
Naomi Wu: They defunded me on Patreon, now they want SubscribeStar [video] - PavlovsCat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FETt5JzufY4
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imtringued
It appears to me that someone at Patreon has an axe to grind. Otherwise they
would start enforcing their TOS against racial slurs or discrimination on
their own platform first rather than using the TOS as an excuse to ban
specific individuals for "breaking" their TOS on a separate platform like
Youtube. This type of selective enforcement wouldn't have turned out to be
such a big issue if they had notified the affected accounts and gave them a
grace period or a chance to change their behavior. If this really was about
the TOS then Pateron wouldn't try to enforce it on their competitor's platform
which by definition doesn't have to obey it.

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PavlovsCat
Shouldn't payment processors, and sites like patreon that hang off them, which
ONLY bow to the law, and nothing but the law, be a huge, un(der)served niche
right now, steadily becoming bigger?

It'll be $next_year soon, there needs to be better than e.g. this, which was
in the suggested videos sidebar:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv7hvZee-
PQ&t=8m07s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv7hvZee-PQ&t=8m07s)

~~~
dragonwriter
> Shouldn't payment processors, and sites like patreon that hang off them,
> which ONLY bow to the law, and nothing but the law, be a huge, un(der)served
> niche right now, steadily becoming bigger?

No, it's not a niche at all. Payment processor and patronage sites are
markets, and to the extent incumbents in those markets exclude certain
distinct submarkets, there is a niche serving the unserved submarkets. But
serving all submarkets allowed by law isn't a niche, and overlaps
significantly with what th incumbents serve.

~~~
PavlovsCat
Then replace niche with untapped potential, something that's needed, dozens of
other ways to say the same thing? For example, we could use "niche":

> A situation or activity specially suited to a person's interests, abilities,
> or nature

but I just realized that wouldn't fit at all. But you get the idea of what I
meant when I said niche, right? I see people wanting to throw money at other
people, and they will find a way, either way. Not providing them a way before
they make their own is "leaving money on the table", if you will.

~~~
dragonwriter
I'm not taking issue with the word niche, I'm saying it's not a market, niche,
whatever that there is a economic incentive to fill. The gap is serving those
unserved by the incumbents.

~~~
PavlovsCat
So there is a gap, there are unserved people (with unspent money), but there
is no niche, no market and no economic incentive.

~~~
dragonwriter
No, again, I'm saying the gap/niche/market/whatever is the specific unserved
groups, _not_ unconditional service. Which is why even when people try to
exploit a perceived gap by pitching unconditional service, all it does is
become a service for the specific groups excluded by the current incumbents.

Let's say the incumbents cut out virulent racists, for example: then their is
a open niche for service to virulent racists. There's not for unconditional
service, because, but for (in this hypothetical) except for virulent racists,
there's no one left unserved by the existing, albeit potentially conditional,
service.

~~~
PavlovsCat
A catchall email in practice receives mails for the specific usernames that
are in the specific mails it gets, but saying "it serves * minus the accounts
that exist" is much simpler. After it was already made that simple, why make
it complicated again?

> Let's say the incumbents cut out virulent racists

So what are you driving at? Just some racists, now and from here on out, so no
loss? And what's a "virulent racist", a racist that makes other people racist
by mere contact? If that word means nothing, why was it added? Why was that
example chosen over Naomi Wu, for example?

By definition, services that play these games cut out anyone who does not want
to empower such arbitrarily acting and unaccountable gatekeepers. That's what
the law is for, for actual society.

Silicon Valley is clearly not up to the task, these virtual kingdoms are
demented, that stuff should be for video games and private forums, not
platforms that speak of community or society. They want to receive _from_
society, but not fulfill their duties _to_ society. Free speech is not an
optional luxury, and mobs out to destroy livelihoods and doing their virtual
lynch justice stuff are not benign. People who on average can't deal with
people that well, even on a small scale and face to face, cannot be in charge
of large systems that affect the social lives and livelihoods of massive
amounts of people. It's not just a trainwreck, it was kinda predictable.

~~~
dragonwriter
> So what are you driving at?

There's no hidden message, the thesis is explicitly stated: “the
gap/niche/market/whatever is the specific unserved groups, not unconditional
service.”

> Just some racists, now and from here on out, so no loss?

No, there was no hidden value judgement in the hypothetical. It would be the
same, _mutatis mutandis_ , if the excluded group were, say, African-Americans
rather than virulent racists; there is demand for services for the specific
unserved groups but—and experience, not just theory, shows this is the
case—there isn't a “niche” for “serves everybody within the law” caused by the
kind of incumbent companies at issue excluding some particular groups. The
niche that is opened is serving specifically the excluded groups.

This was a factual response about market realities to the upthread claim about
what niche was opened, not some kind of covert value judgement about who
deserves service.

> Silicon Valley is clearly not up to the task, these virtual kingdoms are
> demented, that stuff should be for video games and private forums, not
> platforms that speak of community or society. They want to receive from
> society, but not fulfill their duties to society.

Exercising judgement in what ideas one relays _is_ a duty to society, and
enabling that is the core point of freedom of speech.

> Free speech is not an optional luxury

Indeed it is not, so why would you deny it to the firms you are pointing to?

> and mobs out to destroy livelihoods and doing their virtual lynch justice
> stuff are not benign.

Comparing deplatforming to lynching is ludicrous and disgusting.

~~~
PavlovsCat
> This was a factual response about market realities

You simply read "niche" as something like "A focused, targetable part of a
market for certain products or services that has unmet demand". As I said,
replace it with untapped potential and your "thesis" doesn't apply, while my
point remains unchanged.

> Exercising judgement in what ideas one relays is a duty to society, and
> enabling that is the core point of freedom of speech.

Yes, and that's fine for private forums and video games, and birthday parties
and all that.

> Indeed it is not, so why would you deny it to the firms you are pointing to?

Why are you trying to hard to not get my point which is in plain English, and
then expect me to answer that first?

Because they're not persons, and they're offering themselves as middlemen, as
services with which we communicate and even engage in politics with.

Is the fact that the mailman can't rewrite my letters or decide on a "case by
case basis" whether to deliver them infringing on their free speech? No.

> Comparing deplatforming to lynching is ludicrous and disgusting.

I called it virtual lynching. Where the motive is to completely remove a
person, out of sight out of mind, if they starve, who cares, that applies. The
way the people go about it, that's just mob hatred. If you find calling that
out disgusting, it says something about you, it doesn't change what it is. If
you're going to talk about what is disgusting, try this totally irrelevant
tangent about the word "niche", _without_ having a point, in a topic you are
not interested in, where a person pretty much asked for help.

