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Patreon Bars Anti-Feminist for Racist Speech, Inciting Revolt

302 points by mancerayder 8y ago

pcvarmint 8y ago
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
75dvtwin 8y ago
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-users-for-calling-accused-cop-killer-illegal-immigrant-illegal-alien https://www.theblaze.com/news/facebook-takes-action-against-... 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).
darkpuma 8y ago
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.
- raiflip 8y ago
  I don't agree with his choice of words, and I think its kinda weird that he chose to express himself the way he did when there was a much easier way to go about making the same remark, but that said, it's simply amoral to try and cutoff someone's living and censor them just because the way they said something wasn't to your liking (to be clear I'm not talking about you in particular, but just people in general who think what patreon did was ok).
  - pavel_lishin 8y ago
    > it's simply amoral to try and cutoff someone's living and censor them just because the way they said something wasn't to your liking Would it be immoral (or amoral, either one) of my employer to fire me employed if I gave a tech talk and started throwing the N-word around? Patreon has fairly clear rules on behavior; they're not obligated to keep anyone as their client if they start breaking them.
    - orblivion 8y ago
      According to what I've heard, those clear rules state that they apply to what is said as part of work that is funded by Patreon. This could be misinformation, though, and I'd be happy if someone corrects it here. With that in mind, he made the remarks in question during a conversation that took place on somebody else's YouTube channel. It sounds like Patreon presumes that the guy's patronized work includes all public appearances. This seems like a stretch, or at least an ambiguity worth sorting out.
      - NegativeK 8y ago
        I'm not sure why people expect platforms that have ToS to be robotic about them. Companies are run by people. People get uncomfortable when you become known for spraying around racial epithets, and some are not going to want to work with you. If I'm using some vendor and find out that I really don't like what their public persona is doing, I'm going to reevaluate that relationship.
misiti3780 8y ago
Am I the only one surprised that Patreon employs 170 people?
- pavel_lishin 8y ago
  I'm surprised that it only takes 17 of them to moderate. That seems like a very low number, given how big Patreon has gotten.
  - ellard 8y ago
    They probably have a system in place that automatically flags pages that look suspicious until a human approves of them.
    - PavlovsCat 8y ago
      No they don't, it's all based on user reports. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv7hvZee-PQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv7hvZee-PQ
- raiflip 8y ago
  A lot of major tech companies employ a lot less people you'd expect. I think tech companies in general try to leverage tech to scale up their business without increasing their employee overhead by a lot, but that can clash severely with the reality that properly moderating a platform is very hard to automate, and therefore hard to scale. It may very well require tech companies to bite the bullet and hire admins en-masse. Would be interesting to see how this would effect the bottom line or if its even doable.
  - abrowne 8y ago
    I'm surprised they employ that many, not that few!
- gnu8 8y ago
  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?
vowelless 8y ago
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.
- darkpuma 8y ago
  From the context, it seems he was using the words because he knew they were offensive. Also maybe that excuse works for ESL Europeans, but I'm not very convinced it works for somebody who's British.
  - tomp 8y ago
    many words are offensive while not being such a taboo as the n-word in the US
    - darkpuma 8y ago
      He seems to have made his 'career' (if you can really call it that) on commentary about politics, with a heavy emphasis on American politics. I don't think he can plausibly plead ignorance.
- krick 8y ago
  I won't be speaking for all Europeans, as all this craze you labeled as "American standards" certainly has it's influence, but I can confirm all these stories are pretty funny to read for a person, whom I'd label as a "sane European". But I don't think it is the issue here, anyway. I might not feel the righteous rage reading the quotations from these Benjamin guy, but I might on the other topic. So imagining that I do feel offended by his words (and there's plenty ways to make it so): is it still ok to ban him from the platform? I'll leave you to decide for yourself, but either you want the freedom of speech or you want the society where everybody thinks and behaves exactly as everybody else.
orthecreedence 8y ago
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.
- 8y ago
jayd16 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    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 8y ago
      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?
- shard972 8y ago
  So in your world, if your labeled politically incorrect by the NYT or friends you should just lay down and die?
dkjfhalskdjfh 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    What you're describing is a system to develop extremism.
    - zimpenfish 8y ago
      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.
  - LoSboccacc 8y ago
