
Patreon Bars Anti-Feminist for Racist Speech, Inciting Revolt - mancerayder
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/24/technology/patreon-hate-speech-bans.html
======
orthecreedence
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 policies that aren't
selectively enforced, I think it becomes worrisome.

I guess I don't have a problem with people deciding what messages they do and
do not want to support, as much as I have a larger problem with the rest of
the world handing them the reigns.

Centralization is the real evil, here. Why are we giving companies and people
the right to silence vast amounts of voices and opinions on random whims?

Then you see counter-arguments, like "well if you don't want to get banned,
don't say bad things!" But then, who decides what's bad? The societal norms
are shifting to a place where there are certain topics that _are not allowed
to be discussed at all_ even if looking at them from a critical lens. So,
there are problems that people have, and things that need to be talked about,
but they aren't allowed to say anything about it. They can only reference the
idea from some distant euphemism.

The ones that do use their voices are banished to the shadows where, not only
do they not _stop_ thinking and saying what they were before, but now they dig
their heels in further. They spread out to forums that _will_ have them, and
incidentally tend to allow hate speech or inciting violence. So we're taking
the ideas we do not find palatable and sending them off to a distant land
where the other bad ideas go to twist and tear and fester and rot.

To me, personally and anecdotally, this seems to be happening with increasing
velocity. We're tightening our grip on what speech is acceptable and using
centralized services to force this control on ourselves, over a platform that
has always been about the open exchange of ideas.

So what do we do? I don't know. Privately-owned services should be free to
censor. People should also continue to speak freely (if legal). I certainly
think Net Neutrality is essential at this point, whether enforced via public
infrastructure or some kind of over-arching regulation. But, there's not much
anyone can do in the current framework of things other than encourage
decentralization. And I do, when I can.

Also, for the record, I'm a feminist, left-leaning socialist. So good luck
writing me off as another conservative windbag who doesn't understand the
first amendment that's crowing about censorship. I think censorship is a
problem, whether it's via private platforms or not.

~~~
zamalek
> 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
them out. That includes being allowed to throw a loud ranting racist out of a,
say, pub or a website.

These individuals are free to create their own businesses and websites which
facilitate whatever kind of discourse they please, nobody can take that away
from them (unless they venture into fighting words). They, however, seem to
want to be where their ideas are not wanted[1].

Patreon would likely be happy to have a conservative on their website if the
primary concern of the content was not intolerance.

> I'm torn about this.

Karl Popper helps clear it up[2]. His wording surrounding FoS is particularly
illuminating because it doesn't specifically calling out left-extremists or
right-extremists; both have been pretty awful about attacking speech,
especially the escalation over the past few years.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_brigading](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_brigading)
[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance)

~~~
coffeemug
_> 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 death your
right to say it". It is Friedrich Nietzsche's dictum that only insecure
societies are threatened by quirky characters with weird ideas. It is our own
Daniel Gackle's observation that tolerance is the experience of suffering
through unpleasant ideas. We endure that suffering because the world is
dramatically better on balance when we do.

Popper and the paradox of tolerance have nothing to do with it because we
aren't talking about fascists angling to march on Washington DC to burn down
the Library of Congress. We're talking about people who may have made a
careless remark, or have quirky ideas, or disagree with the overall bent of
the arc of history.

By banning these people platforms like Twitter and Patreon are eroding free
speech not in the legal sense, but in the cultural norms sense. If these norms
continue getting eroded, god help us all -- it may set humanity and the
western civilization back by hundreds of years.

~~~
bunderbunder
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 moral code. They were
always free to self-publish. At their own expense, of course.

Fast forward, and, since most these sites default to letting anyone publish on
their platform, with no questions asked beforehand, we've apparently come to
think that using these platforms is a human right. It is not. It is a
privilege. One with which they have been quite liberal with sharing, yes, but
one that they are still free to revoke at any time.

There's another important right to consider, in this siuation: Freedom of
association. It is also fundamental, and it goes hand-in-hand with freedom of
speech. It encompasses, among other things, the right to _not_ associate with
people you don't want to be associated with. If Patreon, a private entity,
does not want to be associated with sexism and racism, they should not be
required to do so.

~~~
toufiqbarhamov
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 harder done by when newspapers,
magazines, and book publishers refused to give them full print runs too.

Honestly though, I have another theory. There is no sense of entitlement or
hypocrisy, no confusion about what is or isn’t censorship. What we’re seeing
is almost purely calculated, and just about trying to get a bigger audience.
Twenty years ago if you wanted to publish your ideas about the queen of
England being a lizard, you had to either self-publish, rant to a crowd, print
fliers, or get lucky. Not that long ago blogs and forums were a huge
improvement for those people, and it’s still very effective, but less
effective than Facebook or Twitter or YouTube.

So do they really think that having the ability to self publish to the planet
through blogs and modern self-publishing doesn’t count as speech? Or... do
they just want more, and realize that position of “I want more” is less
appealing than “I fight censorship!” It’s not that they don’t get it, it’s
that it’s inconvenient to admit it?

~~~
bunderbunder
I've come to believe that one of the most under-recognized forces in politics
is that people tend to fear that that others will treat them the way they
would treat others.

------
throwawaysea
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 valuable to defend,
because what society finds acceptable or unacceptable is very much subjective
and changes with time/location/culture/setting/leadership/etc. Having an open
exchange of ideas is good and necessary for the long-term health and stability
of society, especially if we care about being a collectively truth-seeking
society.

There are also frequent comments on such articles saying that content creators
can just seek another platform, which frankly seems like an obviously
unhelpful suggestion. Twitter, Reddit, Patreon, and others are massive in
scale and have a ubiquity and reach that isn't found elsewhere. Platforms that
benefit from network effects don't face effective competition, and investors
typically won't invest in new competitors in those arenas, because it is such
a long shot to break through those barriers. We could argue that Patreon is
not one of the platforms whose value is driven by network effects, but the
underlying payment processors (e.g. Visa) definitely benefit from network
effects. And of course, Visa has deplatformed many parties, including
famously, Wikileaks back in 2010.

There are also examples of folks who followed that advice and left Patreon for
other platforms (e.g. SubscribeStar) and then got deplatformed (e.g. by Stripe
or PayPal). There are examples of lower-level entities like Visa/Mastercard
_forcing_ platforms built on top of them to censor someone or risk being
banned by them. Clearly, these privately-owned platforms are monopolies or
oligopolies in a sense, holding access to large segments of the population
with no competitive forces acting on them. Alternatively, we can look at them
as being the digital public square, and therefore they should be subject to
regulation that prevents them from taking action beyond what the law in their
jurisdiction requires.

The big risk is this: when only a few entities funnel so much societal
discourse or control our communication infrastructure or process payments,
those entities making arbitrary decisions about who they serve has similar
impacts/risks to the government imposing similar restrictions through the law.
These companies should not act as a moral police and should not impose their
own personal governance above what is minimally required by the law. Nor
should they rely on the judgment of an angry mob to make decisions.

