
Patreon suspended my account. They have not notified me - tonyztan
https://twitter.com/Scott_Helme/status/1077254028453654529
======
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.

[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/)

~~~
AllegedAlec
Although Patreon is an excessively scummy company, there is some evidence that
some of these bans were forced by Mastercard and Visa.

~~~
syshum
There is speculation that Mastercard may have put some pressure on them

I have seen zero actual evidence for MasterCard, and no speculation for Visa,
so I would love to see citation for your evidence?

There was Speculation for MC in the JihadWatch banning, but MC has publicly
said they were not behind it I believe.

PayPal on the other hand probably is, PayPal has been on a moral Authoritarian
left war for over a decade now

~~~
asabjorn
See the transcript of Matts conversation with Patreon [1]. They said this was
entirely their decision, and they did it because they didn't like Sargons
brand whatever that means.

[1]
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U0mQjUA0T5INc_GDkwPJ2mfh...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U0mQjUA0T5INc_GDkwPJ2mfhO7tbaIogisSqqxHw0hc/edit)

------
beezischillin
The whole backlash against Patreon didn't start now as they've done stuff like
what that person on Twitter complains about but it culminated in the strange
circumstances involving the banning of one Carl Benjamin, aka. Sargon of
Akkad. People are upset about this, even outside of politics not because they
support or even agree with Carl Benjamin but because of what Patreon did, and
still does.

They banned the guy over a 10 month old livestream on an obscure channel where
he criticised the alt-right using their own vernacular. If you ignore context,
then sure, it is "hate-speech". The issue here is, however, that Patreon
explicitly said that they only enforce their policies on their own platform in
their terms. (Jack Conte said the same thing, explicitly on a podcast.) And
yet, they suspended a creator, without warning and shoddily still allowed new
people to pledge money to him. For other creators this does shows that their
livelihoods can be shut down any time, any moment, for any reason, on a whim
of someone on that "Trust & Safety Council".

Let us not mention the blatant hate-speech they allow _ON THEIR OWN PLATFORM_,
even among their top 20 creators.

If you entrust your livelihood to a platform, you want someone neutral and
someone who takes the time to notify you about changes related to your income,
even if it's via automated messages.

------
notafraudster
It's possible this is an account suspension (i.e. "We don't want you to have
an account anymore because you do XYZ"), but it looks more like a fraud /
financial flag (i.e. "We think someone has broken into your account and we're
holding your funds temporarily.") As evidence, they still contact him about
new subscribers and his page is still online, which it isn't in other cases
when Patreon suspends an account.

Still an indictment of their communications process, and still a financial
risk to the person, but it's a little odd that literally all the replies in
that Twitter thread are people talking about Milo Yiannopoulous. Even if
Patreon decided it wanted to go all in on hosting controversial political
figures, they'd presumably still have some kind of fraud checks, so the points
really do seem to be unrelated.

~~~
PavlovsCat
If that flag can suspend his account, it can send him a message.

------
blhack
This same story played out 10 or so years ago with Wikileaks, PayPal, and
major card processors and banks.

The sad realization was that private companies can control who gets to speak
very effectively.

Lots of people hoped cryptocurrency would fix this, but so far it hasn't.

~~~
Erlich_Bachman
In technological terms, cryptocurrencies really have fixede this. However, the
adoption is lacking behind somewhat. However, the few creators that do use
cryptocurrency (even just in a rudimentary way of putting a bitcoin address in
a video) - have gained from this.

~~~
y4mi
It really didn't.

Bitcoins ledger is public, marking every transaction from who to whom the
money went. Yes, it's originally only the wallet id that is public, but this
id only needs to be matched once to a person...

And don't even start with exchanges. They have exactly the same problem as any
private entity such as PayPal or patreon has

~~~
Erlich_Bachman
Couldn't one simply use the other currencies where ledger is not public, if
the privacy is needed? Like Zcash, Dash or Monero (no affiliation, I'm just
listing options to clearly show that public ledger is in technological sense
not a problem).

I think that many of these problems stem from censorship, not need of privacy.

~~~
xte
You can't for a simple reason: to use them you need a combination of hw, sw
and connectivity that's largely proprietary and can't be considered safe...

You may trust your FOSS-only OS, your FOSS "wallet", but how you can trust
your hw? How easy a country can look out citizens from internet services?

Mesh network and open hardware exists but mostly at a marginal and embryonic
stage...