    That never really works. There's a reason why these voices are getting stronger that are rooted in the current society issues. Sure silencing them might buy some time, but unless the root problem are addressed more will crop up or people will turn to them and to populists looking for a way to externalize their sorrow against some external force. You can trace the trajectory pretty well looking the political climate all around the world. People gave the right a try, the left a try, now the populists are going strong and it's getting worse. You want to silence the alt right? Fix youth unemployment, income inequality and the rising cost of living and they'll disappear overnight because their platform will. Silencing one or hundreds voices won't silence the thoughts people are having. -2 Edit: so as usual it is apparent it is impossible to have a discussion on hivemind news. Oh well. If even the actual reality you live in can't convince that there's a strong polarization in the public discussion and the factions are bringing ruin to the debate, politics economy and even the world itself with populist undoing years of climate policies you are part of the problem too.
golemiprague 8y ago
I think that anti discrimination laws should apply to companies if they are de facto monopolies. Unless there is reasonable competition, like in a case of a cake shop that doesn't want to sell to gays, they should give their service to everyone regardless of their views, race, sexual orientation or whatever other characteristics of the person. The government should also understand that it is not the company responsibility to foster good behaviour, they are just a platform and if someone do something against the law, like inciting violence for example, the government should deal with them personally and do it with the right authorities. The problem is that the left decided to neglect the law and the proper authorities completely and rather impose some Stalin/Mau style "people committees" to run things. It manifests in things like title IX, it manifest in the demand from facebook to be a nanny/censor and it manifest in the demand to let illegals into the country rather than just changing the immigration laws to allow everybody who wants to come in, if that indeed what they want. It seems like the left wants to circumvent the law rather than working in the confinement of the current proven system, this will lead to anarchy and civil war.
nkurz 8y ago
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.
- darawk 8y ago
  Thanks for posting the actual content. Too often I think the actual content of the statements is left out of these things for political reasons (on both sides, depending on the context). I don't agree with all of Patreon's decisions on stuff like this, but this one seems reasonable, now that I can see the actual text.
  - asabjorn 8y ago
    This transcript shows Patreons malintent rather than alleviate our concerns with it, because they cut out essential context and in Matt Christiansens call with Patreon they admit the real cause was that they don't like his brand [1]. I challenge you to find racism and anti-semitic content on his channel. Transcript: "exactly how you describe black people acting is the impression I get dealing with y'all", the last word should be "the alt-right". Context: How is it not clear from reading this that he is saying that you act like a negative stereotype you've created? The alt-right Sargon is arguing against are (known for being) racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-homosexual. They used said slurs in the chat accompanying the livestream. Transcript: "kikes are ruining everything" Context: calling them out on acting like nazis - "And I see, like, 'kikes are ruining everything'. [laughs] Good—good—good job. Should tackle field [I can't understand this sentence]. You're making your movement look like you're not full of Nazis[clearly an ironic remark]! Great! Bravo!" Context: him calling the alt-right out for turning on one of their own because he is married to a Jewish person - "It's just like how Mike Enoch was treated, when people found out his wife was Jewish. It's just like, he had to go dark, he had to go off the internet, because of the way these people treat him. It's like, holy shit, that's one of your own? Oh, he's married to a Jew, well, I guess, that's a bit of bad luck to be married before he was an alt-righter. Yes, he did, well, there we go. Kind of like 'Millenial was sucking a dick'. You know, it's like, it's crazy. You guys have no decorum. There's no level too low to go to." [1] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U0mQjUA0T5INc_GDkwPJ2mfhO7tbaIogisSqqxHw0hc/edit https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U0mQjUA0T5INc_GDkwPJ2mfh...
deleted 8y ago
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slater 8y ago
Good for Patreon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
throwawaysea 8y ago
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.
- 8y ago
paulcole 8y ago
> 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 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    > 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.
    - ubernostrum 8y ago
      It could just as easily be argued that, instead of "flipping", or swinging back and forth like a pendulum, the consistent trend of the past 400 years or so is toward increased tolerance of everything except intolerance. There are people trying to reverse that trend, of course, but the volume at which they're currently screaming that they've been silenced is, I think, a pretty good indicator of the trouble they're having trying to pull it off.
intrasight 8y ago
"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.
- baby 8y ago
  no, they should stop being assholes.
- tynpeddler 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    Probably not an issue with banks. Patrons can always send cash ;)
scarejunba 8y ago
