
Top Patreon creators launching an alternate crowdfunding platform - raarts
https://www.businessinsider.com/jordan-peterson-says-hell-launch-patreon-alternative-before-christmas-2018-12
======
abnry
This is pretty interesting. People like Peterson get massive amounts of money
through their Patreon. I would find it very hard to give that up. On the other
hand, it seems necessary to do so to stay consistent with his values.

~~~
mpweiher
He is a university professor with tenure, has sold how many millions of copies
of 12 Rules for Life and has had the Patreon income for some time.

I think it's safe to say that he is financially independent, and he doesn't
strike me as the "can't ever get enough" kind of greedy.

------
tptacek
Why exactly won't the outcome of this be that their alternate platform is
dominated by characters that ruin the brand and drive away normal customers?
Thats's what happens every time this is tried elsewhere.

~~~
chasing
That's exactly what will happen. These people don't seem to realize that it's
not some institutional conspiracy that keeps their ideas on the fringe: It's
the fact that most people find them and their ideas toxic, dumb, boring,
and/or repellent.

~~~
sparkie
If that were the case, why would there be a need for such efforts to shut them
down?

The antidote to bad speech is more speech. Instead of attacking people, attack
their arguments.

~~~
chasing
We have limited time on this earth. Sometimes we just have to say "I'm done
arguing this over and over" and just move on. (Especially when the person on
the other side is arguing in bad faith.)

No one has been shut down from continuing the "conversation" on their own
platforms. You're not allowed to wander into Wal-Mart and sell whatever you
want. You're also not allowed to wander onto Patreon and sell whatever you
want.

~~~
sparkie
This is about more than just Patreon.

It took a couple of days for SubscribeStar to have their paypal access removed
once the loonies began their next witch hunt.

How far do we take the witch hunts before we decide enough is enough?

If everyone in the world decided not to trade with people they didn't agree
with on everything, there would exist no trade.

~~~
chasing
Actually, I think we should take into account who we're doing business with
when we do business. Make the world a better place: Support good people doing
good things.

~~~
sparkie
That kind of thinking is why black people would be given seats at the back of
the bus.

You really need to stop making judgements about people.

~~~
tptacek
That is a fatuous argument. You could make precisely the same argument about
people who shun child molesters. People who shun white supremacists are not
the same as white supremacists.

~~~
sparkie
It's a different argument, because child molestation is a heinous crime, but
white supremacy is in itself, not a criminal offence. Certain behaviours which
may manifest as a result of white supremacy may be criminal.

We have legal systems which can deal with accusation of crimes. If you suspect
somebody to be a child molester, you can report them. The legal system makes
the judgement. It also prevents you from falsely accusing somebody of
molestation if you do so without evidence or reasonable motive.

The same legal system should apply to anyone being or claiming to be white
supremacist. Their action is not a crime unless they are inciting crime (ie,
calling for racial genocide). If the latter is the case, then they should be
prosecuted following the due process. Witch hunting is not due process.

I also think the same legal process should be applied to the far-left, who are
frequently falsely accusing people of something they are not. Unfortunately,
most people do not have the resources to fight anonymous twitter trolls for
libel.

This case with Sargon can be seen as a pretty good example of your argument
falling apart. He is frequently labeled as some kind of alt-right white
supremacist, when it is precisely this he denounces publicly. (Yes, his words
were not the most appropriate, but words are meaningless without context.
Patreon specifically ignored the context.)

What has become of the left, is not that they're shunning white supremacists,
but they are shunning _anybody that they perceive_ to be a white supremacist.
A whole different story. If you have loose definitions like "hate speech",
then it is justified to take down anyone you perceive to be your political
opponent according to your standards.

Another example case was the witch hunt against Kavanaugh. It seems the left
are determined to dismantle the idea of due process and putting people before
judge and jury for the sake of virtue signalling and social "justice" (an
oxymoron).

~~~
tptacek
I could not be less interested in any debate on an HN thread than I am in the
one about whether injustices were done to "Sargon of Akkad" and Justice
Kavanaugh.