------
manfredo
Patreon sounds like something relatively easy to replicate. Effectively every
utility implements what patron provides. It's essentially just scheduling
recurring payments, with a discussion forum attached. More behavior like what
we've been seeing Patreon do lately, and I can see larger creators shifting to
hosing their own patronage services. Essentially the same reason why EA,
Blizzard, and even more niche game publishers like Matrix Games, Slithrine,
and X Plane host their own game purchasing and delivery services: greater
control and no cut taken away.

Perhaps a more feasible and maybe probable approach is for another service
like WordPress or SquareSpace to offer patronage functionality (as in,
offering recurring payments and exclusive contents for patrons).

~~~
Waterluvian
The most bizarre part, to me, is that it feels like this should just be a part
of modern banking.

"Hey if you like my stuff consider adding my <public bank account key> to your
monthly payments.

I guess Patreon provides a walled garden of premium content for patrons, but
I'm skeptical that's universally desired by creators. The few I know don't do
any of that.

~~~
manfredo
I think the core of Patreon's value is tying the payment to exclusive contents
and access to patrons-only forums. That's why I think WordPress or SquareSpace
would be suited to capturing Patreon's market. Creators can already create web
stores in SquareSpace, it shouldn't be too much work on top of it to create
recurring payments. It'd be more work, though, to wall off certain portions of
the site to different payment schedules. And that's the real value.

One thing that Patreon does have that would be harder to recreate is the
gamification of patronage. Like comparing subscriber counts on YouTube,
Patreon makes it easy to compare different creators' Patreon income which I
think serves as a rough estimate of clout.

~~~
Waterluvian
Do they? I thought income went private some time in 2018. I did use to enjoy
looking at my favourite creators to see that indeed they were getting paid
enough.

~~~
manfredo
It's configurable by the user: [https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-
us/articles/115000392243-H...](https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-
us/articles/115000392243-How-do-I-change-my-earnings-visibility-)

------
mirimir
Being someone who pays ~zero attention to Twitter, and very little to
"politics", I had no clue that there was a shitstorm happening over
"censorship" by Patreon. (Although I think that it probably _is_ censorship,
I'm not sure, so scare quotes.)

Anyway, so searx.me shows me a NY Times article from today.[0] And it contains
these ironic bits:

> 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.
> [emphasis added]

> _“There are no automated takedowns,” Mr. Conte said._ “As a creator myself
> dealing with these big tech platforms and getting an automated takedown
> notice, there’s no appeals process. You can’t talk to a human. And I never
> want to do that.” [emphasis added]

Funny, that.

Edit: And if this is truly a " fraud / financial flag", wouldn't one expect to
see the same level of outreach?

0) [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/24/technology/patreon-
hate-s...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/24/technology/patreon-hate-speech-
bans.html)

~~~
xte
A small note: how can ever a private company claim the right to decide about
"hate speech", "illegal contents" etc? If they have _suspects_ they have to go
knock the police/other public authority door to _signal_ what they suspect and
after comply to the _public authority_ decision.

Nowadays to many people do not comprehend really this _super-important_
concept... And many countries try to take advantage of it pushing private
power.

~~~
jrs95
"Hate speech" doesn't have a legal definition in the United States that I am
aware of. If it does, it's still covered by the first amendment and legal. So
its not a question of Patreon determining what is legal, they're determining
what is acceptable to them.

~~~
PavlovsCat
> "Hate speech" doesn't have a legal definition in the United States that I am
> aware of.

Then fix that, instead of using it as a loophole to ruin the web, and then
still not having fixed that.

~~~
joshuamorton
Either one of defining hate speech at the federal level or preventing
businesses from enforcing their own hate speech policies would require a
constitutional amendment in the us.

I highly doubt such an amendment could ever get popular or political support.

~~~
weberc2
Seems like policing speech is a bad precedent to set, and even if you don’t
think it’s a slippery slope, how do we make sure the government’s definition
of the phrase is/remains reasonable? Ideally the extreme left wing will be
marginalized (i.e., no more dominating universities and newsrooms or tech
companies) just like we marginalized right wing extremists.

~~~
joshuamorton
Part of the problem may be that you're off the opinion that tech companies are
the extreme left.

I've met people on the extreme left, they're not average Facebook or Google
employees. No one on mainstream TV is "extreme" left. You have to get to
theyoungturks or chapotraphouse. (And these are marginalized, given that
you've probable maybe heard of Cenk and TYT, but CTH is a podcast and
subreddit and nothing else).

