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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

#731

Post by repolfx »

krapp wrote: post #546
repolfx wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Because they tend to get promoted by feminists, and then used to attack and shut down project members who aren't. Look at the NodeJS incident for an example.

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

#732

Post by paulcole »

dang wrote: post #729
paulcole wrote: post #721

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you kidding me? Somebody says they’re “torn” on whether private companies should allow nazis and racists a megaphone and I’m the one starting a “hellish flame war”?

Yes. That comment was obviously substantive, and it was obviously possible to disagree with it substantively. You needn't look far for examples of how to do that, since the top-voted reply is one. Since instead you tossed off a Molotov one-liner which empirically resulted in a flamewar, I don't see any question that you started it. This is not a hard moderation call. When a topic is as provocative and inflammatory as…

Just because someone writes a lot doesn’t mean it’s substantive.

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

#733

Post by reitanqild »

asabjorn wrote: post #714
StavrosK wrote: post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, pretty weak of you to vote me down instead Ugh, first of all, stop assuming I downvoted you, I only now saw your reply. Second of all, it's not about actively harming people in that specific instance, it's about perpetuating the perception. Using a word as an insult implies that the target group is inferior and to be associated with it is undesirable. That's why I don't like people calling others "niggers"…

Well, did you downvote me once you saw it? With regards to your offense that is fine when it is used in this way. However, what is your evidence that anyone in that group was there as collateral damage? The target was alt-rights in a livestream with 3000 views in total, and the context of his words clearly doesn’t match your characterization. I think no one is fooled at this point by activists working hard to find so…

> Well, did you downvote me once you saw it?

StavrosK couldn't possibly downvote you I think.

No account can downvote a direct reply as far as I'm aware.

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

#734

Post by eli_gottlieb »

bunderbunder wrote: post #417
coffeemug wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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…

I'd like to agree with you, but I have to insist that there's some difference between, say, CloudFlare, Patreon, and Twitter.

Twitter is the most straightforward regarding freedom of association: they are literally providing you with a platform to say things, and to broadcast saying things. They're a private company. If they decide they hate everyone born on May 4th or something, fuggit, they've (legally and philosophically) got that right.

Patreon and PayPal, on the next hand, are payment processors. They're not the only payment processors. Patreon also provides you with more publicity for yourself as a payee than PayPal does. Still, these digital payment processors are the cash of the internet. Before we had them, or just when we were teenagers, the best you could do was ask for Mom and Dad's credit-card number, or maybe send a money-order (remember those) by mail to some dude for stuff. It was a damned shady way to do business and we all ditched it the first thing we could.

Next comes CloudFlare. They literally just provide mirroring and maintenance for your web-servers. You supply the software and the content, yes? They don't even publicize you; in fact, they try to avoid publicizing you by keeping your site visible and their service invisible.

At what point does any of these things become, ethically speaking, a common carrier, providing something like unto a public utility, requiring some degree of common carrier protections to make sense as a business?

Are we really going to insist that once you're selling nasty porn or passing out Nazi pamphlets over the Internet there should be no equivalent of payment in cash or a private copy machine that lets you operate a deeply unpopular, even immoral, enterprise without asking the permission of a major advertising firm? In the physical world we have public spaces and legal tender that guarantee us real spaces in which to carry out our legal rights to do things everyone else despises. We should have some equivalent of that over the web, too.

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

#735

Post by dang »

paulcole wrote: post #732
dang wrote: post #729

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. That comment was obviously substantive, and it was obviously possible to disagree with it substantively. You needn't look far for examples of how to do that, since the top-voted reply is one. Since instead you tossed off a Molotov one-liner which empirically resulted in a flamewar, I don't see any question that you started it. This is not a hard moderation call. When a topic is as provocative and inflammatory as…

Just because someone writes a lot doesn’t mean it’s substantive.

Do you really not see how your comment was flamebait?

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

#736

Post by eli_gottlieb »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #453
coffeemug wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 find another publisher. But if Twitter bans Titania McGrath, there is no other Twitter for her to join because the next best alternative has 1/10000…

Yes, and this was problem exists to this day in prevailing cable and newspapers. During the time they were prevalent, unpopular events and speech were not spoken on the biggest networks (still not spoken about) and significant silenced perspectives had to make do with smaller platforms, poorer cable times, smaller venues, and self-publishing newspapers assuming they could fund a printing press. There was not a push t…

It's not new, but I do believe back in the day there was such a thing as public-access television, and anyone could in fact start their own newspaper without being somehow banned from taking cash payments.