People who shun white supremacists are not morally equivalent to white
supremacists.

~~~
sparkie
> People who shun white supremacists are not morally equivalent to white
> supremacists.

I'm not suggesting anything of the like. In fact, I will join you in shunning
white supremacists, as I would shun supremacists of any race.

When "shunning" becomes more than denunciation, but taking action to unperson
people and have them fired, cut off their finance, and make false accusations
about their peers, I draw the line.

If you want to keep believing in the _moral superiority_ of that kind of
social justice, be my guest.

------
jatsign
There have been various "alt-right" versions of companies, like twitter, and
they don't seem to take off. Patreon took a long time to grow before enough
people heard of it, and understood what it was. Alt-right versions don't have
the reach, since by definition, they're niche-focused.

They usually also run into problems with payment processors.

~~~
cm2187
The term "alt-right" is used so frequently by the left that it has lost any
meaning. But if it is meant to refer to far-right extremist movements, I don't
think that should apply to either Peterson, Harris or Rubin.

~~~
MikePemulis
I think the broader point is that the 'free speech' sites that these guys make
end up being overrun by the alt-right and the out-and-out fash.

But, on the question of Peterson being alt-right, his arguments for a willful
re-adoption of mythical 'archetypes' as a basis for modern society is... well,
excatly what happens with all far right ideologies, where a conception of
social order is influenced by lobsters. (Cherry-picking bits of animal
behaviour to explain human society is a mug's game, but if we were going to go
down this route, why not create some vision of frozen gay ice cream orgies and
child rearing, based on penguins?)

But the real smelly herring in Peterson's schtick is his conflation of
Marxism, post-moderism, and general identity politics. It's an invented
bogeyman, detached from any real analysis of the cornerstones of modern
poltiics. Again, it's absolutely a key strain of any rightish movement.

A lot of this could be explained as him being more of a grifter than anything,
but ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

~~~
raarts
This makes me wonder. Would it be useful if HN added the age of an account
which each comment?

~~~
yorwba
HN differentiates new users from the rest by giving them a green username.

------
EGreg
The root of the problem is centralized platforms. The future consists of
platforms which are:

1) End to end encrypted, with clients sharing keys as needed

2) Distributed hash tables route every activity to a few servers (per
activity) which run consensus

3) Automatic rebalancing when some server is taken out

Simple? Well, this is the future. Not blockchains, but this.

MaidSAFE, Holochain, Intercoin and others are building it.

You can even make realtime push via sockets in this model, though anything
realtime compromises anonymity.

------
Rumperuu
Ignoring whatever views you may have about him and those he associates with,
at the end of one of Carl Benjamin/Sargon of Akkad's recent videos on his
Patreon removal [0] he starts talking about 'alt-tech' (Gab, Voat, whatever
this alt-Patreon ends up being) and tells his viewers to join with him 'to
essentially build a new Internet that _they_ can't attack'.

This has me wondering about the long-feared Balkanisation of the Internet.
It's always been assumed that nation state conflicts would bring this about
[1,2], but this incident has me wondering if we might not see it come about
based on ideology instead.

With all the fuss made about how people on social platforms live in filter
bubbles, at least those bubbles coexisted on the same platforms and there
might be at least some chance of piercing them. What's going to happen if we
create two (or more) entirely separate service ecosystems for people to sort
themselves into on political bases?

On the flipside, maybe this is a _feature_ of the market rather than a bug and
everything'll work out fine [3]? It might even lead to a drive to develop
resilient, distributed services that don't run the risk of a single provider
being strongarmed or being able to revoke service on ideological grounds that
everyone can benefit from.

I'll be interested to see how this all develops.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXRx98gpuRY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXRx98gpuRY)

[1] [http://newdigitalage.com/](http://newdigitalage.com/)

[2] [https://www.rt.com/russia/446502-russia-legislators-
internet...](https://www.rt.com/russia/446502-russia-legislators-internet-
security/)

[3] [http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/07/archipelago-and-
atomic-...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/07/archipelago-and-atomic-
communitarianism/)

~~~
Kye
Humans interpreted censorship as damage and routed around it long before they
encoded that into the internet. Dissent seems like an inherent, impossible to
isolate part of the human condition. They can create bubbles all they like,
but some people will break out and keep the ladder down.

