrons, not Patreon, and had no recourse to challenge the decision. In the call Patreon made it clear that their platform is;

1) explicitly anti free-speech

2) is not a free market (they can ban you for arbitrary reasons, for things posted anywhere including leaked private messages)

3) their rules are enforced in a subjective manner by design

Considering that they have banned many people that disagree with progressive PC ideology, which seems to be a moving target of increasing religious [2] fervor, I can't see why anyone would trust their platform at this point and rely on it to build their income.

Even progressives might like the so-called TERFs fall on the wrong side of the party-line at some point, so I can't see how anyone can trust their platform as a source of income. Unless you of cause love staking your income on the arbitrary whims of the ideologues at Patreon.

As evidence for their political tilt they do not ban leftists that call for violence against viewpoint opponents:

   - https://www.patreon.com/intlantifadefence

   - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/antifa-domestic-terrorists-us-security-agencies-homeland-security-fbi-a7927881.html
 
   - https://www.patreon.com/chapotraphouse
 
   - https://www.reddit.com/r/ChapoTrapHouse/comments/9k14nf/why_does_chapo_promote_political_violence/

   - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_violence
Patreon employees officially support the domestic terrorist group anti-fa:

   - http://www.returnofkings.com/125075/patreon-employee-aaron-ringgenberg-publicly-supports-antifa-domestic-terrorist-organization
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv7hvZee-PQ&feature=youtu.be

[2] https://areomagazine.com/2018/12/18/postmodern-religion-and-...

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

#522

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…

What this article fails to mention, is that Patreon lied about why Benjamin was banned. He did NOT violate their TOS. Patreon dishonestly tried to retroactively apply an amended TOS to justify banning him, after the fact. This demonstrates that Patreon is a dishonest company that will ban you because they feel like it, and then also try to take the high ground and pretend that they are just following their own rules…

Am I factually incorrect? NO. Patreon should not be trusted with anyone's money, because they will make up new rules on the spot, and ban you for things that were not against their own rules. How long until Patreon decides that they don't have to give refunds anymore?

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

#523
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if it's centralisation so much as personification. Patreon wants to be a a friendly brand, part of people's self-image. And having chosen this, perhaps they can't afford to live and let live. It's very difficult to imagine Bell Telephone (in their 100% monopoly days I mean) feeling responsible for what people discuss on their wires, or feeling a need to deny (say) pornographers service so that its other…

And having chosen this, perhaps they can't afford to live and let live. This is how oppression operates. First it's, "Well, we'd live and let live, but we can't afford the consequences if we serve you." Then it will be, "We can't afford the consequences if we're at all associated with you." Then it will be, "We can't afford the consequences if we don't loudly support the 'right' things." Finally, it will become, "We…

Good lord the hyperbole. This isn't the government doing this, and stop trying to construe it as some great 'issue of our time'.

I'd argue this is the natural selection of ideas at work. If you don't like it, raise hell, and gather enough people to make a difference, that's what everyone's done since it became an option to do so.

If you can't harness the momentum perhaps it means that your idea just isn't cut out for life on the grand stage of society. Life after all, is not fair.

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

#524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Verbally abusive music actually gets people killed in Chicago [re: drill music]. Teenagers even get killed over Twitter comments. It's not a joke.

Sorry: NO. If someone is murdered the murderer is responsible, not the person who wrote abusive lyrics or twitter comments.

On the other hand, if you shout "fire" in a crowded place, you make yourself responsible of causing a dangerous situation. Same as flying a drone over an airport or throwing stones from a building.

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

#525
post #312

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. 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…

> In the case of Patreon, there is a man who people want to give money to. He wants to accept that money. There is no criminal activity on either side of the transaction. Yet Patreon is preventing these people from doing what they want because Patreon dislikes one paragraph of the man's boorish utterances.

Patreon isn't "preventing" the transaction, they are merely choosing not to facilitate it. Respecting individual rights does not oblige anyone to help others to do what they want to do.

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

#526

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.

So how do you build a payment system? You partner with banks. What if those banks deplatform you? Do you go and build your own bank? You should be able to see this isn’t practical

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

#527
post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Arguing in bad faith, and exploiting logical technicalities exist, and are widely used to sway the opinion of the masses. this is something any rational society needs to take into account in my opinion.

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

#528
post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 s…

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

> I have not encountered any instance of this occurring.

How could you witness such a thing occurring? This seems like an unreasonable evidentiary standard.

> 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.

Do HIV drugs cause HIV? Do civil rights movements cause racism? De-platforming is a treatment. Of course it's going to co-occur with the thing it's attempting to treat. This is evidence of nothing at all. What you need to do, and what the studies I reference did do, is examine individual communities pre and post treatment. That is how you start to get at causality. The analysis is imperfect, to be sure, but it's a lot better than looking at simple correlation.

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

#529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good question. I've found a transcript published by patreon: https://patreonhq.com/hate-speech-on-patreon-a9026e52c2cf?gi... It's... pretty vitriolic. I'm not totally comfortable with even quoting the redacted version, but here goes nothing: > “I just can’t be bothered with people who chose to treat me like this. It’s really annoying. Like, I — . You’re acting like a bunch of n_____s, just so you know. You act like w…

Oh, yeah, that's bad. He's not even mentioning the words, he's just using them against white people instead of black, but the way he uses them is still meant as an insult. Oops.

Context matters. The alt-right people he targeted viewed it as an insult, so he used their own language against them and framed them as what they define as bad.

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

#530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK with that line too. Guy's a douche.

And tomorrow the line will be don't be Republican. Republicans were banned IRL from a public parade in Portland, OR.

Can you link to what you are talking about? Because if it's what I think it is, this is my neighborhood. It was a parade cancelled to avoid violence, mostly by people who don't live in this neighborhood and don't care about the parade but about politics.
Post reply on HN