If your ideal is that the US's center left (which is globally center or center
right) is considered the extreme left and marginalized, your personal overton
window is so far to the right that you probably shouldn't be making these
decisions. And as you say, the government probably shouldn't be either, it
would allow a government that believed that CNN was far left to censor it.

~~~
weberc2
Let me set the record straight so you don’t have to guess about whether I’m
conflating far left and center left:

1\. I’m a moderate liberal by every measure.

2\. I don’t view CNN as far left; while it is shamefully partisan, no more so
than Fox News.

3\. I don’t want the government to censor anyone, I’m more or less a free
speech absolutist.

4\. I don’t think tech companies in general are far-left; only that a handful
appear to contain a sufficiently powerful contingent of far left ideologues
who feel comfortable using their company to suppress dissent (social media
platforms censoring moderate liberal and conservative viewpoints, Google
firing Damore under patently false pretenses, Mozilla pushing out Eich, etc).

~~~
xte
A small intervention: to my (western) European eyes saying that CNN is far
left or even saying that far left exists in the USA is a fascist
affirmation...

That's to add a different "relative" measure.

Apart of that far left and far right are essentially the SAME, their "lower
labor force" are fanatic people used as a weapon/Ford models workers by the
very same "sponsors" who want dictatorship instead of free society.

If you read about or know someone who have visited both Franco's Spain and
Chernenko's Soviet Union you will see that they are _equally_ oppressive and
use essentially the very same language, only with a little color variation in
flags.

Do not forget that Lenin was massively financed by Kaiser's Germany, Stalin by
UK crown etc just to stop socialism transforming it in a dictatorial regime
with same symbols, not different by the hitler financing by German élites
against socialism in Germany, mussolini financed by UK crown against a
socialist Italy etc.

"left" is socialism, "center" is liberalism, the rest are only a grayscale of
dictatorship movements disguised in various ways.

~~~
weberc2
Yes, these political descriptors have different meanings in the US compared to
Europe.

------
xte
With modern "web platforms" we are not customers but only lemons to be juiced
and dropped, puppets, slaves. Nothing more.

Now think REALLY well about our future, especially imaging at actual trend a
future with a banking system lead by big of IT instead of banks and of course
usable only via proprietary services.

Think about the past when we have bankbooks with any transaction written and
signed by the bank in _our_ hand vs today when we only have to relay on bank's
servers itself. Think about how you can pay with physical money and how you
need to pay with electronic one, especially observe the hard dependencies that
both systems have.

Add to the soup the fact that power corrupt and interdependence force
cooperation instead of wars.

Add to the soup the fact that in the past knowledge generally used to be in
universities, so in public hand while now it's mostly in super-big-corps
secret hands.

Add to the soup the fact that when we totally depend on something, including
basic things like food supply/production/distribution there is no need of
strong power to create a dictatorship simply because people can't live without
the product of de-facto "dictator"...

------
RomanPushkin
GoFundMe also suspended my account this way in the past. No response or
explanation for more than 6 months.

------
DanielBMarkham
I'm not going to focus on the free speech part of this, or even the purpose of
art. It's gotten to the point that watching well-funded companies go down this
road is just painful. All of that money and education. Such idiots. I'm
embarrassed to be part of the same tech community with them. Go buy a copy of
On Liberty and take a time-out until you grok it. (Rawls can wait until later)

Instead, I'm curious as to a few other things.

1\. This looks prima facia like fraud. You say one thing, the TOS says one
thing, you do another -- and you take money while acting that way. If that's
not fraud, I don't understand the term.

2\. As I noted in a recent essay, the way that software generalizes
communication, combined with a system/platform that has massive adoption,
always leads to a bad place even when this has nothing to do with politics or
content. Even if we get past the speech and fraud part of the problem, we
still have a huge problem. [http://tiny-giant-
books.com/1.html?EntryId=recEUbufzhAvph8K1](http://tiny-giant-
books.com/1.html?EntryId=recEUbufzhAvph8K1)

3\. Are we a bulletin board or a publisher? I understand these companies want
to take both stances simultaneously, and that the law allows this, but heck if
it makes any sense to me how it's going to work out well. Yes, it's legal, but
that doesn't make it any more tenable. Algorithms don't amount to magic sauce,
no matter how much you wave your hands around.

4\. We are in need of anti-trust legislation when it comes to the _marketplace
of ideas_. On the net, either there is no such thing as a public square or
some legislative intervention is required. I don't think arguing that there's
no such thing as a public square works for rational observers of the
marketplace. Sounded pretty cool ten years ago, sure. And perhaps most of the
public might still buy it. But its days are numbered.

Interesting place we have ended up. I note that "interesting" can have
terrible connotations.

------
anhonestopinion
Opinion: first big enough country that will force neutrality of payment
processors will get all content creators, startups and the trillions in sound
money and cultural value that come with them

------
Havoc
Trying hard to emulate PayPal behaviour :/

------
aestetix
I'm unclear whether this is due to an account being suspended, or an account
on hold due to some kind of fraud detection.

I'd say the one clear indictment here is Patreon's absolute shit
communications. Traditional companies have a phone number you can call to talk
to a human and sort everything out, but that seems to have gone the way of the
Dodo, replaced with a way less effective but cheaper solution.

------
mirimir
HN may have come to the rescue again. OP got his account restored on the 24th
at 4:48 PM PST:

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DvQ75bUX4AMLblW.jpg:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DvQ75bUX4AMLblW.jpg:large)

------
kidoodle
Apparently J. Peterson is building something to solve this problem.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GWz1RDVoqw4](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GWz1RDVoqw4)

I wonder how they handle the payment part.