~~~
darawk
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.

~~~
manfredo
> Social media platforms and the internet generally, substantially weaken the
> power of culture to regulate speech in the way that it used to.

I fail to see how this is the case. It does absolutely grant the power to
regulate speech. What Social media platforms have changes is that the people
who are carrying out the informal regulation of speech have shifted to being a
very narrow subset of the population, and one that is overwhelmingly made up
of one category of culture. Tech, especially in the Bay Area, is effectively a
political monoculture. Support for Republicans is often in the single
digits[0].

The evidence really does indicate that sunlight is the best disinfectant.
Despite the constant concern over Trump's comments on immigrants, for example,
support for immigration in the US is at record levels.[1][2] Despite the
concern over explicitly fascist rallies at Charlottesville and DC, these
rallies actually cased a significant drop in support for far-right.[3] And
lastly, while the Republican has become a party of Trump and has adopted much
of his rhetoric the result has been largely bad for the party. They lost over
a dozen seats in the midterm election - surprising given that the midterms are
when the Republicans tend to do well.

Yes, sunlight is the best disinfectant, and the data demonstrates it. Ironic,
then, that some would want to shield these views that they despise from said
disinfectant.

0\. [https://www.recode.net/2018/10/31/18039528/tech-employees-
po...](https://www.recode.net/2018/10/31/18039528/tech-employees-politics-
liberal-employers-candidates)

1\. [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/23/us/immigration-polls-
dona...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/23/us/immigration-polls-donald-
trump.html)

2\. [https://news.gallup.com/poll/235793/record-high-americans-
sa...](https://news.gallup.com/poll/235793/record-high-americans-say-
immigration-good-thing.aspx)

3\. [https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/09/alt-
weake...](https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/09/alt-weakened-
dead-charlottesville-170920081948414.html)

~~~
darawk
> I fail to see how this is the case. It does absolutely grant the power to
> regulate speech.

I didn't say it prevented speech regulation in general. I said that it
attenuated the _previous_ regime of speech regulation. It does so by replacing
it with a new one, where speech norms are determined by a tiny group of people
in unelected, unreviewable positions at private companies.

> The evidence really does indicate that sunlight is the best disinfectant.
> Despite the constant concern over Trump's comments on immigrants, for
> example, support for immigration in the US is at record levels.[1][2]
> Despite the concern over explicitly fascist rallies at Charlottesville and
> DC, these rallies actually cased a significant drop in support for far-
> right.[3] And lastly, while the Republican has become a party of Trump and
> has adopted much of his rhetoric the result has been largely bad for the
> party. They lost over a dozen seats in the midterm election - surprising
> given that the midterms are when the Republicans tend to do well.

You may be right. But the story is far more complex than you're letting on. If
sunlight is always the best disinfectant, then why did these movements gain
steam in the first place? Sure, after an _adverse event_ like Charlottesville,
support may drop. But these movements just elected a president. Where was the
disinfectant then?

~~~
manfredo
Largely because the opposition did exactly that: they started deplatforming
and attempting to more coercively prevent right wing views from speaking.
Deplatforming grew in popularity around 2013 or 2014. Students at Brown shut
down Ray Kelly's speech in 2014 [1]. We did prevent these groups from going
out into the sunlight. That gave them the chance to grow in the shadows.

Also, with regards to Trump, I largely see his election as happening despite
his association with the alt right rather than because of it. It's a big
liability not just for him, but the Republican party. Trump's biggest
advantage wasn't anything to do with him, but the fact that Democrats had
alienated manyc centrists in the leadup to the election, and fielded a
candidate that lacked the enthusiasm to rally their base.

1\. this is not to say that Ray Kelly is alt right. The fact that he got shut
down despite not being nearly that extreme, though, is still demonstrative of
my point.

~~~
darawk
> Largely because the opposition did exactly that: they started deplatforming
> and attempting to more coercively prevent right wing views from speaking.
> Deplatforming grew in popularity around 2013 or 2014. Students at Brown shut
> down Ray Kelly's speech in 2014 [1]. We did prevent these groups from going
> out into the sunlight. That gave them the chance to grow in the shadows.

I'm not a fan of de-platforming, but there's pretty decent evidence that it
can be effective [1]. I'm aware of no empirical data supporting the notion
that it is counter-productive. That being said, it's certainly a theoretical
possibility. It could be the case that exposing ideas to the light of day robs
them of their power. But then, why are conspiracy theories so persistent? Why
was Alex Jones so successful, in spite of the unbelivably simplistic and
falsifiable lies he was telling?

I see almost zero evidence that sunlight acts as a disinfectant for ideas that
appeal to people's preconceptions, and a lot of evidence that the modern
left's tactics of shaming and de-platforming are actually the most effective
ways to change culture and minds. To be clear, I don't like those tactics. I
think that, in the very long run, they are probably harmful. But it is hard to
seriously deny their efficacy.

> Also, with regards to Trump, I largely see his election as happening despite
> his association with the alt right rather than because of it. It's a big
> liability not just for him, but the Republican party. Trump's biggest
> advantage wasn't anything to do with him, but the fact that Democrats had
> alienated manyc centrists in the leadup to the election, and fielded a
> candidate that lacked the enthusiasm to rally their base.

I think that's part of it. Another part of it is that Trump saw through the
stalemate stable equilibrium of left/right politics in the US. He correctly
surmised that there was a middle path, that activated ethnic and nationalistic
identities of the right, while simultaneously stoking economic anxiety
traditionally associated with the left, to form a coalition that had
unanticipated electoral power.

1\. [https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/bjbp9d/do-
social-...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/bjbp9d/do-social-media-
bans-work)

~~~
manfredo
That deplatforming deprives the person being deplatformed of a platform is
obvious, to the point that it's effectively a tautology. However, concluding
that this means deplatforming is effective is extremely naive. When tech
companies engage in acts of censorship like deplatforming, it causes many do
lose trust in the perceived lack of partiality of these platforms. So while
individual people getting censored may see their audiences diminish, support
for the views they espouse and distrust of the authority carrying out the
censorship often increase. In case it wasn't clear, the lack of efficacy in
deplatforming I referred to in my previous comment was in reference to
attempts to curb ideas and political movements - not individuals within those.

Again, deplatforming gained traction in the early to mid 2010s. It coincides
more or less directly with the rise of the Alt Right. Increases in
deplatforming is correlated _with_ support for the far right, not against it.

~~~
darawk
> That deplatforming deprives the person being deplatformed of a platform is
> obvious, to the point that it's effectively a tautology. However, concluding
> that this means deplatforming is effective is extremely naive. When tech
> companies engage in acts of censorship like deplatforming, it causes many do
> lose trust in the perceived lack of partiality of these platforms. So while
> individual people getting censored may see their audiences diminish, support
> for the views they espouse and distrust of the authority carrying out the
> censorship often increase. In case it wasn't clear, the lack of efficacy in
> deplatforming I referred to in my previous comment was in reference to
> attempts to curb ideas and political movements - not individuals within
> those.

It didn't just impact the individuals, it reduced the behavior site-wide.

> Again, deplatforming gained traction in the early to mid 2010s. It coincides
> more or less directly with the rise of the Alt Right. Increases in
> deplatforming is correlated with support for the far right, not against it.

This is a pretty clear correlation/causality confusion. If factor A is on the
rise and triggers reaction B, you cannot use the rise of B to prove that B
caused A. Now, your narrative _may_ be correct, but the narrative story you've
provided does not demonstrate it.

~~~
manfredo
> It didn't just impact the individuals, it reduced the behavior site-wide.

And? Even saying it reduced the behavior site-wide is not an effective
measurement to conclude that deplatforming works in reducing the prevalence of
those views in society. Again, "Deplatforming X views from platform Y resulted
in less of X on platform Y" is effectively stating the obvious. To demonstrate
the effectiveness of deplatforming, one would have to determine whether
deplatforming actually results in fewer people believing in the views that are
being deplatformed. I have not encountered any instance of this occurring. Ask
yourself this: when you are banned from a forum for views you believe in, or
you witness someone banned for views you agree with do you tend to turn around
agree with the censor? Or do you become more enthusiastic for that view and
lose respect for the censor

> This is a pretty clear correlation/causality confusion. If factor A is on
> the rise and triggers reaction B, you cannot use the rise of B to prove that
> B caused A. Now, your narrative may be correct, but the narrative story
> you've provided does not demonstrate it.

We're seeing trust in media and tech companies plummet. While the fact that a
rise in extremist views is correlated with increases in deplatforming is not
hard evidence of causation, it's extremely difficult to claim that
deplatforming works to reduce said views in the face of that positive
correlation between the two. That's trying to claim a causal relationship in
the face of evidence of the opposite correlation.

In other words, if we see A rise alongside B it is indeed jumping the gun to
say that A certainly causes B. But it's even more dubious to say that A
_reduces_ B in the face of that correlation.

