Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Patreon Bars Anti-Feminist for Racist Speech, Inciting Revolt

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

531–540 of 789 posts

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

#531

Post by Udik »

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…

One possible take, or solution, to this dilemma is to establish that a service that chooses who to include or exclude based on the content (beyond what is required by the law) becomes a publisher. And as a publisher, it becomes responsible for everything that it makes available to its users.

So in the end a company would be put in front of a choice: either choose what to allow and reject, and become legally responsible for everything that is published; or act as a neutral intermediary and assume no responsibility for the contents. Sounds fair?

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

#533

Post by StavrosK »

asabjorn wrote: post #529
StavrosK wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes but it's an insult targeted towards black people. I'm not sure it had the impact he thought it'd have, since some white racist would just think "but I'm not black", and he just ended up kind of perpetuating the insult.

I mean, I know he didn't mean disrespect towards black people, it was just in poor taste.

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

#534

Post by SolaceQuantum »

halbritt wrote: post #498
krapp wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Patreon is not a de facto monopoly. There is twitch (for subscription/donation), ko-fi (direct donation), mailing a check, PayPal, stripe...

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

#535

Post by mallets »

stcredzero wrote: post #508
SolaceQuantum wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really confused, culturally we didn't really have freedom of speech the way is being described here (the freedom to be in private spaces and say disagreeable things without being ousted). Being bullied out of social circles, shunned for behaving in socially unacceptable ways (like women wearing pants, being gay, accepting interracial marriage) including speaking socially unacceptable things (like women are object…

Being bullied out of social circles, shunned for behaving in socially unacceptable ways (like women wearing pants, being gay, accepting interracial marriage) including speaking socially unacceptable things (like women are objects, I choose not to vaccinate my child) If Patreon were trying to cultivate a "brand" on the side of shunning homosexuals, shaming women who wear pants, and denigrating interracial marriage, wo…

No. But would take a stand against Patreon, and only Patreon, if such a thing were to occur. Patreon is "free" to cultivate their public image as they see fit and I am free to stop using them, discourage others from using it, etc. Nothing to do with their take on free speech.

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

#536

Post by randallsquared »

manfredo wrote: post #258
nkurz wrote: post #69

The article avoids the specifics of what Benjamin said, which makes it hard to judge whether Patreon is acting reasonably. The interview in question is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQ87Wf-0rZg . Here are some excerpts from the automatically generated transcript (click the 3 dots, then "Open transcript"): I just can't be bothered to deal with people who treat me like this it's really annoying like I you are a…

He used slurs, that's for certain. But it's critical to point out that the context in which they were used was to tell the Alt Right that they're behaving exactly like they see the groups they despise (blacks, Jewish people, gays etc.) through their bigoted worldview. Not to mention, your excerpt cuts off a crucial part of what he said. As other commenters pointed out, the whole part of this was: > It's not about, li…

> It is difficult to claim that these statements were meant as an attack on blacks and Jewish people themselves.

Looking through the rest of this thread, it doesn't appear to be difficult to claim that at all. Lots of people are doing so with ease. I think the issue is more about gaslighting vs honesty.

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

#537

Post by icebraining »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #488
kristofferR wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I believe the answer is yes, in that no one is forced to read spam or flyers.

kristofferR wrote "can hear you" not "wants to hear you".

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

#538

Post by afuchs »

pjc50 wrote: post #266
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…

> Also, for the record, I'm a feminist, left-leaning socialist. So good luck writing me off as another conservative windbag who doesn't understand the first amendment that's crowing about censorship. Well, that's all well and good; but I do notice that on Hacker News there is a very strong tendency to only report and discuss this kind of thing when it affects "conservative windbags" or people with terrible long-discr…

The predominant viewpoint of most HN posters seems to lean towards some idealized form of anarcho-capitalist libertarianism. Although there are definitely a few leftists and conservatives in the mix.

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

#539

Post by CamperBob2 »

beokop wrote: post #495
krapp wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Historically, no, but things might be different this time.

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

#540

Post by root_axis »

dwsfzdsfasf wrote: post #481
root_axis wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're way way way overthinking this. The bottom line is that an online service can ban any user for any reason, period. Just because a service is popular doesn't mean that you have a right to use it. If you don't like how a company operates their business, then you can start a boycott or use a competitor. > the world handing them the reigns. Nobody is handing anyone the reigns. Patreon didn't even exist a fe…

"The bottom line is that an online service can ban any user for any reason, period. " Agreed. And the govt (US and EU) can break them up whenever they they attain market monopoly. Or governments (every other one) can decide they've had enough with arbitrary content control by foreigners and ban their service within their borders. Which is fine, really. I dont b%^ h about FB and friends kicking someone out of their se…

> The Internet as we knew it in the 90s is dead

FB, Twitter and Patreon are not the internet of the 90s. The internet as we knew it in the 90s is exactly the same today as it was back then and there were plenty of people receiving subjectively applied bans on various PHPb forums.

Post reply on HN