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.
EamonnMR 8y ago
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.
avar 8y ago
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.
augustl 8y ago
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.
sayno3 8y ago
People just latch on to these identities (anti-fem, fem, racist, anti-racist, whatever) because it's an easy way to feel like you are important or what you say matters without having done anything noteworthy or without anything original to say. It is such a big deal to others because we as a society have jumped the shark in regards to "actually matters." It is one of many twisted end-games of post-modernism, an infatuation with the mobius strip of self-criticism and pointless navel-gazing. Incitement to violence only works if people want an excuse to be incited. Zealous tribalism is only relevant because people need the comfort of a mob in order to act out. Neither an individuals screams into an echo chamber, or the response of some forum are any more novel than the previous decades of talk radio or cable television. Hell is other peoples' need to feel relevant in a world where your 15 minutes feels like it is just a few mouse-clicks away. Taking this BS so seriously is just as dumb as any hate-rant. Taking it seriously is the ONLY thing that gives it power and turns it into a memetic pathology that may destroy the world.
josteink 8y ago
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 8y ago
  > 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.
microcolonel 8y ago
"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
DonHopkins 8y ago
"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
jeremyw 8y ago
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.
infoworm 8y ago
>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.
village-idiot 8y ago
> “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.
vergessenmir 8y ago
"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-gay-horse-jibe-is-absurd-says-Tatchell.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/4196447/Arrest-for-g... 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.
dgudkov 8y ago
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?
- zozbot123 8y ago
  > Or they are afraid of loss of revenue/capitalization if an online activist group launches a shame/smear campaign? This, pretty much. They see their established niche as that of hosting a well-defined, 'harmonious community' of creators, and if this requires "harmonizing away" some of these creators due to their slightly bothersome political stances, then so be it.
- justin66 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    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.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - justin66 8y ago
      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?
rhegart 8y ago
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 8y ago
  And yet not long ago the New-York Times supported the racist tweets of its editor Sarah Jeong.
Proven 8y ago
Hatreon solved the crowdfunding platform censorship problem until the fascists from VISA put it out of business.
arduanika 8y ago
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.
Jare 8y ago
"[...] 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 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    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 8y ago
      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"?
williesleg 8y ago
Dear Internet Help Desk, I cannot help myself. Therefore I am asking you to ban everything and everyone who disagrees with me. I blame everyone. Except me. Please change them all so I can open my eyes again.
stevebmark 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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
- PavlovsCat 8y ago
  Calling everything that gets banned hate speech by definition is like murdering young male adults with drones and calling them enemy combatants solely for being young male adults. There are no values and no principles to be found in that whatsoever.
warp_factor 8y ago
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.
CapitalistCartr 8y ago
Freedom is the right to be wrong. If I can voice any opinion, as long as its correct, I'm enslaved.
dblotsky 8y ago
Patreon is as free to deny someone service as their customers are to express themselves. No affront to free speech there.
mcguire 8y ago
"“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?!
thoughtstheseus 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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
drak0n1c 8y ago
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.
wmil 8y ago
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
m0zg 8y ago
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.
anotherevan 8y ago
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...
asabjorn 8y ago
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-the-faith-of-social-justice/ https://areomagazine.com/2018/12/18/postmodern-religion-and-...
eyeball 8y ago
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.
entwife 8y ago
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.
lgleason 8y ago
>"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 8y ago
  > 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.
rdiddly 8y ago
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.
memeograph 8y ago
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.
untangle 8y ago
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?
kfk 8y ago
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.
knorker 8y ago
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.
bmn__ 8y ago
> 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?