~~~
darawk
> I have not encountered any instance of this occurring.

How could you witness such a thing occurring? This seems like an unreasonable
evidentiary standard.

> We're seeing trust in media and tech companies plummet. While the fact that
> a rise in extremist views is correlated with increases in deplatforming is
> not hard evidence of causation, it's extremely difficult to claim that
> deplatforming works to reduce said views in the face of that positive
> correlation between the two. That's trying to claim a causal relationship in
> the face of evidence of the opposite correlation.

Do HIV drugs cause HIV? Do civil rights movements cause racism? De-platforming
is a treatment. Of course it's going to co-occur with the thing it's
attempting to treat. This is evidence of nothing at all. What you need to do,
and what the studies I reference did do, is examine individual communities pre
and post treatment. That is how you start to get at causality. The analysis is
imperfect, to be sure, but it's a lot better than looking at simple
correlation.

~~~
manfredo
> Do HIV drugs cause HIV?

How is immunodeficiency treatment at all related to deplatforming? Viruses
aren't thinking human beings.

> Do civil rights movements cause racism?

The Civil Rights movement did not enagage in deplatforming. Many of them
explicitly acknowledged that their opponents also deserve the ability to
speak. It was often the civil Rights movement itself that was subject to
deplatforming.

> Of course it's going to co-occur with the thing it's attempting to treat.
> This is evidence of nothing at all.

The rise of deplatforming preceded the rise of the Alt Right by about a year
or two. They didn't always co-occur, one preceded the other. Their continued
co-occurrence suggests that the implementation of deplatforming either 1. has
no effect on that brand of extremist, or 2. maybe even causes it.

This is not consistent with treating a disease. Usually, a disease is present
sometime before treatment is administered. Then as treatment is administered
the symptoms are reduced, if the treatment is successful. This is not what we
are witnessing with the relationship between deplatforming and the brand of
right wing extremism we've been seeing lately.

> What you need to do, and what the studies I reference did do, is examine
> individual communities pre and post treatment.

Limiting measurement to individual communities is not a good way to measur
it's overall effect. Again pointing out the fact that when a community
deplatforms a certain view that view is no longer present is pointing out an
obvious consequence. Of course the platform sees a reduction in the view that
was deplatformed. That's basically just restating the definition of
deplatforming: kicking a person or group off the platform.

If you want to measure the effect of deplatforming on society, then the
analysis has to be society-wide. Otherwise one is effectively just building a
bubble of the communities that do engage in deplatforming, and burying their
head with respect to it's impact on the rest of society.

~~~
darawk
> How is immunodeficiency treatment at all related to deplatforming? Viruses
> aren't thinking human beings.

> The Civil Rights movement did not enagage in deplatforming. Many of them
> explicitly acknowledged that their opponents also deserve the ability to
> speak. It was often the civil Rights movement itself that was subject to
> deplatforming.

My point is that the type of reasoning you used here would lead you to draw
both of those conclusions.

> The rise of deplatforming preceded the rise of the Alt Right by about a year
> or two. They didn't always co-occur, one preceded the other. Their continued
> co-occurrence suggests that the implementation of deplatforming either 1.
> has no effect on that brand of extremist, or 2. maybe even causes it.

That's an a-factual statement. When did the alt right "rise"? Was it when
Mencius Moldbug started writing Unqualified Reservations in 2007? When Richard
Spencer joined the National Policy Institute in 2011? During Gamergate in
2014? Similarly, when did de-platforming 'start'? Was it when people first
started protesting The Bell Curve when it was published in 1994? Was it when
British National Union of Students adopted a no-platform policy?

The point is, neither of these events have a well-defined starting point, so
any claim of one preceding the other is silly, and has no basis in fact.

> Limiting measurement to individual communities is not a good way to measur
> it's overall effect. Again pointing out the fact that when a community
> deplatforms a certain view that view is no longer present is pointing out an
> obvious consequence. Of course the platform sees a reduction in the view
> that was deplatformed. That's basically just restating the definition of
> deplatforming: kicking a person or group off the platform.

Your objection suggests a _specific_ causal model, though. You're right that
kicking users off of the platform will tautologically reduce the content.
However, what if you didn't kick people off the platform? What if instead, as
in the example I linked, you banned the sub-communities dedicated to advocacy
of the proscribed topics? The people stay, the community goes. Then, you look
at the level of the material _in other sub-communities on the site_. That is
what those studies did, and that is why they demonstrate causality.

~~~
manfredo
One can argue when these terms were initially coined. But we do have hard data
on when they became prevalent in the public mind. Look at the Google trends
for "deplatforming"[1], "no platforming"[2] and "alt right"[3]. "No
platforming" had some blips starting in the late 2000s, but begins rising
significantly in 2015, "deplatforming" in January of 2016, and "alt right" in
august of 2016. There is evidence to the claim that deplatforming (or at
least, widespread interesting in deplatofrming or "no platforming") preceded
widespread interest in the alt-right.

> The people stay, the community goes. Then, you look at the level of the
> material in other sub-communities on the site. That is what those studies
> did, and that is why they demonstrate causality.

Yes, but as I stated multiple times by now the key limitation here is that
they only looked at the material _on the same site_. Site X bans Y (whether in
full or in only some subforums). You observe a reduction of Y on the site.
That's not evidence that this action reduced Y in society as a whole. There is
a causal relationship between deplatforming and reduction of the deplatformed
view _on said platform_. Nobody is disagreeing with that - most people would
likely read such a statement and think "no kidding, Sherlock".

For example, pointing to the fact that when Reddit banned racist subreddits
racist content on other subreddits were reduced is proof that banning racist
subreddits reduced racist content _on Reddit_. This is not at all surprising,
and is something most would call obvious. But to portray this as proof that
banning racist subreddits reduces racist content in society as a whole is a
very large misrepresentation. This study did not study the impact on society
as a whole - only the forum that is carrying out the deplatforming.

And again, I do not attempt to claim the the correlation between the rise of
deplatforming and the rise of the alt right is irrefutable proof that the
former causes the latter. But claiming that the former helps _prevents_ the
latter is not backed up by the evidence we do have.

1\.
[https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=deplatfo...](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=deplatforming)

2\.
[https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=no%20pla...](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=no%20platforming)

3\.
[https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=alt%20ri...](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=alt%20right)

~~~
darawk
> One can argue when these terms were initially coined. But we do have hard
> data on when they became prevalent in the public mind. Look at the Google
> trends for "deplatforming"[1], "no platforming"[2] and "alt right"[3]. "No
> platforming" had some blips starting in the late 2000s, but begins rising
> significantly in 2015, "deplatforming" in January of 2016, and "alt right"
> in august of 2016. There is evidence to the claim that deplatforming (or at
> least, widespread interesting in deplatofrming or "no platforming") preceded
> widespread interest in the alt-right.

The terms themselves don't seem particularly relevant. The idea of
deplatforming people has been around and practiced for a while. The alt-right
dates back to at _least_ Gamergate, and its roots in neoreaction, TRP, MGTOW,
/pol/, etc can be traced back much further. I don't think Google trends really
proves much here.

> Yes, but as I stated multiple times by now the key limitation here is that
> they only looked at the material on the same site. Site X bans Y (whether in
> full or in only some subforums). You observe a reduction of Y on the site.
> That's not evidence that this action reduced Y in society as a whole. There
> is a causal relationship between deplatforming and reduction of the
> deplatformed view on said platform. Nobody is disagreeing with that - most
> people would likely read such a statement and think "no kidding, Sherlock".