------
tekproxy
All crowd funding can be disintermediated by smart contacts. Imho, the writing
is on the wall.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Until the FBI or whoever comes in to shut it down once it attracts enough
illegal activity.

~~~
mirimir
If it can be shut down, it was a fail from the start.

Edit: Just in case it's not obvious, I consider vulnerability to takedown as a
backdoor.

~~~
tjoff
If it can't be shut down it is doomed to fail.

~~~
sparkie
What makes you so sure?

BitTorrent couldn't be shut down, and that certainly didn't fail. Various
torrent websites have been shut down and the protocol sill runs as good as
ever.

What is needed isn't just a company delivering a patreon alternative, but
people to build a protocol for crowdfunding, much like Bittorrent. This can be
done now thanks to Bitcoin. If exchanges and webhosters get shut down, it will
cause a slight disturbance in the protocol, but it won't bring the protocol
down.

These protocols can offer better privacy than their centralized counterparts,
and censorship becomes a non-issue. Given the clear advantages, I suspect that
it is the centralized, politically charged providers who are doomed to fail,
eventually.

~~~
tjoff
Who cares about the protocol? BitTorrent most certainly has taken a huge hit
just by being associated with piracy, but regardless that's not very
interesting. There are tons of ISPs etc. that filter BitTorrent, but that's
mostly because it puts a strain on the network. Aside from that few has been
attacking the protocol itself.

If emailing was considered illegal and google, microsoft et al would shut down
their servers, you would still be able to email people.

Though far from anyone, and you might need to remember that odd IP because the
DNS queries for popular people might be blocked depending on where you live.

If that was the case, would email be dead? Yes.

Would email as a protocol be dead? No. But it would be dead in the eyes of the
public.

And that kind of defeats the "censorship becomes a non issue". By that logic
censorship in china is also a non-issue. Because you can circumvent the great
firewall with VPNs. Never mind that you have to be tech savvy and take
personal risks, but despite that it isn't a non-issue to the public. And
that's enough.

~~~
sparkie
DNS is a problem for censorship resistance. The solution is not to identify
people by their IP address, but to identify them by a unique token which
cannot be forged by anyone else (a public key).

In place of DNS, you have distributed gossip protocols which map public keys
to IP addresses, and where the messages in that protocol are digitally signed
using the private keys for that public key, such that you couldn't have the
equivalent of "DNS spoofing".

You can also use the same public keys to perform an authenticated DH key
exchange and then have all of your communications encrypted and MITM
resistant.

A public key would be like a phone number. You give it out to the people you
want to have it directly.

We're effectively in an arms race right now where one side is determined to
tightly control internet traffic like the Chinese firewalls, and the other
side is developing distributed protocols which resist these censorship
efforts. The latter has had a significant boost with the invention of Bitcoin,
which can now be used without an internet connection, over SMS, satellite,
radio and whatever else. This isn't going to be a trivial thing to shut down.

~~~
tjoff
So, now those gossip protocols must now go through a central service, which
has government oversight (I mean, think of the children!).

Any such traffic that are not destined for that central service is dropped at
all ISP borders.

~~~
sparkie
Gossip is P2P. The protocols can be hidden as if they were SSL or some other
widely used protocols, but without the PKI and the centralization problems
that has. Evading the censors will probably be a continuous effort. The great
firewall has not succeeded in preventing the use of proxying services and
VPNs, despite the efforts.

If internet censorship becomes too widespread, people will use other
communication mechanism to conduct trade. As I mentioned, Bitcoin is broadcast
over satellite and radio in some locations. You can send a transaction as an
SMS message. A bitcoin transaction is ~250 bytes and can be encoded as a
sequence of 16 emojis. I can print a bitcoin transaction on paper and the
recipient can scan it.

~~~
tjoff
Sure, but "evading the censors will probably be a continuous effort" and
"censorship becomes a non-issue" are not compatible in the real world.

Even despite that the great firewall has not succeeded in preventing the use
of proxying services it still is a massive success. And despite all the ways
you can circumvent it censorship very much continues to be an issue, I'd argue
more so for every day.

The instant such SMS message transactions become popular a quick filter will
kill that if the need for it arises. And SMS is hardly the technique for
privacy minded communication (neither is bitcoin).