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

#737

Post by reitanqild »

lgleason wrote: post #571

>"Patreon takes a highly personal approach to policing speech. While Google and Facebook use algorithms as a first line of defense for questionable content, Patreon has human moderators. They give warnings and reach out to talk to offenders, presenting options for “education” and “reform.” Some activists hope this will become a model for a better and kinder internet." As soon a I hear the words "education" and "refor…

> unlike Google alternatives etc. which are not as readily available.

Happy to say that duckduckgo is getting really good.

Cannot say it is better than Google, but for most queries it is equally good and it feels a lot better. Also, retrying with Google is as simple as adding a !g to the query.

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

#738

Post by eli_gottlieb »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #335
ggreer wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Listeners are perfectly free to go elsewhere to hear racist speech — Gab exists, 4chan exists, and there are plenty of smaller sites dedicated to this as well. Insofar as they want to support someone monetarily, no one can prevent them from using Bitcoin.

>Listeners are perfectly free to go elsewhere to hear racist speech — Gab exists, 4chan exists, and there are plenty of smaller sites dedicated to this as well.

Haven't various hosting and mirroring platforms refused to service some of these websites? I recall Gab in particular running into some trouble on that front.

>Insofar as they want to support someone monetarily, no one can prevent them from using Bitcoin.

Except for Bitcoin being non-convertible into legal tender without going through... oh look, a privately-owned payment processor.

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

#739

Post by eli_gottlieb »

stevenicr wrote: post #392
aeternus wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they aren't highly unpopular then there should be a demand and market for services/platforms that do allow those opinions. Even though not as large, another company/service should be able to fill the void.

I was under the impression that the main thing preventing "another company/service should be able to fill the void." - is the rules and hoops / unchecked power of the visa/mc/amex etc. I have seen rumors about us gov and other govs pressuring cc authorities to do things in certain ways as well, however my senator says there is no proof rumored pressure changed anything in one case that I write about. there is demand…

Basically, we don't just need a post-office bank, we need a post-office networked payment processor, hosting service, and DNS registry, ensuring that there's always an option of last resort for enabling Bad Things to be done over the internet exactly as freely as we legally allow them to be done in meatspace.

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

#740

Post by PavlovsCat »

PavlovsCat wrote: post #681
toufiqbarhamov wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s interesting, and weird when you consider that the people who seem to be railing against this supposed censorship share significant overlap in the Venn diagram of people who complain about a growing sense of entitlement among others. Ironically at some point these same people decided that they deserve to be published wherever they want, and anything else is censorship. Presumably these are people who felt even ha…

> in the Venn diagram The one you just made up from whole cloth? > Honestly though, I have another theory. Do you have an actual position, too?

You don't want to address actual people so you talk about a Venn diagramm you made up, and you have several theories, so I guess not one of them is what you actually think. Prove me wrong. You can't have two opinions, so is either one of those "theories" your opinion, or is neither? You see, I'm not being snarky when I'm being short, I'm giving the reader the benefit of the doubt. I can expand and substantiate everything I hint at, or I wouldn't hint at it.

And also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word and then notice how HN is positively gushing with super-couched "arguments", in any thread. "I'm not entirely sure it would be impossible to theorize that"... it's like the only subjects many people are comfortable with talking about with any level of attention or intellectuality are those that are purely technical, i.e. where person doesn't need to have position.

With anything that can't be decided by reading specs or benchmarks, wishy-washy stuff comes out, and doesn't get defended either. It just keeps getting posted, and calling it out may get downvoted -- as if showing something to mean nothing is worse than writing something that means nothing [0] -- but no actual defense, at most one half-assed attempt and when that is refuted, no conceding of a point either.. rinse, repeat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ2AH7u_9Xo&t=1m10s

> the ways in which we were turning politics into economics, and allowing our faculty of reason to be denigrated into a faculty of calculation

... which might lead a person to think that being in the majority makes them right, or that an imaginary Venn diagram describes all sorts of real people, or that truth is decided by votes, or that the wisdom with which someone votes makes a quantum leap when they reach 500 karma. Among other things.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18759743

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