651–660 of 789 posts
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If you are only allowed to speak freely when noone can hear you - are you then allowed freedom of speech?
You need to rephrase this to: "If you are only able to speak freely when no one is forced to listen to you - are you then allowed freedom of speech?" This isn't some guy shouting in the street or some other public place (who, funnily enough, everyone usually agrees with their removal), but someone shouting on what is effectively private property.
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> Freedom of Speech is not the right to be heard Then this limited "freedom of speech", a provincial americanism based on a historical accident (the first amendment), is not the full freedom of speech the philosophers of enlightenment, artists, activists, etc., described. > If people don't like what you have to say, or how you are saying it, they are free to walk away In this case, they weren't free to walk away, the…
> a provincial americanism Can you point to other countries that have broader freedom of speech than the US?
All, or almost all, Western European countries have freedom of speech and freedom of the press in their law and/or constitution.
In any case, all of these are beside the point. The point wasn't about what "freedom of speech" laws the state deemed ok to give, but what freedom of speech is (or should be).
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I think the lesson of the past, is that people who do the kind of suppression which Patreon is engaging in, which Pay Pal is engaging in, which people who ran "restricted" clubs engaged in -- the people doing these things are the ones who have decided that certain people are "undesirables" and are motivated by the darker side of human emotion. It's those who are on the wrong side of history. The right side is the sid…
That is not the same thing. The white supremacists are thrown off Patreon because of what they do not because of who they are . Their ideas aren't being suppressed.
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> 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. People keep saying this and repeating it, but as far as I can tell this meme is destructive and wrong. Freedom of speech isn't just a legal assurance that congress shall make no law abridging it. It is also a set of cultural norms rooted deeply in a long lineage of hard won ideas. It is Evelyn Hall's principle "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the de…
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> Patreon isn't "preventing" the transaction, they are merely choosing not to facilitate it. What is the distinction between these two terms? If Wells Fargo refuses to let me deposit checks because of something I said, are they preventing a transaction or merely choosing not to facilitate it? After all, I could open an account at another bank. If FedEx returns packages addressed to me because of something I said, are…
In my mind, banks are infrastructure. There are a limited number of them, and you have to get a pretty specific charter to operate one (that I don't think is even being granted anymore?) Patreon isn't. Anyone can create a website where people donate money to creators.
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I’m confused why patreons behavior is newly unacceptable in a way that sparks controversy. I agree that it is likely a problem overall, but I don’t understand what has occurred that has made it new to discuss.
>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.
In other words "a lot of people in the tech community" are alt-right and anti-feminist (and thus, implied, bad people with bad ideas), but weaselly put.
How about, "a lot of people in the tech community" sympathize with people being deplatformed, period? (Ever heard of the EFF? The story of the Pirate Bay and its support? DeCSS? Support for Assange?)
Sure, this which would still include people being sympathetic to "alt-right and anti-feminist". Do people have to follow your particular politics and ideological preferences wholesale to be acceptable? Perhaps those are just pure truth, and everything else is evil?
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Really? How many anti-feminists are there on Hacker News? Very few, I'd say, especially as such views tend to be immediately downvoted and flagged into oblivion. There are however plenty of people who are disturbed by the systematic way certain minorities attack and destroy speech about ideas that are, objectively, commonplace and popular (just look at opinion polls). Even the top voted comment on this whole thread t…
> Very few, I'd say, especially as such views tend to be immediately downvoted and flagged into oblivion They do have to be here to be voted down, though. But they show up often enough in threads that deviate into gender politics (particularly as regards hiring and women in tech,) gender biology and, unsurprisingly, feminism. And codes of conduct. For some weird reason, a lot of people seem to believe software codes…
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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.
You can see parallels with white extremists that write racist screeds, and later go on to commit violence themselves, or when their writing inspires violence. One former white supremacist who was the leader of a popular white supremacist punk band admitted he knew there were people who committed violence and quoted his music as an inspiration, which in part helped him leave his old views behind.
To paraphrase Bob Dylan, music can't keep a revolution going. But it can and does encourage people to act.
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If you take a very specific definition of Patreon's business, donate a monthly amount to creators in return for nothing, recognition, or virtual/physical benefits, then perhaps you could say they have a defacto monopoly. But if you take a slightly wider look at supporting creators whose content you enjoy, then not at all. You have Twitch subscriptions, YouTube supports/members/whatever they are calling it these days,…
> It also seems way easier to start up something like Patreon than a FB competitor. 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…
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I just made an argument about that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18765494 , and here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18765509 . > The difference is that the internet has discontinuously more scalable network effects, so technology companies often find themselves in a winner-takes-all dynamic. If some publisher, newspaper, or literary magazine refused to publish Walt Whitman, he could always try and…
The fact that Twitter is way more popular than Mastodon doesn't really change anything. It's freedom of speech , not freedom of venue.