What remains is perhaps ham radio. Still easy to triangulate, jam and is not
accessible to anyone but the most extreme. Making triangulation even more
desirable and paints an even greater target on your back.

Printed copies are hardly something to look forward too, it also excludes
pretty much everyone. Cash would be quite superior unless you are transferring
huge amounts (which most won't).

------
TheodolphusRose
Peterson and Rubin are starting this because Patreon banned Yiannopoulos and
Benjamin. Benjamin got banned for saying, among other things, “Maybe you're
just acting like a n....r, mate? 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 really
amazing to me." Portraying Patreon’s action as being anti-conservative is
pretty disingenuous unless “conservative” was suddenly redefined to mean
“racist.”

------
raarts
OP here. More information here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWz1RDVoqw4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWz1RDVoqw4)

------
thecatspaw
So what stops this new site from getting extremist?

Looking at a similar story of voat here, which quickly became very rightwing
and unwelcome to tame ideologies

~~~
Cthulhu_
Who says this site intends to NOT get extremist? Providing a platform for
freedom of speech as an ultimate goal will end up with extremism, which chases
the less extremist people away - which is why e.g. Reddit started to crack
down on the fringes a while ago, to increase their mass appeal and not piss
off potential advertisers.

If you run a platform where your members pay you a percentage though, you're
not beholden to advertisers. You'd be beholden to law enforcement though.

~~~
cm2187
Well, they will likely run into problems with payment processors. My guess is
that the only way they can achieve this is by still filtering for unwanted
content (porn, extremists) but trying to not do what Patreon did, which is to
call extremist people who really aren't just because they don't share their
political opinion.

~~~
wetpaws
Looks like they need their own payment processing as well :)

------
digianarchist
Wonder how they will get Visa/Mastercard to support their new white
supremacist crowd funding site.

~~~
raarts
The people doing this are not white supremacists. Whoever claims this is
either misinformed or slanderous.

------
hossbeast
Finally, a reason to build something on a block chain.

------
Sujan
HN submission title is missing the "of the 'Intellectual Dark Web,'" bit.

~~~
Raphmedia
So, I've have listened to quite a few of Jordan Peterson's talks to understand
what was going on last time there was a controversy around him. I'm part of
one of the demographics that was really angered about some of his
conversations. After actually watching the content, I have seen nothing to
worry or get mad about.

How could anyone think that "intellectual dark web" is any accurate to
describe him?

There's nothing secret about what he does. He has podcasts, public talks and
university classes that he uploads to his youtube channel.

It seems that the only way to create controversy around him is to clickbait
stories and not actually listen to or describe his actual content.

Other than a profile / link aggregator called "intellectualdark.website" that
hosts his profile, I don't see any relation at all.

Am I missing some details? Anyone has the full explanation?

\---

Edit:

This is about the article's full title: “Top Patreon creators, of the
'Intellectual Dark Web,' say they're launching an alternate crowdfunding
platform not 'susceptible to arbitrary censorship'”.

~~~
cm2187
The "intellectual dark web" is a term that I believe Eric Weinstein coined to
refer to themselves, so it is not meant to be critical or to refer to secrecy.
Rather I understand it as a reference to a relatively diverse circle of
intellectuals (Harris and Peterson for instance are on the opposite side of
the political spectrum on many topics), that have a large direct audience
(through youtube, conferences and podcasts), but that are persona non grata on
mainstream medias (other than the occasional hit piece).

~~~
Raphmedia
You seem to know a bit about the subject, I'll take the opportunity to ask a
few questions if you don't mind (well, anyone else can answer too).

I am scouring the internet in the search of any snippets of information that
actually links those youtubers / podcasters together.

Other than being at the center of controversies and having a lot of public
notoriety, I'm not seeing anything. Even their ideologies and philosophies are
not the same.

From my point of view, it almost seems like a huge misunderstanding... or
perhaps a smearing campaign but I'm not one to cry wolf.

The situation is somewhat similar to that time mainstream media was implying
relationship between youtubers based on 3rd degrees connections that occurred
after collaborations. "X worked with Y. Y also worked with Z who is evil. X
must be evil".