~~~
PavlovsCat
It's a video with the summary of discussion between a lot of people who are
unhappy with Patreon and are looking for alternatives, from 9 days ago -- how
is that not relevant?

And why are we not busy talking about and making alternatives, rather than
downvoting an example of what _should_ be going on here?

------
ploggingdev
Like someone else suggested, this is likely a case of automated flagging by
fraud detection systems, but it does not excuse such terrible communication on
Patreon's part.

I have been following the recent Patreon backlash with interest, which I think
was triggered by Patreon banning a youtuber who goes by Sargon of Akkad for
using the phrase "white [n-word]" in a youtube video. Sam Harris, who was one
of the highest earning people n Patreon, closed his patreon account and
explained why he did so [0]. Jordan Peterson and Dave Rubin (popular internet
personalities who spoke out against Patreon's trust and safety policies) are
planning on launching an alternative [1] to Patreon that is more pro free
speech. It would be interesting to see if they manage to build a free speech
alternative since the problem usually is that the worst elements on the
internet flock to it before regular people and the site/service will be
labeled a hub for nazis/white supremacists and no bank/financial institution
will want to do business with such a service. It also sounds like companies
such as Stripe and Paypal can do little even if they wanted to support a free
speech alternative to Patreon, since that would cause issues with their
payment networks.

I am interested in learning a little about how the financial infrastructure
works (banks, payment processors, regulations), who decides what types of
service should not be allowed even if it's legal and what it would take to
build a free speech alternative to Patreon, so if there are some good
resources that you know about, please share them in the comments.

[0]
[https://twitter.com/SamHarrisOrg?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctw...](https://twitter.com/SamHarrisOrg?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)

[1]
[https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/10772442911251742...](https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/1077244291125174275)

~~~
Erlich_Bachman
But notifying the owner is not a part of automated flagging? How hard is it to
make it send out a short e-mail? This is basically very bad care and support
for clients, however one spins it.

------
mirimir
I wonder if anyone relevant at Patreon reads HN.

~~~
robbrown451
You'd think someone at Patreon would know someone who reads HN.

------
floatingatoll
Patreon is very likely on mandatory US Holiday today. By the time they read
this thread on Wednesday, it will be far too late for them to fend off the
mob. They deserve one business day to reply, and they won't have had that
until Wednesday at the _earliest_. Be kind.

EDIT: If your reply is "they should reply 24/7/365", ask yourself whether it
makes financial sense to staff a support team on Christmas at triple-overtime
pay; notice that essentially all US businesses do not staff support on
Christmas; and then reconsider your reply.

~~~
tokyodude
I get your point that most businesses are closed but I didn't know it was
mandatory or required triple pay. Is that true?

Disneyland is open on Christmas. Most movie theaters are open on Christmas. I
think most convenience stores, many groceries stores, and most gas stations
are open on Christmas.

~~~
StudentStuff
It seems OP also missed this gem:

> This suspension came between 18 and 47 days ago based on my missed payouts.
> No review has taken place in that time...

Patreon has had weeks to do this review, yet they haven't communicated or done
anything.

~~~
mirimir
True. But he just tweeted today, and it quickly hit HN front page.

~~~
georgemcbay
I agree with your basic point about not grabbing the pitchforks out just yet,
but wouldn't it be nice if online businesses had to be accountable in a
reasonable timeframe to all of their customers (especially when it comes to
handling money that is due to the customer) and not just people who happen to
have large twitter followings?

~~~
mirimir
Well, I actually would expect someone to be checking Twitter and HN ;)

But maybe they've given up paying attention, given the other stuff going on.
Or maybe overwhelmed and frustrated.

