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SubscribeStar was composed almost entirely of people banned from Patreon for various reasons, including things like dropping n-bombs in videos and blocking sear

SubscribeStar was composed almost entirely of people banned from Patreon for various reasons, including things like dropping n-bombs in videos and blocking search-and-rescue boats from saving migrants in the Mediterranean. It's not surprising that big, mainstream companies don't want to touch that with a ten foot pole. Patreon has also banned various leftist sites for things like doxxing and posting instructions on how to commit terrorism, but that doesn't get as much attention for some reason.

davidb_ 8y ago
SubscribeStar servicing assholes doesn't make that level of collateral damage acceptable, though I do agree it is not surprising. https://twitter.com/realsexycyborg/status/1073697264932052993 https://twitter.com/realsexycyborg/status/107369726493205299... > I am not alt right, I am not a nazi. I've been on @SubscribeStar since @Vice terminated my @Patreon account in May. I haven't even recovered from that hit to my income. I am tired of being acceptable collateral damage in your culture wars. You sacrifice your livelihood- not mine.
ralusek 8y ago
Sargon of Akkad told a group of white neo-nazis they were a bunch of "n-words," ironically, in the context of accusing them of having the same poor behavior they attempt to associate with black people. If you're familiar with the entire rest of his body of work, he is a vehement liberal in opposition of any such identity politics. He said this on somebody else's channel, not only off of Patreon, but off of his YouTube account altogether. But all that being said, it's all irrelevant. Let's say he said the n-word maliciously and was a racist, is it the role of MasterCard to prevent that person from being able to pay for a burrito? To get a paycheck from their legal employment? Why can't the expectation be that MasterCard is neutral up until the point of legality? There is a really bad authoritarian trend on the left wing to go after absolutely every neutral cog in the machine. If Reddit doesn't ban /r/The_Donald, Reddit is right wing. If Twitter doesn't ban TERFs, Twitter is right wing. Now payments? Are we going to get mad at the government for letting Been Shapiro drive on their neutral roads?
- pryce 8y ago
  Deciding 'whether to do business with someone or not' is one of the kinds of freedoms capitalism is supposed to protect. Outside of a standard set of specific reasons for which it is agreed to be illegal to refuse business (race, sex, orientation etc..), no business is supposed to be able to be compelled -by the government- to associate or transact with another. Instead, boycotts are used by the public themselves (rather than via government strongarming) or by company-to-company action to persuade companies to adjust their behaviour to meet expectations of what is ethically appropriate. In arrangement, the expectation is not that companies are 'neutral' but that they are sufficiently moderated by public will. This freedom not-to-transact is what allows things such as boycotts of Apartheid South Africa, boycotts of companies that abuse their workers or run sweatshops etc. There are plenty of ways to rearrange things outside of a Capitalist model, but once you decide to have Capitalism but 'prevent boycotting on political grounds' you're basically suggesting that Capitalism ought to be stripped of one of its extremely few mechanisms for ethical feedback. The implications of that ought to scare you.
  - ralusek 8y ago
    Where did I say that it should become legally mandated that MasterCard associate with anybody? Not only do I not think capitalism does/should compel them to do that, I think that capitalism explicitly doesn't compel anybody to do anything. What I'm asking is if we as a public really want our payment processors to be making these moral judgements? That doesn't mean I think they should be compelled to do anything, but I certainly think it's cause for concern, and call for an alternative that IS willing to behave as a neutral party. I don't want the noise of what is effectively a pipe to be making arbitrary political judgements when deciding what is allowed to pass through. Now, publicly funded banks, that's a different question. I absolutely expect neutrality within what is legal from our government institutions.
    - pryce 8y ago
      > What I'm asking is if we as a public really want our payment processors to be making these moral judgements? If this action was completely unprompted, sure, but I think we're talking about payment processors choosing not to associate with people who have already been the subject of boycotts on their previous platform. A better example would be WikiLeaks which enjoyed a fair amount of public support at the time Visa etc declined to process their payments, as we have reasons to suspect that the pressure on Visa to do this may have been from the U.S. Government. By contrast, there have already been numerous public protests against people hosted on the SubscribeStar platform.
im3w1l 8y ago
Do you think that thieves and violent criminals should be allowed to exchange money for goods and services or is that a punishment you reserve for the worst of the worst, those who make offensive jokes?
manfredo 8y ago
> Patreon has also banned various leftist sites for things like doxxing and posting instructions on how to commit terrorism, but that doesn't get as much attention for some reason. For left leaning people it takes doxxing and instructions on how to commit acts of mass violence to get banned. For the opposite ends of the political spectrum people have been banned for months-old videos - not even on a channel that the banned person runs - in which someone uses a swear word to tell the alt-right that they "are acting like n_____s" (which I interpreted as a deliberate word choice to emphasize irony that the alt-right is behaving how they often portray and see African Americans. Sargon's explanation is roughly similar). Meanwhile there are plenty of people who use the same slur regularly, some even in the usernames of their social media profiles. There is zero doubt in my mind that Patreon decided to ban Sargon on the basis of his political views first, then searched for something to justify the ban. These are hardly the same situations.
- thecatspaw 8y ago
  > For left leaning people it takes doxxing and instructions on how to commit acts of mass violence to get banned. It doesnt take that. But the far-left rarely insults people with racial slurs.
  - baud147258 8y ago
    > But the far-left rarely insults people with racial slurs No, they prefer to use words like nazi, facist *phobe, which most likely won't get anyone banned, expect the target of those insults
    - thecatspaw 8y ago
      True, and I do not condone these insults either. Its just that coorporations are far more scared of beeing associated with the right, than the left. Legally speaking you're not allowed to insult anyone, wether as a n-word, nor as a nazi
      - manfredo 8y ago

davidb_ 8y ago

SubscribeStar servicing assholes doesn't make that level of collateral damage acceptable, though I do agree it is not surprising. https://twitter.com/realsexycyborg/status/1073697264932052993 https://twitter.com/realsexycyborg/status/107369726493205299... > I am not alt right, I am not a nazi. I've been on @SubscribeStar since @Vice terminated my @Patreon account in May. I haven't even recovered from that hit to my income. I am tired of being acceptable collateral damage in your culture wars. You sacrifice your livelihood- not mine.

