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Patreon Bars Anti-Feminist for Racist Speech, Inciting Revolt

nytimes.com

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

#91

Post by iguy »

losvedir wrote: post #67
iguy wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if it's centralisation so much as personification. Patreon wants to be a a friendly brand, part of people's self-image. And having chosen this, perhaps they can't afford to live and let live. It's very difficult to imagine Bell Telephone (in their 100% monopoly days I mean) feeling responsible for what people discuss on their wires, or feeling a need to deny (say) pornographers service so that its other…

> Or Visa likewise today -- it's understood that other people will use the same plastic to pay for things you morally disapprove of, just as they could use cash. But it's positioned as a neutral carrier, and nobody cares (I think). Heh, well I hope so. But that recent NYTimes story[0] about how mass shootings used guns and ammo bought with a credit card makes me unsure about that. I'd have thought using cash vs credi…

Thanks, I heard about this gun case & forgot. So this points out that it's not only about new kinds business, but about a changing mood in general, even in old businesses.

By new kinds business I mean that lots of internet companies seem to be awkwardly half-way between neutral infrastructure (like Windows, and your water company) and being publications (which of course have an editorial line).

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

#92

Post by paulcole »

> Why are we giving companies and people the right to silence vast amounts of voices and opinions on random whims?

This is not a new situation. But all of a sudden it’s a problem because it’s conservative white guys instead of women, LGBTQ people and people of color?

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

#93

Post by intrasight »

"And while many internet creators argue that Silicon Valley is trying to censor free speech, what the companies are doing is legal, said Vera Eidelman, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s speech, privacy and technology project. “The First Amendment right is on the side of the company,” she said."

I think that sums up the matter. If people want to raise funds from their supporters, they should disintermediate and just ask those supporters to send checks - just like it used to be done.

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

#94

Post by darawk »

throwawaysea wrote: post #77

I don't understand why commenters in these threads keep noting that free speech only protects people from government censorship. This is a common, distracting, and empty statement. Proponents of free speech are pro free speech as a general concept and principle, beyond what protections are afforded under American law today. The idea of free speech predates the existence of the United States. Free speech is hugely val…

It's an interesting problem. Speech has never truly been free, sometimes and in some places its been regulated by government, but in modern liberal democracies its been regulated by culture. Polite society regulates speech by rejecting people who engage in whatever that society views as harmful speech.

Social media platforms and the internet generally, substantially weaken the power of culture to regulate speech in the way that it used to. I don't know what we do about this. We don't want government regulating speech, and it doesn't seem like allowing social media platforms to regulate it arbitrarily is particularly good either. But the gates that culture and localism placed on speech in the past did, seemingly, serve some useful purpose.

Do we want to live in a world where speech is truly unregulated, even by shame or culture? Maybe. It's possible that the answer here is yes we do, that sunlight is always the best disinfectant, and that the truth always emerges victorious in the end. But it's also possible that those things aren't true. I don't have an answer, but I don't think one way or the other is the obviously correct path forward either.

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

#95

Post by stcredzero »

evil-olive wrote: post #78
iguy wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if it's centralisation so much as personification. Patreon wants to be a a friendly brand, part of people's self-image. And having chosen this, perhaps they can't afford to live and let live. It's very difficult to imagine Bell Telephone (in their 100% monopoly days I mean) feeling responsible for what people discuss on their wires, or feeling a need to deny (say) pornographers service so that its other…

> It's very difficult to imagine Bell Telephone (in their 100% monopoly days I mean) feeling responsible for what people discuss on their wires, or feeling a need to deny (say) pornographers service so that its other customers wouldn't feel tainted. Bell in its monopoly days was a common carrier [0], regulated by law to treat all phone lines equally. > Or Visa likewise today -- it's understood that other people will…

If you have freedom of commerce, but no individual freedoms outside of that, like freedom of speech, then you basically have China. So it's a very reasonable trade off to make: give up a little freedom of commerce to ensure more basic personal freedoms.

The recipe for boiling the frog in introducing totalitarianism is the same: First you go after the least popular people and get tacit approval. Then you extend that to someone else, then someone else. Eventually, you get to a point where everyone is at least a little leery of speaking up. Then you turn it up just a little more. Rinse and repeat.

