Patreon Bars Anti-Feminist for Racist Speech, Inciting Revolt

So far the evidence presented is that there existed a journalist in TV 50 years ago who gave an episode of his television show to an elected Senator who was a political opponent. The countervailing evidence is the existence of a wide variety of mainstream platforms including some who haven't banned NASA Candidate Carl Benjamin; the zero cost of creating a new website on your own and the proliferation of platforms and sites specifically for far-right content; and that there are more publicly active far-right nuts than at any point in history and they receive less political opprobrium and better access to organized politics than any time in the last 100 years.

Take the Daily Stormer: This is an avowed neo-nazi website that denies the holocaust and uses its web platform to specifically target harassment and violence against Jews and feminists. They have no access to visa but still manage to accept private funds and use crypto. The founder of the website is a legal fugitive and a digital nomad. We're not even talking about legal far-right content like Carl Benjamin, we're talking about a guy actually under court indictment for inciting violence and harassment, and the site has a bigger megaphone than ever. And by the way, they even got dropped by Cloudflare, the website that literally doesn't ban anyone or cooperate with authorities or harassment C&Ds. But they're still online and they're still hating just as hard. Is there really a major barrier to entry for Carl "Wheel of Logic" Benjamin?

As to the notion of allowing web platforms to be common carriers, I am indifferent, but also don't feel it's relevant. I trust that Patreon doesn't want to be one. One way you can tell that Patreon doesn't want to be one is that they have never asserted themselves to be a common carrier, they have always banned certain types of content (even though the types of content may change over time), and the fact that they are happily banning far-right figures right now. If they wanted to wash their hands of it, they presumably would. Do you get the sense that Patreon's executives are doing this under extreme duress and really they would just love to host MENSA King Carl Benjamin? I guess it's really possible that the evil VISA SJWs are ruining the daily lives of the Free Speech Protestor Patreon Staff, but I somehow doubt it.

So if allowing web providers to be classed as common carriers doesn't solve the problem, what then? The alternative is that common carrier status is not a protection a provider can choose to avail themselves of, but rather a regulatory requirement of anything deemed to be infrastructural online.

If you are proposing this, that sounds interesting. I think it would take approximately 5 seconds for a Christian VPS provider to object to hosting gay porn, but if you think it's a good use of regulatory muscle to prevent that injustice, then go for it.

Maybe you recognize that's silly and instead of all web infrastructure, the suggestion is that suitably large or critical web infrastructure would be a common carrier. In this case, Patreon and Twitter are both enjoined from banning nazis, although maybe Kickstarter still could. You'd also paradoxically create a situation where Gab could ban feminists but Twitter couldn't ban Carl "The Touch Of Woman Deprives Me Of My Genius Juices" Benjamin.

It is pretty amazing to me that someone would propose reviving notions of trust regulation and busting to secure safe spaces for diaper baby nazis to cash internet welfare while whining about jew feminists... especially in a world where we don't apply any pressure to abuses by Google, Facebook, or Amazon against, you know, everyone.

But I salute your commitment to free speech, I guess.

I think you're probably right. I feel like it's a semantic argument, but it's still worth having, especially when it comes to creating legislation.

There are other options and it's probably not that difficult for another company to disrupt Patreon's business model. There's still the winner-take-all phenomena in tech that makes more or less difference depending on whether your platform has a broad or narrow userbase. If one were creating anti-monopoly legislation, then this distinction might be critical.

Second, even if we set aside protected classes, I don't think Patreon should be obligated to host projects it doesn't agree with, whatever they may be. It is their right to cultivate their public image in whatever way they see fit.

Of course, I also believe VISA is under no obligation to process transactions for Patreon, and so I'd sincerely hope that they'd cut off a hypothetical Patreon that exists just to enrich 4chan weirdos, and I'd work to achieve that goal in society. I would help any effort to shut down such a site.

I would make the same claim about players kneeling during the Anthem in an NFL game. To me, that stage (field) is a workplace and neither owned nor managed by the players. They have no right to kneel there.

In both cases, the protesters have every right to leave the platform and start their own. Of course, various extra-legal downsides may ensue from hard-edged prohibitions by the owners -- not the least of which is alienation of the workforce and/or customers.

IANAL but I wonder though at what point the policing content provider loses any Safe Harbor protections that it may have held. For example, would the portal become liable for some criminal activity that they miss?