ralusek 8y ago

Sargon of Akkad told a group of white neo-nazis they were a bunch of "n-words," ironically, in the context of accusing them of having the same poor behavior they attempt to associate with black people. If you're familiar with the entire rest of his body of work, he is a vehement liberal in opposition of any such identity politics. He said this on somebody else's channel, not only off of Patreon, but off of his YouTube account altogether. But all that being said, it's all irrelevant. Let's say he said the n-word maliciously and was a racist, is it the role of MasterCard to prevent that person from being able to pay for a burrito? To get a paycheck from their legal employment? Why can't the expectation be that MasterCard is neutral up until the point of legality? There is a really bad authoritarian trend on the left wing to go after absolutely every neutral cog in the machine. If Reddit doesn't ban /r/The_Donald, Reddit is right wing. If Twitter doesn't ban TERFs, Twitter is right wing. Now payments? Are we going to get mad at the government for letting Been Shapiro drive on their neutral roads?

pryce 8y ago
Deciding 'whether to do business with someone or not' is one of the kinds of freedoms capitalism is supposed to protect. Outside of a standard set of specific reasons for which it is agreed to be illegal to refuse business (race, sex, orientation etc..), no business is supposed to be able to be compelled -by the government- to associate or transact with another. Instead, boycotts are used by the public themselves (rather than via government strongarming) or by company-to-company action to persuade companies to adjust their behaviour to meet expectations of what is ethically appropriate. In arrangement, the expectation is not that companies are 'neutral' but that they are sufficiently moderated by public will. This freedom not-to-transact is what allows things such as boycotts of Apartheid South Africa, boycotts of companies that abuse their workers or run sweatshops etc. There are plenty of ways to rearrange things outside of a Capitalist model, but once you decide to have Capitalism but 'prevent boycotting on political grounds' you're basically suggesting that Capitalism ought to be stripped of one of its extremely few mechanisms for ethical feedback. The implications of that ought to scare you.
- ralusek 8y ago
  Where did I say that it should become legally mandated that MasterCard associate with anybody? Not only do I not think capitalism does/should compel them to do that, I think that capitalism explicitly doesn't compel anybody to do anything. What I'm asking is if we as a public really want our payment processors to be making these moral judgements? That doesn't mean I think they should be compelled to do anything, but I certainly think it's cause for concern, and call for an alternative that IS willing to behave as a neutral party. I don't want the noise of what is effectively a pipe to be making arbitrary political judgements when deciding what is allowed to pass through. Now, publicly funded banks, that's a different question. I absolutely expect neutrality within what is legal from our government institutions.
  - pryce 8y ago
    > What I'm asking is if we as a public really want our payment processors to be making these moral judgements? If this action was completely unprompted, sure, but I think we're talking about payment processors choosing not to associate with people who have already been the subject of boycotts on their previous platform. A better example would be WikiLeaks which enjoyed a fair amount of public support at the time Visa etc declined to process their payments, as we have reasons to suspect that the pressure on Visa to do this may have been from the U.S. Government. By contrast, there have already been numerous public protests against people hosted on the SubscribeStar platform.

im3w1l 8y ago

Do you think that thieves and violent criminals should be allowed to exchange money for goods and services or is that a punishment you reserve for the worst of the worst, those who make offensive jokes?

manfredo 8y ago

> Patreon has also banned various leftist sites for things like doxxing and posting instructions on how to commit terrorism, but that doesn't get as much attention for some reason. For left leaning people it takes doxxing and instructions on how to commit acts of mass violence to get banned. For the opposite ends of the political spectrum people have been banned for months-old videos - not even on a channel that the banned person runs - in which someone uses a swear word to tell the alt-right that they "are acting like n_____s" (which I interpreted as a deliberate word choice to emphasize irony that the alt-right is behaving how they often portray and see African Americans. Sargon's explanation is roughly similar). Meanwhile there are plenty of people who use the same slur regularly, some even in the usernames of their social media profiles. There is zero doubt in my mind that Patreon decided to ban Sargon on the basis of his political views first, then searched for something to justify the ban. These are hardly the same situations.

thecatspaw 8y ago
> For left leaning people it takes doxxing and instructions on how to commit acts of mass violence to get banned. It doesnt take that. But the far-left rarely insults people with racial slurs.
- baud147258 8y ago
  > But the far-left rarely insults people with racial slurs No, they prefer to use words like nazi, facist *phobe, which most likely won't get anyone banned, expect the target of those insults
  - thecatspaw 8y ago
    True, and I do not condone these insults either. Its just that coorporations are far more scared of beeing associated with the right, than the left. Legally speaking you're not allowed to insult anyone, wether as a n-word, nor as a nazi
    - manfredo 8y ago