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Patreon Bars Anti-Feminist for Racist Speech, Inciting Revolt

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

#611

Post by PavlovsCat »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #7
raiflip wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree with his choice of words, and I think its kinda weird that he chose to express himself the way he did when there was a much easier way to go about making the same remark, but that said, it's simply amoral to try and cutoff someone's living and censor them just because the way they said something wasn't to your liking (to be clear I'm not talking about you in particular, but just people in general who th…

> it's simply amoral to try and cutoff someone's living and censor them just because the way they said something wasn't to your liking Would it be immoral (or amoral, either one) of my employer to fire me employed if I gave a tech talk and started throwing the N-word around? Patreon has fairly clear rules on behavior; they're not obligated to keep anyone as their client if they start breaking them.

> Patreon has fairly clear rules on behavior

Wrong.

There are no clear rules that apply to all, there's just very vague, wishy washy words that are applied differently in different cases, which is "subjective" and "case-by-case":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv7hvZee-PQ

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

#612

Post by chillacy »

FakeComments wrote: post #567
nkurz wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I quit Patreon over a previous version of this issue. I doubt that they did this for any reason other than using power against people they don’t like.

One repulsive person quits, 1000 people stay.

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

#613

Post by halbritt »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #534
halbritt wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

The winner-take-all phenomena of tech is described elsewhere in this topic at length.

Patreon has no viable direct competitor for subscription based donations. You may not consider that to be a de facto monopoly, but that’s a semantic argument that’s orthogonal to my point.

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

#614

Post by ralusek »

krapp wrote: post #556
Fins wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with the Paradox of Tolerance is that while in theory it is quite correct and rather profound, in practice it's often an explanation trotted out by those in power to silence those they do not like.

Can you give examples of this in practice where those being "silenced" weren't expressing intolerant views?

Sargon of Akkad being taken off Patreon...literally what is being discussed in this thread. Janice Fiamingo having fire alarms pulled. Ben Shapiro being prevented from speaking at universities.

They aren't intolerant, they're just anti-left.

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

#615

Post by jnbiche »

unethical_ban wrote: post #456
bunderbunder wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting how this gets framed differently nowadays. 20 years ago, before social media, there was no assumption that everyone has a fundamental right to be able to broadcast their ideas using others' platforms. Since publication was more resource-intensive, the default for most media was to not publish things, and deciding that someone's ideas didn't merit publication wasn't seen as a violation of any great mo…

Ooo, I can link to my blog for relevance: https://wannabewonk.com/gab-and-free-speech-on-the-internet/ Summary: I agree, largely. Socially, we should be able to debate people with diverse opinions without turning the world into one big safe space. As far as the rights of hosting platforms: There has to be a line somewhere. I draw the line at CAs, ISPs and registrars. They should have to serve ANYONE unless the govern…

I agree. I don't believe each and every social network should be obliged to host every damn extremist group in the nation. On the other hand, ISPs, CAs, and registrars should be obligated to do so, being analogous to public utilities. I'd support a law codifying this requirement.

Social media companies, in the other hand, are more like the modern version of newspapers and magazines. And you don't have the right to be published been the most popular magazine simply because there's where the most readers are.

However, I would put cloud companies like AWS in the bucket of utilities and not media. Gab shouldn't have to worry about being cut off for lack of a hosting company. We can't say, "go find another social media home" to people we disagree with, only to watch in glee as the social media companies that will have them are shut down for lack of a hosting company or data center.

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

#617

Post by ralusek »

smrtinsert wrote: post #343
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…

At racism. Easy call for me.

Yes, but please examine how the case becomes muddied with literally any level of nuance. Sargon of Akkad was deplatformed for using the n-word in a conversation criticizing a group of white-supremacists for behaving exactly like the people that they constantly classify as "n-words." He was literally using the term ironically, against white-supremacists, to show them how their own behaviors were exactly the sorts of behaviors they were attempting to classify as inferior and "black."

The man has hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of footage of his opinions online. He is not racist...at all. And yet here you are confidently and smugly declaring your comfort with his livelihood being taken away on the basis of his racism because the issue could not be simpler in your mind.

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

#618

Post by PavlovsCat »

NegativeK wrote: post #34
orblivion wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to what I've heard, those clear rules state that they apply to what is said as part of work that is funded by Patreon. This could be misinformation, though, and I'd be happy if someone corrects it here. With that in mind, he made the remarks in question during a conversation that took place on somebody else's YouTube channel. It sounds like Patreon presumes that the guy's patronized work includes all public…

I'm not sure why people expect platforms that have ToS to be robotic about them. Companies are run by people. People get uncomfortable when you become known for spraying around racial epithets, and some are not going to want to work with you. If I'm using some vendor and find out that I really don't like what their public persona is doing, I'm going to reevaluate that relationship.

> I'm not sure why people expect platforms that have ToS to be robotic about them.

Being fair, being open, being honest isn't being "robotic". Treating people like more than something to exploit and throw away is what I would consider "robotic". The constant "it's a private company, brain off", that's what is robotic.

> Companies are run by people. People get uncomfortable when you become known for spraying around racial epithets, and some are not going to want to work with you.

Yeah, people. Not necessarily adult people. Take this man, for example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORp3q1Oaezw

Do you honestly think you know or have anything he doesn't? Wouldn't you rather think it's the other way around?

If you stand aside as mobs try to kill free speech on the internet, you're banking on them winning, on there never being a time where, if you can't show clear proof that you resisted, nobody wanting to work with you. I doubt you would just say "fair enough". I don't think you'd consider that a humane society just because the majority might claim it is.

> If I'm using some vendor and find out that I really don't like what their public persona is doing, I'm going to reevaluate that relationship.

This isn't just a vendor. We're talking about companies that provide services that really, realistically, should be utilities. You shouldn't get your water turned off for calling obese people names, or your electricity turned off for saying Hitler was right. That's a stone age level regression that not just shows a level of moral bankruptcy on par or worse of the views that are "fought" by these mobs, it also says that these views cannot be fought other than by fighting the people that hold them, virtually or even physically.

It's undoing progress and re-introduces "might is right" as a valid ideal. That is all. If you use Patreon in 2019, you have a.) no alternatives, b.) no clue, and/or c.) double standards, and I for one will not be working with you. A bad standard is a bad standard, a person with double standards is quicksand.

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

#619

Post by someguydave »

barry-cotter wrote: post #563
SolaceQuantum wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Patreon may not be a de facto monopoly but the MasterCard Visa cartel are and they leaned on the downstream payment processors to ban the Patreon competitor SubscribeStar as soon as they took on Carl Benjamin. https://twitter.com/nickmon1112/status/1076886857445711872?s...

And MasterCard and Visa operate their cartel in cooperation with banks and federal regulators. To what degree does the first amendment apply to entities that are regulated and protected by the federal government?

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

#620

Post by XorNot »

PavlovsCat wrote: post #507
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…

> Privately-owned services should be free to censor. 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…

You're making a real big assumption that anyone wants to build this service, and anyone wants to support it.

The evidence says, they do not - hate groups fail at these gives all the time because ultimately they also don't get along with anyone else.

I'd view that as the marketplace of ideas working correctly.

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