It's not tautological that that should happen. Remember, they're looking at
the prevalence of that view _elsewhere_. It's not at all obvious that it
should be the case that when you ban the 'Fat People Hate' subreddit, fat-
shaming content _elsewhere on reddit_ decreases.

It would be very hard to prove this effect on general social sentiment even
for a site as big as reddit, because society is so much larger. Facebook
_might_ be big enough to have a measurable effect on society writ large, but
their policing mechanism, and the internal organizational structure of
Facebook doesn't really lend itself to these sorts of experiments.

> For example, pointing to the fact that when Reddit banned racist subreddits
> racist content on other subreddits were reduced is proof that banning racist
> subreddits reduced racist content on Reddit. This is not at all surprising,
> and is something most would call obvious. But to portray this as proof that
> banning racist subreddits reduces racist content in society as a whole is a
> very large misrepresentation.

It didn't just reduce the aggregate racist content on reddit. It reduced the
aggregate racist content _above and beyond the literal content that was
removed_. In other words, when they banned r/CoonTown, r/politics got less
racist. That is not at all an obvious consequence.

~~~
manfredo
Sure, it reduced toxic content "elsewhere" but that "elsewhere" is limited to
the same space that is administered by the same authority. Banning /r/coontown
may have made posters in /r/politics less toxic, likely because they witnessed
the shift in moderation policies. Also because racist users likely stopped
using the service for posting racist content. But you're acting as though this
means this content wasn't posted at all. For all we know, this just displaced
it to 4chan, Gab, or something else.

Again, I agree that banning racist subreddits led to a reduction of racist
content across the board _on Reddit_. But you're treating this as proof that
said bans reduced racist content in society as a whole, which is a baseless
claim even with the aforementioned analysis of the impact on other subreddits.

~~~
darawk
I agree that it isn't absolute proof. It is possible that an effect like the
one you described took place. But it isn't the only evidence. I'd direct you
again to people like Alex Jones. I think it's extremely hard to argue that
Alex Jones and his toxic brand of disinformation didn't benefit _enormously_
from access to platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube. I think you'd be
extremely hard pressed to argue that his reach has _increased_ as a result of
being de-platformed. You may be able to make the case that it has retrenched
the support of his hardcore followers, but that is not the same thing as
signal boosting his message in society at large.

------
nkurz
The article avoids the specifics of what Benjamin said, which makes it hard to
judge whether Patreon is acting reasonably. The interview in question is here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQ87Wf-0rZg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQ87Wf-0rZg).

Here are some excerpts from the automatically generated transcript (click the
3 dots, then "Open transcript"):

 _I just can 't be bothered to deal with people who treat me like this it's
really annoying like I you are acting like a bunch of niggers just so you know
you you act like white niggers exactly how you describe black people acting is
the impression I get dealing with y'all_

 _don 't expect me to them have a debate with one of your faggots then why
would I bother bother you read like enough class I don't know maybe you're
just acting like a nigga me have you considered that do you think white people
act like this white people are meant to be polite and respectful to one
another and you guys can't even act like white people_

 _it 's about gaining attention and seems like kikes are ruining everything_

While one can reasonably to debate the whether Patreon should ban people based
on ideology and off-site behavior, his comments do seem undeniably racist,
anti-Semitic, and anti-homosexual.

~~~
augustl
According to Carl Benjamin himself, the comments were meant ironically. He was
reacting to a chat stream, which is missing context in that video, and the
chat used slurs like this. So Benjamin used the slurs back at them.

Having said that, we have to assume Benjamin’s inner thoughts to know what he
really meant, so I’m not arguing we should disregard it completely because of
his alledged good intentions.

~~~
agentdrtran
You see officer, I did all that hate speech _ironically_

~~~
augustl
Analogies are flawed, by their nature. In this case, we don't have a clear
case of X, followed bu backtracking and claims of not really saying X.
Instead, we have the same X, that some people interpret as malice and hate
speech, and other people interpret as using alt-righters own bad language back
at them.

------
wmil
This article is poorly researched and misses the key points of the dispute.

Patreon previously said that they only care about content on their platform.
Sargon's comments weren't on Patreon. They weren't on his Youtube channel,
which is presumably what Patreon money is supporting. They were made during an
interview with an altogether different channel.

So the rules were changed retroactively without warning.

Next, the scary part involves another company called Subscribe Star.

After the ban was announced, a number of creators decided they didn't want to
put all their eggs in one basket and opened up accounts on Subscribe Star.

Several hours later PayPal cut service to Subscribe Star without explanation.

Jaqueline Hart, who made the decision to ban Sargon, used to work at PayPal.

It certainly looks like she called in a favour to kill a competing service.

A tech lawyer who runs a channel called YoutuberLaw is trying to file an FTC
complaint about it:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2ySC7edHO0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2ySC7edHO0)

------
darkpuma
The real meat of the racist speech:

> _" This month, the site’s moderators received a complaint about Mr.
> Benjamin, who had risen to fame railing against diversity and feminism
> during the GamerGate movement in 2014. Mr. Benjamin used the N-word and
> anti-gay language during an interview posted to YouTube on Feb. 7, Patreon
> found."_

I could be wrong, but I'm under the impression Benjamin used that word to
insult white supremacists, whom he evidently does not count himself among. It
wasn't very smart of him to think everybody would be okay with it just because
he chose the 'right' target.

~~~
apk-d
Our descendants are going to be _seriously confused_ by our practice of
limiting or taking away people's ability to earn money because they publicly
used a wrong word. Or so I hope, at least.

~~~
endisukaj
The right to free speech protects you from being persecuted by the government.
Patreon and any other private company reserve the right to choose their
customers (and workers) based on what they say. This has always been the case.
There are countless examples, even in the past, where companies have fired
employees for saying things they shouldn't have.

~~~
harimau777
As I see it, a functional democracy requires tolerance of unpopular opinions
not just by the government but also by society at large. I don't agree with
these sorts of statements, but I believe that censoring them is harmful to
society.

~~~
zimpenfish
> a functional democracy requires tolerance of unpopular opinions not just by
> the government but also by society at large

If you insert "some" before "unpopular", I'm with you. If you require "all"
before "unpopular", then no, I disagree - e.g. people who believe "LGBTQ
people should be done away" with, well, that's an "unpopular opinion" that
should not be tolerated and, in fact, should be made anathema for anyone to
express.

~~~
PavlovsCat
That's because it has _other_ properties besides being unpopular.

~~~
zimpenfish
What other (I'm assuming redeeming since if they're not redeeming, why would
we care?) properties could the opinion "LGBTQ people should be done away with"
have?

------
jeremyw
Misreported here is what more reasonable creators objected to:

\- Account shutdown without notice

\- Lack of appeals process until publicity and a wave of de-subscribes hit the
platform

\- Reversal of Conte's promise to only police content directly supported by
patrons

\- Surprise morality stance and language, "reforming" and requiring a "full-
throated apology"

While one cannot condone Benjamin's behavior, Patreon is not being honest
about its mercurial behavior, shifting policies, and repositioning as a scold.
So creators who ethically address controversial topics (i.e. not Benjamin)
become nervous.

I love what Patreon does for creators. But this deeply disturbs me.

------
jayd16
If you've branded yourself as being politically incorrect, isn't this the kind
of conflict and publicity you strive to achieve?

I'm getting a little tired of people who've made a career saying what you
"can't say on TV" and then pretending to be surprised when their content gets
pulled.

~~~
mancerayder
_If you 've branded yourself as being politically incorrect, isn't this the
kind of conflict and publicity you strive to achieve?

I'm getting a little tired of people who've made a career saying what you
"can't say on TV" and then pretending to be surprised when their content gets
pulled._

Wait - how do you know what people's intentions are?