This is where we are now. We are in the middle of the process above. It doesn't matter how idealistic the people who are implementing it. Control thought and speech, and you lock in absolute power, and absolute power corrupts. All of the worst totalitarian regimes throughout history had idealistic, flowery sounding language to justify their actions. All of them.

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

#96

Post by lancesells »

ng12 wrote: post #56
pavel_lishin wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's stay on topic here; being banned from Patreon doesn't limit his speech at all.

But what happens when Patreon, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, Twitch and PayPal all work together to create collective censorship? Is your speech being limited if you're functionally blocked from the meaningfully accessible parts of the internet? Yes, these are all private companies. In fact someone already tried to create an alternative Patreon (called Hatreon, iirc) that was shut down by Visa. Allowing censors…

No, your speech is still safe even if Comcast cuts off your service. The internet does not equal freedom of speech. Just because the barrier of entry to Twitter or Facebook is considerably easier than appearing on CNN they are companies that can have rules regarding who they allow on.

If people are being arrested for what they are saying then that's censorship and something to be worried about.

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

#97

Post by c3534l »

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…

We live in a world where corporate entities have an extraordinary control over our lives, what opinions we see and hear, even if we actively seek out those opinions. At some point we need to stop thinking about free speech as simply a guarantee against government intrusion, but also a guarantee against our increasingly powerful corporate overlords.

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

#98

Post by eesmith »

darkpuma wrote: post #79
tshaddox wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know anything about this particular case, but it is certainly possible to be a Nazi while claiming to be anti-Nazi.

I can't speak to what's really in the guy's head, but he seemed to be arguing with and insulting nazis.

> Likewise, Benjamin has been called right wing and an alt-right sympathizer by multiple news outlets. He rejects those characterizations, calling himself a “classical liberal.” However, a recent Southern Poverty Law Center report revealed he has been a stepping stone for some white supremacists on the path to radicalization. The Right Stuff, an unapologetically racist, antisemitic blog founded by white supremacist Mike Peinovich, hosted a poll asking users who their biggest influence was in coming to the alt-right. Multiple respondents named Sargon of Akkad. And for someone who says he’s not a part of the alt-right, he’s been spending a lot of time with them lately. He’s appeared in videos with alt-right figures like Millennial Woes and Richard Spencer, giving those men a platform to reach his nearly 800,000 subscribers in the process. - https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/04/25/milo-yiannopo...

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

#99

Post by thelasthuman »

fb-denier wrote: post #39
pavel_lishin wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> taking away people's ability to earn money On a single platform. Nobody's preventing Mr. Benjamin from making money; they're just not allowing him to use one specific platform. He's welcome to sign up for Hatreon, or to use a payment processor directly.

One does not simply use a payment processor directly. Stripe and PayPal both deplatformed within a week the Patreon alternative that the guy went to after being kicked off Patreon (SubscribeStar). Hatreon was also deplatformed by their payment processor, as noted below. In another recent instance, MasterCard demanded that Patreon kick off another person for political reasons [1]. Social network Gab is now accepting U…

What's stopping these people from creating a "MasterRacecard" and fulfilling their payment processing?

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

#100

Post by darkpuma »

fucking_tragedy wrote: post #88
darkpuma wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak to what's really in the guy's head, but he seemed to be arguing with and insulting nazis.

> arguing with and insulting nazis. He wasn't arguing with white supremacists because he fundamentally disagreed with them. It was infighting between factions. He disagreed with a particular faction's behavior and words. He was arguing with them because they, using his words, were acting like "white n-words"[1]: > “ I just can’t be bothered with people who chose to treat me like this. It’s really annoying. Like, I —…

I'm aware of what he said. He also said: ‘I was being anti-Nazi,’

I can't get into his brain and determine if he actually opposes genocide or secretly supports it, but from what I've seen thus far it seems he carelessly uses offensive racially charged language but takes exception with those who advocate for genocide.

Just so we're clear, I don't like this guy. I dislike a lot of people who fall well short of being nazis or otherwise advocating for genocide.

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