302 points by mancerayder 8y ago

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

75dvtwin 8y ago

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

darkpuma 8y ago

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.

raiflip 8y ago
I don't agree with his choice of words, and I think its kinda weird that he chose to express himself the way he did when there was a much easier way to go about making the same remark, but that said, it's simply amoral to try and cutoff someone's living and censor them just because the way they said something wasn't to your liking (to be clear I'm not talking about you in particular, but just people in general who think what patreon did was ok).
- pavel_lishin 8y ago
  > it's simply amoral to try and cutoff someone's living and censor them just because the way they said something wasn't to your liking Would it be immoral (or amoral, either one) of my employer to fire me employed if I gave a tech talk and started throwing the N-word around? Patreon has fairly clear rules on behavior; they're not obligated to keep anyone as their client if they start breaking them.
  - orblivion 8y ago
    According to what I've heard, those clear rules state that they apply to what is said as part of work that is funded by Patreon. This could be misinformation, though, and I'd be happy if someone corrects it here. With that in mind, he made the remarks in question during a conversation that took place on somebody else's YouTube channel. It sounds like Patreon presumes that the guy's patronized work includes all public appearances. This seems like a stretch, or at least an ambiguity worth sorting out.
    - NegativeK 8y ago
      I'm not sure why people expect platforms that have ToS to be robotic about them. Companies are run by people. People get uncomfortable when you become known for spraying around racial epithets, and some are not going to want to work with you. If I'm using some vendor and find out that I really don't like what their public persona is doing, I'm going to reevaluate that relationship.

misiti3780 8y ago

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

pavel_lishin 8y ago
I'm surprised that it only takes 17 of them to moderate. That seems like a very low number, given how big Patreon has gotten.
- ellard 8y ago
  They probably have a system in place that automatically flags pages that look suspicious until a human approves of them.
  - PavlovsCat 8y ago
    No they don't, it's all based on user reports. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv7hvZee-PQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv7hvZee-PQ
raiflip 8y ago
A lot of major tech companies employ a lot less people you'd expect. I think tech companies in general try to leverage tech to scale up their business without increasing their employee overhead by a lot, but that can clash severely with the reality that properly moderating a platform is very hard to automate, and therefore hard to scale. It may very well require tech companies to bite the bullet and hire admins en-masse. Would be interesting to see how this would effect the bottom line or if its even doable.
- abrowne 8y ago
  I'm surprised they employ that many, not that few!
gnu8 8y ago
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?

vowelless 8y ago

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.

darkpuma 8y ago
From the context, it seems he was using the words because he knew they were offensive. Also maybe that excuse works for ESL Europeans, but I'm not very convinced it works for somebody who's British.
- tomp 8y ago
  many words are offensive while not being such a taboo as the n-word in the US
  - darkpuma 8y ago
    He seems to have made his 'career' (if you can really call it that) on commentary about politics, with a heavy emphasis on American politics. I don't think he can plausibly plead ignorance.
krick 8y ago
I won't be speaking for all Europeans, as all this craze you labeled as "American standards" certainly has it's influence, but I can confirm all these stories are pretty funny to read for a person, whom I'd label as a "sane European". But I don't think it is the issue here, anyway. I might not feel the righteous rage reading the quotations from these Benjamin guy, but I might on the other topic. So imagining that I do feel offended by his words (and there's plenty ways to make it so): is it still ok to ban him from the platform? I'll leave you to decide for yourself, but either you want the freedom of speech or you want the society where everybody thinks and behaves exactly as everybody else.

orthecreedence 8y ago

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.