Your entire comment is premised on the idea that 'people who've made a career'
\- as in "all of em" since you said "people who ."\- are in fact trolls who
deserve what they get. First you know their secret intentions (making a career
out of it) and second you deem them unworthy of having their content even
remotely worth thinking about preserving before being pulled. You're tired,
after all.

Please don't end up in a position of power, kind sir/ma'am.

~~~
jayd16
He's quoted in the article as saying his brand is politically incorrect. Its a
calculated decision to add shock to his act. This conflict is not something
he's trying to avoid to get his ideas out there. Its painfully clear.

The content itself is irrelevant to my point as it is a general statement
about adding shock value to any act and the faux-consequences of it.

~~~
mancerayder
And my point is that there are people who conveniently "know" people's
intentions as a way to silence, diminish or discredit them, like you're doing
right now when you say things like "faux-consequences." Getting de-platformed
(and losing revenue) are faux?

------
rhegart
This is such a biased article. The most important fact is purposefully
omitted. This article makes it seem like Sargon purposefully used those racist
statements in a racist context. He was using it as an analogy and against the
alt-right. Lying by omission makes this entire article completely bogus. I
hate when the fringe media does this in literally every article and I really
hate it when the best papers do it and the NYtimes is unfortunately the best
paper we have in my opinion. I would pull my subscription over something like
this 5 years ago but now days everyone does this.

~~~
conradfr
And yet not long ago the New-York Times supported the racist tweets of its
editor Sarah Jeong.

------
josteink
While the article incorrectly conflates being anti-feminist with being against
gender equality[1], it’s worth noting that the ban was not for anti-feminist
content, but for other improper speech which may or may not be highly
contextual.

But somehow they decided to ban Milo too, making it much less clear what these
bans are all about.

Patreon might want to make it clear at this point whether their guidelines are
political or not.

[1] I’d rather argue modern day feminist oppose gender equality by constantly
promoting special privileges for women. As such being anti-feminist means
being pro gender equality.

~~~
wishinghand
> I’d rather argue modern day feminist oppose gender equality by constantly
> promoting special privileges for women. As such being anti-feminist means
> being pro gender equality.

Whenever I see this perception, I can't help but think it's due to the tweets
and tumblrs of a few extreme voices being passed around as representations of
the movement as a whole, especially when posted on various subreddits made to
put those sorts of views on blast.

------
Jare
"[...] all contentious speech or behavior will put the speaker or actor at
risk of serious financial and social sanctions, and strip them of all
defense,”

Thing is, a lot of self-described "contentious" speech is putting other people
at risk of serious financial, social, mental and physical harm.

I believe in free speech and I believe that you can't successfully fight ideas
by burying them, but I am also aware that I can afford such beliefs because I
am largely free of said risks thanks to my social / biological / demographic
circumstances.

That said, time and time again I find that most of the people who end up in
this kind of complaints are just agitators, racists and assholes who have
found in the internet a vehicle to amplify their hateful voices. Labeling it
as "hate speech" may be subjective, but so is not labeling it as such. I have
no doubt in my mind that it's what they practice.

~~~
PavlovsCat
So, without knowing anything about the actual details, you have no doubt in
your mind.

And the livelihood of others is just to roll over, because you can't be
bothered to actually look into it, before weighing in either way. So, what do
you think you are practicing, here? If one were to look into history, with
what would they find parallels, you think?

~~~
Jare
What part of "time and time again I find" was so unclear you had to bring out
the "without knowing anything"s and the "can't be bothered"s.

~~~
PavlovsCat
I find it very clear, it's simply just a bald assertion, and "asshole" makes
it meaningless, since that's entirely subjective and not falsifiable at all.
And time and time again doesn't tell us how many times we're talking about,
and what you "finding" that means, what kind of examination precedes it, if
any. At the most basic level, a phrase like "I find Jazz great" doesn't
express the result of a thorough investigation, it can simply describe an
opinion.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18750037](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18750037)

Would you call that person an "agitator, racist and asshole"?

This person isn't on the receiving end of it, but not happy about the
arbitraryness of it:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv7hvZee-
PQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv7hvZee-PQ)

Does that make them an "agitator, racist and asshole", too?

How is such a broad claim not also kinda agitation, especially if it's on the
backdrop of people _already_ knocking people off platforms in an organized
fashion -- with no word about what is to become of them, simply because some
people are considered undesirables, or "assholes"?

~~~
Jare
A single instance of hate speech can hurt many people, few directly but many
indirectly. The compound effect is that a relatively small group of "assholes"
cause damage to a lot of innocents. Saying that a platform is free of
political bias does not free that platform from the guilt, and consequences,
of having helped them do so.

Every individual that is harmed by an agitator is exactly as deserving of
protection as every individual that is harmed by deplatforming. Guess which
group is more numerous?

There may be some undeserved damage among people labeled as "assholes", but
there is A LOT of undeserved damage among the innocent victims of hate speech.
It seems that you consider the former group more deserving of protection (due
to number, value, or something else?) than the later. Be my guest, but I do
not.

~~~
PavlovsCat
> A single instance of hate speech can hurt many people

Would you Naomo Wu an "agitator, racist and asshole"?

Would you call Matt Christiansen an "agitator, racist and asshole"?

Or is this how you arrived at your "time and time again" claim, because you
simply ignore what doesn't fit that? Oh yeah, what part about "most" don't I
understand, right? Well, none, I understand that you don't understand that
"most" isn't good enough.

So people as a vague group "mostly" deserve something, or you consider it
possible that someone somewhere used hate speech, but how Naomi Wu or others
would fit into that, who cares? You're not Naomi, so you don't seem to. That's
just collateral damage. But as a result of what, a careful approach to avoid
collateral damage? Nope, far from it. Anything but. If anything, it's the
attempt to lift hatred to the status of an argument in social and political
discourse, while claiming to be _against_ "hate speech". The _actions_ speak
louder than the phrases used to excuse them.

Even when black people were lynched, the _talk_ of those doing the lynching
was always about self-defense, and the harm the lynched people caused, etc.
etc. etc. You cannot find a group helpless enough, treated brutally enough,
for their tormentors to not call them the aggressors. Not just are there
endless examples, I'm not even sure there's any cases where that isn't the
case. I mean, racists also say they're not hating on others, they just "defend
themselves" against everybody hating whites and not wanting them to be pure,
or whatever. It's a constant.

In final analysis, as the best we have: Sure, labeling wishing someone a nice
day as hate speech may be subjective, "but so is not labeling it so", so who
cares?

> here may be some undeserved damage among people labeled as "assholes", but
> there is A LOT of undeserved damage among the innocent victims of hate
> speech. It seems that you consider the former group more deserving of
> protection

No. Just like you didn't say "just like there can be some undeserved damage
among people by an agitator", but called them "victims", individuals are
getting hurt here, too, by mobs that follow them around, and agitate to
destroy their livelihoods.

I actually believe in the principles that allow a person to see why hate
speech is bad. I believe in due process, I don't believe in the framing in a
false dichotomy, and I think people who do everything to not have due process,
are the last people to educate me about "hate speech". I know all of these
arguments, though I read most instances of them in German before they first
appeared on the web. The greater good, they "mostly deseserve it", they're
"mostly guilty", no real examination takes place, and of course, nobody who
nods off others being treated that way would to be treated in the way they
declare good enough for others.

That's the thing, really. I don't argue against censorship because I'm a
racist, but because I'm so much more than _just_ "not being a racist". And
what I criticize, I wouldn't want to be doing either, and what I want for
others, I would want for myself.

Can you say the same?

> (due to number, value, or something else?)

No, I don't believe that numbers make right, or might makes right. But said
how "most" affected people are just "assholes and racists and agitators",
which you find "time and time" again (and from which you can of course
conclude that it will always be those who will get affected). I simply pointed
out that even in the argument you subscribe to, you might be off the mark by
multiple orders of magnitude.

I say "might" because I don't exactly have the numbers right here either. But
if you actually talk with normal people, totally randomly selected, there's
probably not many who never said anything racist or sexist in their life, or
spouted bigotry about religious people. You simply dismiss people in the
millions and billions in the abstract. Are you even considering due process
has value in its own right? This isn't something where you get to move fast
and break things.

And if you look at the people hounding other for "hate speech", you will
sometimes find no hate speech in their targets, and with most you find hate
speech "time and time again" on either their own or liked tweets. But since
you already flat out said what is called hate speech is subjective, that's no
bother. Technically, it should be possible to say "kill all men" isn't hate
speech, "women aren't funny" is. It's all subjective, but of course not when
it comes to people seeking out what offends them. That harm is real, always,
and the destroyed livelihoods don't count.

Just leave it up to the law. Even bad judges take this stuff more seriously
than the internet crowd that wants take the law into their own hands.

------
warp_factor
I deleted my patreon account last week. I feel sorry for the artists I
supported every month, but I cannot in good conscience continue to support any
service that erodes cultural free speech anymore.

As I see it, the radical left is on a course to set humanity back a couple
hundred years.

------
vowelless
Looks like this guy is from Europe. Do they have the same stigma for those
words? Are we okay applying American standards to their words? That would be a
slippery slope. Some nations consider speech against their sultans or their
deens as hate speech. Will patreon take the side of those governments or the
vast majority of those populations (who will gladly watch blasphemers get
imprisoned)?

On the other hand, should they take a progressive stance on a global scale?
For example, should they ban Arabs who use “abeed” too? Should they ban the
quasi antisemetic vitriol spewed out by many in MENA? (Example that Kuwaiti
“Instagram influencer” who ranted about her Filipino maid)

Maybe neither. Perhaps as a private company, they should do whatever they
like. Let competitors fill the gaps if needed.