~~~
needz
If you were asking how Harris and Peterson can be linked, they've debated
publicly and have hosted discussions with one another on their podcasts.

~~~
Raphmedia
This is grasping at straws. I am no alt-right apologist and consider myself
quite the democratic socialist. Even from my point of view, it seems like this
is nothing more than a vilification of the social discourse.

Would Sir Roger Scruton, The Cambridge Centre for the Study of Platonism and
the Ralston College be considered part of the "Intellectual Dark Web" for
hosting Jordan Peterson? (I'm not well versed in Peterson's career, this is
the latest video on his youtube channel).

Perhaps Channel 4 News is also part of the conspiracy for hosting him on TV.
Channel 4 is operated by Channel Four Television Corporation which is a public
corporation of UK's Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. Does
that means that the UK is at the head of the "dark intellectual web"? ...

I'm obliviously kidding, but there's no limit on how far you can spin this
situation.

Thanks for answering. I'm leaving it at that, now I know more but this is not
a rabbit hole I want to dive in any further.

------
ghostly_s
What the hell is with the editorializing in this submission headline? The
original is "Top Patreon creators, of the 'Intellectual Dark Web,[...]'. The
headline here creates the impression that Jordan Peterson et al are the most
popular people on the platform. They're not[1].

1\. [https://graphtreon.com/top-patreon-creators](https://graphtreon.com/top-
patreon-creators)

~~~
owaty
Peterson is #20 and Harris is #15 — how is that not the top?

------
hiddenSU
One of my favorite Jordan Peterson quotes:

> Now, here’s the issue. We know that things can go too far on the right, and
> we know that things can go too far on the left. But we don’t know what the
> markers are for going too far on the left. I would say that it’s ethically
> incumbent on those who are liberal or left-leaning to identity the markers
> of pathological extremism on the left and to distinguish themselves from the
> people who hold those pathological viewpoints — and I don’t see that that’s
> being done.

I think when sites like Patreon, Twitter, etc. start banning other view points
in the name of "social justice" or "political correctness"... all the while
being complete hypocrites to their own values... is when the left goes too
far.

~~~
sparrc
really? extreme leftism is pretty clear, it's communism. Saying that communism
isn't recognized by most people on the left as "going too far" is pretty hard
to believe.

~~~
sparkie
The irony is that you see many people non-ironically touting a hammer and
sickle on their profiles on these sites. To me that symbol is as dreadful as
the swastika. Both communism and fascism are two sides to the same coin.
Horseshoe theory is a real.

If the platforms were concerned about extremism, they would be clamping down
on the communists too, who have a human rights record as bad, if not worse
than the fascists.

~~~
49531
It's extremely reductive to label the ideology of Marx and that of the Nazis
as two sides of the same coin.

Yea, planned economies suck and systematic mismanagement can have devastating
effects, but you think that is comparable to an ideology of racial cleansing?

You think that the idea of democratic workplaces is the same as the idea of
creating a master race? Governments do a lot of awful things, but at their
core can you really say the ideas and tenets of communism are the same as
Nazism?

It's not ironic that the symbols of communism aren't abhorred the same way as
those of fascism, it's just that there's a little more nuance than "anti-
capitalism is evil".

~~~
sparkie
To me it only seems that their is a lack of reflection among socialists to
acknowledge the utter failures of communism everywhere and every time it has
been preached. I believe most conservatives acknowledge the failures of
facsism.

I'm not comparing the specific details which differentiate the two ideologies,
I'm comparing the traits which make them strikingly similar - the
authoritarianism. Whether a commie or a fascist, it is the support of the use
of state force to compel others into ones ideology that is the awful trait
shared between the two camps.

------
rchaud
Yesterday there was some discussion about how Robinhood's SIPC fiasco could
have been a marketing push because all publicity is good publicity. I
disagreed because Robinhood is trying to be a "serious" business, and stunts
like that would hurt their credibility.

This on the other hand is exactly the kind of situation where bad publicity
helps the characters in question. This Patreon competitor is pure vaporware;
Peterson has zero interest in business and tech, and doesn't even try to
describe the feature set. He knows that as far as his audience is concerned,
he only has to make it look like he's playing the big man and going to battle
against the "oppressive censorship of the far left" for the money to keep
coming in, either via book sales or speaking engagements.