8y ago

jayd16 8y ago

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 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    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?
shard972 8y ago
So in your world, if your labeled politically incorrect by the NYT or friends you should just lay down and die?

dkjfhalskdjfh 8y ago

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 8y ago
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 8y ago
  What you're describing is a system to develop extremism.
  - zimpenfish 8y ago
    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.
- LoSboccacc 8y ago
  That never really works. There's a reason why these voices are getting stronger that are rooted in the current society issues. Sure silencing them might buy some time, but unless the root problem are addressed more will crop up or people will turn to them and to populists looking for a way to externalize their sorrow against some external force. You can trace the trajectory pretty well looking the political climate all around the world. People gave the right a try, the left a try, now the populists are going strong and it's getting worse. You want to silence the alt right? Fix youth unemployment, income inequality and the rising cost of living and they'll disappear overnight because their platform will. Silencing one or hundreds voices won't silence the thoughts people are having. -2 Edit: so as usual it is apparent it is impossible to have a discussion on hivemind news. Oh well. If even the actual reality you live in can't convince that there's a strong polarization in the public discussion and the factions are bringing ruin to the debate, politics economy and even the world itself with populist undoing years of climate policies you are part of the problem too.

golemiprague 8y ago

I think that anti discrimination laws should apply to companies if they are de facto monopolies. Unless there is reasonable competition, like in a case of a cake shop that doesn't want to sell to gays, they should give their service to everyone regardless of their views, race, sexual orientation or whatever other characteristics of the person. The government should also understand that it is not the company responsibility to foster good behaviour, they are just a platform and if someone do something against the law, like inciting violence for example, the government should deal with them personally and do it with the right authorities. The problem is that the left decided to neglect the law and the proper authorities completely and rather impose some Stalin/Mau style "people committees" to run things. It manifests in things like title IX, it manifest in the demand from facebook to be a nanny/censor and it manifest in the demand to let illegals into the country rather than just changing the immigration laws to allow everybody who wants to come in, if that indeed what they want. It seems like the left wants to circumvent the law rather than working in the confinement of the current proven system, this will lead to anarchy and civil war.

nkurz 8y ago

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.

darawk 8y ago
Thanks for posting the actual content. Too often I think the actual content of the statements is left out of these things for political reasons (on both sides, depending on the context). I don't agree with all of Patreon's decisions on stuff like this, but this one seems reasonable, now that I can see the actual text.
- asabjorn 8y ago
  This transcript shows Patreons malintent rather than alleviate our concerns with it, because they cut out essential context and in Matt Christiansens call with Patreon they admit the real cause was that they don't like his brand [1]. I challenge you to find racism and anti-semitic content on his channel. Transcript: "exactly how you describe black people acting is the impression I get dealing with y'all", the last word should be "the alt-right". Context: How is it not clear from reading this that he is saying that you act like a negative stereotype you've created? The alt-right Sargon is arguing against are (known for being) racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-homosexual. They used said slurs in the chat accompanying the livestream. Transcript: "kikes are ruining everything" Context: calling them out on acting like nazis - "And I see, like, 'kikes are ruining everything'. [laughs] Good—good—good job. Should tackle field [I can't understand this sentence]. You're making your movement look like you're not full of Nazis[clearly an ironic remark]! Great! Bravo!" Context: him calling the alt-right out for turning on one of their own because he is married to a Jewish person - "It's just like how Mike Enoch was treated, when people found out his wife was Jewish. It's just like, he had to go dark, he had to go off the internet, because of the way these people treat him. It's like, holy shit, that's one of your own? Oh, he's married to a Jew, well, I guess, that's a bit of bad luck to be married before he was an alt-righter. Yes, he did, well, there we go. Kind of like 'Millenial was sucking a dick'. You know, it's like, it's crazy. You guys have no decorum. There's no level too low to go to." [1] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U0mQjUA0T5INc_GDkwPJ2mfhO7tbaIogisSqqxHw0hc/edit https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U0mQjUA0T5INc_GDkwPJ2mfh...

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

slater 8y ago

Good for Patreon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

throwawaysea 8y ago

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.