~~~
ianleeclark
> Do they have the same stigma for those words?

We both know a dude from the UK, who primarily speaks English, and who talks
about American politics would be aware of the stigma of the word.

> Are we okay applying American standards to their words?

It's important to look at the context of the situation to determine what's
happening. In this situation, Sargon was appealing emotionally to white
supremacists by saying they are as low as black people and that they should be
better by acting white--this implies black people are lower than white people.
It's racist and that's pretty obvious.

~~~
vowelless
Would you ban her from Instagram?

[https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/27/middleeast/kuwait-
philippines...](https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/27/middleeast/kuwait-philippines-
domestic-workers-intl/index.html)

I can assure you the life of domestic indentured servants in the Khaleej is
much worse than that of blacks in america today.

~~~
ianleeclark
> Would you ban her from Instagram?

Honestly I don't find free speech to be an interesting topic, so I'm not
interested in continuing this. I just wanted to point out that it's possible
to be so charitable that you say something naive.

~~~
vowelless
I don’t think he was naive in saying what he said and neither do I think he
was being charitable to blacks or to whites for that matter.

Maybe the simplest thing is to let profit motivated corporations do whatever
it takes to increase their revenues, and leave the moralities out of the door.
If they want to deny service to people because of their speech in the pursuit
of growing their business, why not?

~~~
ianleeclark
> I don’t think he was naive in saying what he said and neither do I think he
> was being charitable to blacks or to whites for that matter.

No, you're being too naive when you're so charitable to assume that a Brit, of
his background and who does what he does for a living, isn't aware of the
stigma of the n-word.

------
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.

~~~
tynpeddler
Checks themselves require the banks to act as intermediates. I don't know if
banks would be allowed to deplatform someone in the same manner as patreon.

~~~
intrasight
Probably not an issue with banks. Patrons can always send cash ;)

------
lgleason
>"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 "reform" the hair goes up on the
back of my neck. It's bad enough when a totalitarian government does this with
internment camps etc., but when I private company, that has no accountability
to the general public doing this we are in deep trouble.

The only good news is that with this there are some well funded alternatives
in the works for a Patreon alternative, unlike Google alternatives etc. which
are not as readily available. That said, some of the pressure has been coming
from Visa and MasterCard. Once again, given their position in the market they
can and should be regulated as utilities.

~~~
reitanqild
> 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.

------
asabjorn
Patreon has been on a spree to ban people that think the wrong way. Matt
Christiansen had a call [1] with Patreon to discuss their banning of Sargon of
Akkad. Sargon was notified of the banning by his patrons, not Patreon, and had
no recourse to challenge the decision. In the call Patreon made it clear that
their platform is;

1) explicitly anti free-speech

2) is not a free market (they can ban you for arbitrary reasons, for things
posted anywhere including leaked private messages)

3) their rules are enforced in a subjective manner by design

Considering that they have banned many people that disagree with progressive
PC ideology, which seems to be a moving target of increasing religious [2]
fervor, I can't see why anyone would trust their platform at this point and
rely on it to build their income.

Even progressives might like the so-called TERFs fall on the wrong side of the
party-line at some point, so I can't see how anyone can trust their platform
as a source of income. Unless you of cause love staking your income on the
arbitrary whims of the ideologues at Patreon.

As evidence for their political tilt they do not ban leftists that call for
violence against viewpoint opponents:

    
    
       - https://www.patreon.com/intlantifadefence
    
       - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/antifa-domestic-terrorists-us-security-agencies-homeland-security-fbi-a7927881.html
     
       - https://www.patreon.com/chapotraphouse
     
       - https://www.reddit.com/r/ChapoTrapHouse/comments/9k14nf/why_does_chapo_promote_political_violence/
    
       - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_violence
    

Patreon employees officially support the domestic terrorist group anti-fa:

    
    
       - http://www.returnofkings.com/125075/patreon-employee-aaron-ringgenberg-publicly-supports-antifa-domestic-terrorist-organization
    

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv7hvZee-
PQ&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv7hvZee-
PQ&feature=youtu.be)

[2] [https://areomagazine.com/2018/12/18/postmodern-religion-
and-...](https://areomagazine.com/2018/12/18/postmodern-religion-and-the-
faith-of-social-justice/)

------
dkjfhalskdjfh
It's also worth considering that the Alt-Right has been deliberately working
to get more popular moderate figures like Sargon kicked off of mainstream
platforms, so they'll be forced to move (and bring their audiences) to Alt-
Right platforms:
[https://twitter.com/crislopezg/status/969225740540678145](https://twitter.com/crislopezg/status/969225740540678145)

~~~
namlem
I hope they succeed, because they'll just end up isolating themselves to their
own little echo chambers, sparing the rest of us from having to hear their
drivel.

~~~
awakeasleep
What you're describing is a system to develop extremism.

~~~
zimpenfish
We already have systems to develop extremism. That's how these extremists have
arisen. What we need is to develop systems that combat and drive out
extremism.

------
augustl
What is the case for NYT labelling Carl Benjamin as "anti-feminist"? He was
involved in gamergate, but I don’t believe he’s against equal rights for all
genders. I suppose "feminist" means different things to different people.

I also find this to be vague and unclear. Hate speech is bad, but who defines
it? His use of the n-word was targeted ironically towards alt-righters. Why is
that self evidently off limits? Is referring to the use of the n-word in a
context where you are defining it also off limits? How can we be sure it is
not? Patreon is not very clear on this in my eyes.

------
EamonnMR
This is the result of privatized everything-it lacks the checks and balances
that would be afforded by a democratic government. It is ironic people who are
virulently anti-government complain because a private party has decided that
they aren't going to act like a government.

------
dgudkov
The missing question here -- why did Patreon do it? Is it because they are
afraid of legal risk of not being able to defend themselves against a lawsuit?
Or they are afraid of loss of revenue/capitalization if an online activist
group launches a shame/smear campaign? Or it simply because it rubbed the
wrong way someone in the company management?

Why did they do it?

~~~
justin66
This doesn't seem like a big mystery. It would not take a smear campaign or
some kind of major boycott to cost a company that became too closely
associated in the public imagination with alt-right whackjobs.

~~~
dgudkov
Too closely - meaning having a customer that said the N-word somewhere? I'm
not picky, just trying to understand what "too closely" means in your answer.

~~~
justin66
The threshold that would have to be crossed - that was crossed, unless someone
at the company took a decision to ban the guy just because he's obnoxious,
which is possible - would be for the company to feel like its future earning
potential were at risk because of reputational damage. I doubt the judgment on
the part of the company is going to be as simple "a single user said one
specific thing." How could it be?

------
microcolonel
"racist speech" is a bit tenuous in this case. He was using the N word, but
not against black people (telling people he perceived to be white supremacists
that they are acting in precisely the ways they criticize black people for).

I think the New York Times was very lazy with this piece, and basically
reprinted Patreon's corporate opinions as fact. I basically agree with Tim
Pool's reading of the situation [0].

[0]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8c1ng0N_h0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8c1ng0N_h0)

------
m0zg
Dumb move on Patreon's part. Payment processors should act like payment
processors, not as enforcers of arbitrarily defined virtue. Anything else will
eventually backfire.

------
misiti3780
Am I the only one surprised that Patreon employs 170 people?

~~~
gnu8
I am surprised that the picture in the article is their working environment.
Is it really necessary in a tech company that everyone be asses-to-elbows like
so?

~~~
jmalicki
Those look like pretty standard 48-inch desks comparing to the size of the 27"
screens - just like 99% of other workplaces I've seen. Do you know of places
where larger desks are remotely common?

~~~
gnu8
I don’t know what is common, but apparently I’m living the high life in that I
have a L shaped desk and cubicle walls so I don’t have to see my fellow man.

~~~
jmalicki
You don't know how good you have it... over the past 10 years the luxury of a
cube has been going to the grave, like private offices for everyone did a ways
back.

------
75dvtwin
There are not many things, that are more dishonest than selective outrage,
hidden behind the veil of 'moral high ground'.

Is anybody auditing Patreon to apply same level of 'checks' to all the other
users? Is there a legal audit-framework for this, is it based on
Twitter/Facebook like stats ?

Here is Facebook banning a post of police officers wife, who was killed by
illegal immigrant[1]

How is this ok?!

[1] [https://www.theblaze.com/news/facebook-takes-action-
against-...](https://www.theblaze.com/news/facebook-takes-action-against-
users-for-calling-accused-cop-killer-illegal-immigrant-illegal-alien)

This is total madness with kind of garbage morality.

It will bring on biased courts system (they will look like inquisitions in the
middle ages).

And, that, as we know, will bring irreconcilable fractions, and those,
eventually, will bring on a civil war(s).

------
bmn__
> Ms. Hart said. “You cannot say those words on our platform. It doesn’t
> matter who you’re directing them at.”

This needs to be challenged.

The New York Times author Bowles is referencing a video by name where the
Youtuber Benjamin explains his position. This video is not linked to. There
are other hyperlinks in the article, though. The author chose to not give the
interested reader easy access to the opinion from the subject of the story.
Why not? We have a completely one-sided story where the only the Patreon side
have their say. Is this online journalism?

I will provide the links:

The video is properly titled "The Patreon Witch Trials (#PatreonPurge 2)":
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkON93drONQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkON93drONQ)

Its predecessor is titled "You Cannot Trust Patreon (#PatreonPurge 1)":
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ThPdCicEsg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ThPdCicEsg)

Youtuber Benjamin claims the incident that got him banned did not happen on
Patreon (and that Patreon only has rules for Patreon users what they can and
cannot say on Patreon). Patreon employee Hart claims it happened on Patreon.

These are two opposite statements, they cannot be both true. If you've read
the article and watched the videos and thus now know both sides of the story,
whose statement do you think is right?

------
anotherevan
As a thought experiment, I wonder what the reactions would be if, instead of
barring objectionable creators, they instead forego their 5% cut and instead
donate it to a charity or cause that is opposite to the creator's ideology.

In the interests of full transparency, they would have to include a notice on
the top of the creator's page...

------
arduanika
Can we all just come together and agree that this headline is frustratingly
ambiguous? Was "inciting revolt" in the litany of Benjamin's alleged crimes?
Or did Patreon's action incite a revolt? I need to know!!

Or maybe this is intentional, and the NYT knows how to make me click. You can
never be too paranoid about this stuff.

------
untangle
The talking heads may revolt but I see no 1st Amendment issue here. A
privately-owned property may police its content as it sees fit.

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?

------
pcvarmint
This article is very incomplete and very late, because this Patreon story has
been known for weeks among those who listen to non-MSM podcasts funded by
Patreon. I suspect it's damage control for Patreon.

For more complete information, listen to Tim Pool. [0]

0\.
[https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=timcast+patreon](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=timcast+patreon)

------
rdiddly
The problem in a nutshell is the assignment of quasi-public roles to private
corporations. There's the public interest, and then there's a corporation's
interests. To make the two coincide, you need a fairly heavy regulatory
regime, such as the one we use for private electric utility companies. If
that's not present, it's inevitable that there will be a mismatch of
expectations.

------
infoworm
>That stopped this month. On Dec. 6, Patreon kicked the anti-feminist polemic
Carl Benjamin, who works under the name Sargon of Akkad, off its site for
using racist language on YouTube.

The article says they barred an account for racist speech, but the article
doesn't share the offending quote and without the accompanying context?

Classic case of dishonest media framing.

------
dblotsky
Patreon is as free to deny someone service as their customers are to express
themselves. No affront to free speech there.

------
kfk
I don’t know, in Germany, Spain, Italy and probably most other EU countries we
have rules that forbid various types of hate speech. For instance in Italy you
can be charged for spreading “fascist ideas”. Not exactly sure if US has that?
That would provide an objective framework for these discussions. I do think
Patreon has a brand to defend and they do what’s right for them, but then they
should be much more clear and upfront about it. I don’t think banning
individuals is ok, I think updating your policies, communicating them clearly
and then banning those violating them with upfront anticipation would be the
correct way here.

Also, looking from outside, challenging various ideas in US today seems to be
tabu. For instance, nobody dares to even slightly criticize the current
feminist movement/s. I don’t know, no movement I have studied in human history
has been 100% right. But again, if Patreon does not want anybody to criticize
feminism they can be upfront about it, put it clearly in their policies and
that would be ok, they own their platform after all.

------
CapitalistCartr
Freedom is the right to be wrong. If I can voice any opinion, as long as its
correct, I'm enslaved.

------
thoughtstheseus
Patreon is not important or unique enough that exclusion would disadvantage
people systematically. They can do what they want, it’s their business. If
people don’t like it go build a competitor. It’s just a webpage and payment
system.

~~~
colejohnson66
So how do you build a payment system? You partner with banks. What if those
banks deplatform you? Do you go and build your own bank? You should be able to
see this isn’t practical

------
slater
Good for Patreon.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance)

------
memeograph
The whole "private companies can do what they want" and "nobody has to listen"
argument is a red herring. The choice to financially support who you want is
being denied, by capricious and orwellian "safety" boards, who openly talk
about having no objective standards for it.

If that doesn't set off your bullshit alarms, you don't value the mindset that
gave us all the ability to listen in the first place, and let people live such
bubbled, comfortable lives that a wrong word feels like an attack.

------
DonHopkins
"It is said that the people are revolting!"