8y ago

paulcole 8y ago

> 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 8y ago
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 8y ago
  > 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.
  - ubernostrum 8y ago
    It could just as easily be argued that, instead of "flipping", or swinging back and forth like a pendulum, the consistent trend of the past 400 years or so is toward increased tolerance of everything except intolerance. There are people trying to reverse that trend, of course, but the volume at which they're currently screaming that they've been silenced is, I think, a pretty good indicator of the trouble they're having trying to pull it off.

intrasight 8y ago

"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.

baby 8y ago
no, they should stop being assholes.
tynpeddler 8y ago
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 8y ago
  Probably not an issue with banks. Patrons can always send cash ;)

scarejunba 8y ago

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.

EamonnMR 8y ago

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.

avar 8y ago

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.

augustl 8y ago

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.

sayno3 8y ago

People just latch on to these identities (anti-fem, fem, racist, anti-racist, whatever) because it's an easy way to feel like you are important or what you say matters without having done anything noteworthy or without anything original to say. It is such a big deal to others because we as a society have jumped the shark in regards to "actually matters." It is one of many twisted end-games of post-modernism, an infatuation with the mobius strip of self-criticism and pointless navel-gazing. Incitement to violence only works if people want an excuse to be incited. Zealous tribalism is only relevant because people need the comfort of a mob in order to act out. Neither an individuals screams into an echo chamber, or the response of some forum are any more novel than the previous decades of talk radio or cable television. Hell is other peoples' need to feel relevant in a world where your 15 minutes feels like it is just a few mouse-clicks away. Taking this BS so seriously is just as dumb as any hate-rant. Taking it seriously is the ONLY thing that gives it power and turns it into a memetic pathology that may destroy the world.

josteink 8y ago

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 8y ago
> 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.

microcolonel 8y ago

"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

DonHopkins 8y ago

"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

jeremyw 8y ago

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.

infoworm 8y ago

>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.

village-idiot 8y ago

> “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.

vergessenmir 8y ago

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

dgudkov 8y ago

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?

zozbot123 8y ago
> Or they are afraid of loss of revenue/capitalization if an online activist group launches a shame/smear campaign? This, pretty much. They see their established niche as that of hosting a well-defined, 'harmonious community' of creators, and if this requires "harmonizing away" some of these creators due to their slightly bothersome political stances, then so be it.
justin66 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - justin66 8y ago
    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?

rhegart 8y ago

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 8y ago
And yet not long ago the New-York Times supported the racist tweets of its editor Sarah Jeong.

Proven 8y ago

Hatreon solved the crowdfunding platform censorship problem until the fascists from VISA put it out of business.

arduanika 8y ago

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.

Jare 8y ago

"[...] 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 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    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"?

williesleg 8y ago

Dear Internet Help Desk, I cannot help myself. Therefore I am asking you to ban everything and everyone who disagrees with me. I blame everyone. Except me. Please change them all so I can open my eyes again.

stevebmark 8y ago

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 8y ago
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
PavlovsCat 8y ago
Calling everything that gets banned hate speech by definition is like murdering young male adults with drones and calling them enemy combatants solely for being young male adults. There are no values and no principles to be found in that whatsoever.

warp_factor 8y ago

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.

CapitalistCartr 8y ago

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

dblotsky 8y ago

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

mcguire 8y ago

"“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?!

thoughtstheseus 8y ago

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 8y ago
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

drak0n1c 8y ago

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.

wmil 8y ago

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

m0zg 8y ago

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.

anotherevan 8y ago

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...

asabjorn 8y ago

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-the-faith-of-social-justice/ https://areomagazine.com/2018/12/18/postmodern-religion-and-...

eyeball 8y ago

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.

entwife 8y ago

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.

lgleason 8y ago

>"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 8y ago
> 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.

rdiddly 8y ago

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.

memeograph 8y ago

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.

untangle 8y ago

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?

kfk 8y ago

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.

knorker 8y ago

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.

bmn__ 8y ago

> 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?