"You said it. They stink on ice!"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0iAcQVIokg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0iAcQVIokg)

------
knorker
GitHub forced a company off their platform for using the word "retard" to mean
delay/hold back in signals processing context.

What a time to be alive.

------
avar
I don't see if it's mention in this article (there's a hard paywall), but
notably Sam Harris, among other things previously one of the top authors on
Patreon, quit the platform over this incident.

His own explanation for why starts around 5 minutes into this podcast:
[https://samharris.org/podcasts/drive-interview-peter-
attia/](https://samharris.org/podcasts/drive-interview-peter-attia/)

Briefly, while he doesn't defend what Carl Benjamin said, he himself feels he
can't financially rely on a platform that boots controversial authors from the
platform.

------
vergessenmir
"This month, the site’s moderators received a complaint about Mr. Benjamin,
who had risen to fame railing against diversity and feminism during the
GamerGate movement in 2014. Mr. Benjamin used the N-word and anti-gay language
during an interview posted to YouTube on Feb. 7, Patreon found."

If you read the transcript you can see why some may view what he said as
offensive. Personally I think it was a poor choice of words and a rather
unwieldy attempt at a satirical jab.

From what I've gathered, though, the uproar isn't to the fact that Mr Benjamin
was kicked off but more around the ambiguity of the 'trust and safety"
guidelines. Patreon claim he was kicked off for using 'hate speech', they
don't say it was because of using the N-word because the N-word is littered
across their site for about 50 pages of search results
([https://www.patreon.com/search?q=nigger&p=50](https://www.patreon.com/search?q=nigger&p=50)).
If hate speech is the issue the definition of what that is, is apparently
missing.

The uproar I believe is related to the fact that content creators can not
self-police and that patreon can arbitrarily define the boundaries of
acceptable speech
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window)).
This boundary is extended to policing on 'other' platforms like Youtube or
Twitter which I believe is a little ludicrous.

The finger pointing at Patreon at the moment rails the accusation that this
has nothing to do with morals and hate speech but everything to do with
political bias due to its lack of specificity. I think this conflation is
clear, the NYT article is peppered with the mention of political affiliations
and repeatedly casts the detractors by associating them with hate movements or
the political right.

Hate speech does exist, but this here seems to me to be a polarised
conversation about left and right politics in America than anything else and
the platforms being the next phase of this debate. Rowan Atkinson gave a talk
a few years ago on hate speech in England,
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3UeUnRxE0E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3UeUnRxE0E)
. Notice it is a levelled critique of hateful speech and says nothing about
left or right, conservative or democratic. I wish the NYT had taken a more
measured and thoughtful approach in teasing this story apart and doing what
good journalists do: separate the signal from the noise and tell the truth
intelligently in the language of the everyday man and woman and not adding to
the confusion.

For a bit of context, I'm British and black and we have our own share of
problems trying to deal fairly with 'hate speech'.

\- "Man guilty of hate crime for filming pug's 'Nazi salutes'" \-
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-
west-43478925](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-43478925)

\- "Teenager faces prosecution for calling Scientology 'cult'" \-
[https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/may/20/1](https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/may/20/1)

\- "Gay horse jibe" \-
[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/4196447/Arrest-
for-g...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/4196447/Arrest-for-gay-
horse-jibe-is-absurd-says-Tatchell.html)

It's difficult, but let's not pretend for a second that Patreon dealt with
this fairly and transparently. Let's not pretend either that they are
deserving of our custom because of their moral virtue.

------
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?

~~~
ubernostrum
As the kids say these days: you accidentally said the quiet part out loud :)

When it was Margaret Sanger being prosecuted for distributing information
about contraception, well, there's a perfectly reasonable justification for
that law! Women can't just go around having sex without consequences! When it
was theaters refusing to book touring companies of _South Pacific_ , well,
it's Communist to say that interracial marriage is OK! And we're at war with
Communism! When it was movie studio associations and comic book publisher
associations enforcing "codes" to avoid having formal censorship imposed on
them by law, well, topics like sex and drugs are objectionable, and people
shouldn't be encouraged to question authority figures!

The people complaining today about being "silenced" tend to hold the same
types of views as their predecessors who used to _do_ the silencing. And their
predecessors didn't stop at just boycotting or otherwise exercising their
right of free association (and disassociation). Even if it's not, in the end,
held to be fair play, turnabout is a nice source of schadenfreude.

~~~
brandonmenc
> turnabout is a nice source of schadenfreude

The problem with the, "ha! now you're getting yours!" attitude is that the
situation will inevitably flip, and "your" side will be on the receiving end.
Again. Rinse, repeat.

Meanwhile, the power of the tools keeps growing until one day, it will be
absolute. Whoever is on the wrong side of the ideological coin flipping when
that happens will be in big trouble.

~~~
paulcole
>The problem with the, "ha! now you're getting yours!" attitude is that the
situation will inevitably flip, and "your" side will be on the receiving end.
Again. Rinse, repeat.

Yep. Believe it or not, it’s possible for what’s seen as right today to be
considered wrong tomorrow and this can be a sign of progress in society.

See slavery, bloodletting, alchemy. Although with Bitcoin’s popularity, it
seems as though alchemy is back in again.

~~~
brandonmenc
> Believe it or not, it’s possible for what’s seen as right today to be
> considered wrong tomorrow and this can be a sign of progress in society.

Of course I believe that.

I also believe that the tools the world uses to communicate are controlled by
a small number of people who may not always share in whatever the prevailing
tolerant attitude of the day is.

------
village-idiot
> “These recent expulsions seem more readily explained by political bias”

This reasoning seems weak. It might me political bias, but it might also be
about hate speech. In order to claim this is purely about politics, one would
need to show that hate speech is evenly distributed among political ideologies
while unevenly punished. In this climate, that's not a bet I would take.

------
drak0n1c
As an aside - it's interesting that the New York Times uses the descriptor
"left-leaning" for Chapo Trap House, a podcast by self-described Marxists who
regularly advocate for mass property seizure and anti-social mischief. In the
article there is no hesitation to use "right-wing", so why not use "left-
wing"?

"Far-right" appears regularly in headlines about a variety of events, but I
can't recall the last time "far-left" was used at all in headlines or body
text, outside of a quote.

------
eyeball
Is there a link anywhere to what the guy actually said to get banned? Curious
to hear what we’re calling “hate speech” these days.

------
scarejunba
I’m comfortable with current protected classes not being expanded. I’m
comfortable with non-protected classes being unsupported by services. I am
comfortable with the line for people who are supported being drawn with these
guys outside it.

These guys aren’t providing any value to society. Whether they make money or
live on the dole is irrelevant to me.

The “no platform” argument has merit and I think it should occur by having
ISPs be regulated as common carriers.

------
mcguire
" _“I think the most likely outcome, if this continues, is that all
contentious speech or behavior will put the speaker or actor at risk of
serious financial and social sanctions, and strip them of all defense,” Mr.
Peterson wrote in an email._ "

 _OH, MY GOD!_ Say it ain't so! We cannot live in a world where "contentious
speech or behavior" might lead to "serious sanctions!" Who will think of the
victims?!

------
entwife
With Internet Banking, is easy to have a check sent to individual or
organization one wants to support on an annual or semi annual basis, which has
the same effect as $1-5/month.

Patreon is useful to discover new content. I imagine it is convenient for the
"creator". But, not being on Patreon doesn't prevent a person from gathering
support for their cause. It only prevents Patreon from advertising causes,
which is Patreon's right.

------
stevebmark
I applaud Patreon's principled and value based stance. Hate speech is a
difficult thing to address, and building social pressure against it is one of
the few valuable tools we have.

~~~
outoftheabyss
Given the context, Patreon were hardly addressing hate speech in any well
meaning or virtuous way. Your applause is not for a value based stance but for
an ideological one

