Patreon sounds like something relatively easy to replicate. Effectively every utility implements what patron provides. It's essentially just scheduling recurring payments, with a discussion forum attached. More behavior like what we've been seeing Patreon do lately, and I can see larger creators shifting to hosing their own patronage services. Essentially the same reason why EA, Blizzard, and even more niche game publishers like Matrix Games, Slithrine, and X Plane host their own game purchasing and delivery services: greater control and no cut taken away.
Perhaps a more feasible and maybe probable approach is for another service like WordPress or SquareSpace to offer patronage functionality (as in, offering recurring payments and exclusive contents for patrons).
The most bizarre part, to me, is that it feels like this should just be a part of modern banking.
"Hey if you like my stuff consider adding my <public bank account key> to your monthly payments.
I guess Patreon provides a walled garden of premium content for patrons, but I'm skeptical that's universally desired by creators. The few I know don't do any of that.
I think the core of Patreon's value is tying the payment to exclusive contents and access to patrons-only forums. That's why I think WordPress or SquareSpace would be suited to capturing Patreon's market. Creators can already create web stores in SquareSpace, it shouldn't be too much work on top of it to create recurring payments. It'd be more work, though, to wall off certain portions of the site to different payment schedules. And that's the real value.
One thing that Patreon does have that would be harder to recreate is the gamification of patronage. Like comparing subscriber counts on YouTube, Patreon makes it easy to compare different creators' Patreon income which I think serves as a rough estimate of clout.
Do they? I thought income went private some time in 2018. I did use to enjoy looking at my favourite creators to see that indeed they were getting paid enough.
But what is the interest of the creator to this gamification? I would think the only effect could be to turn off users who wish to contribute then see a large amount of contributions already and think they don’t really need my money.
>"Hey if you like my stuff consider adding my <public bank account key> to your monthly payments....
Banks specifically DON'T want you doing that because they don't want undesirable businesses funneling money in and out of their banks. I'm sure there are different legal liabilities for different places for different undesirable businesses with that kind of thing. It's probably a potential minefield to let anyone do that indiscriminately.
Probably have to track everyone, and then roll back or cancel accounts when you catch the pornographers, or cartels or what have you.
(Of course, that brings you back to the problem of randomly cancelled accounts.)
My credit union offers free unlimited bill pay to anyone. Certain businesses can do it via a direct deposit, but I can send a set amount of money to ANYONE and they will mail a check on the Nth day of the month.
Banks specifically DON'T want you doing that because they don't want undesirable businesses funneling money in and out of their banks
Not sure I understand this objection - the recipient of such a transfer would already have to have an account at another bank, and that bank would have to do the full AML/KYC checks anyway. There should be no issues with someone with an account at reputable bank A sending a regular payment to an account at reputable bank B for any purpose.
A bank will KYC/AML other banks too. But two people with accounts at high street banks in economically developed countries should never normally encounter an issue, once they had both passed the initial gatekeeping. Which isn't flawless but should cover the majority of use cases - I mean Patreon isn't Silk Road, is it?
How is that different from bank transfers or credit card numbers? It just reduces the risk of fraud by only sharing a token that can’t be used for anything else. If anything it cuts the middle man and allows the bank to capture a greater share of the fees.
Hopefully someone brings forth a patreon replacement. I'm not keen on how they've been acting in the last month and I kind of want to close my account, but I also want to continue supporting the groups I support.
This has got me thinking, what if someone created a Patreon account to fund the creation of a Patreon replacement? If nothing else, I would appreciate the irony.
> I think the real problem is upstream: The payment processors.
In this case, the problem is Patreon itself. They aren't paying out to the creator, and apparently people are still being billed.
There are many exchanges though, and their brand is not associated with how people spend the crypto/money received. And assuming that people don't hold money in online wallets, they can freeze the asset either.
So quite different from the Mastercard and Patreon case.
First, many exchanges (at least in the US) allow you to purchase with bank transfer, not a credit card. That completely changes the context of the risk profile. Credit card companies are much more concerned about fraud since CC's are so much easier to perpetrate fraudulent transactions. Its relevant for any kind of "riskier" transaction, like those on something like Patreon.
More importantly, once you have purchased cryptocurrency, you can easily transfer to a wallet which you control. Install MetaMask, then move currency to your new wallet on your Mac/Windows/PC. If you keep everything in Coinbase, you are right you are subject to their rules when you attempt to transfer money. If you keep funds in your own wallet, you are 100% free to transfer money to ANYONE without restriction. This is what people mean when they say "decentralization."
You are free to transfer bitcoins to anyone, maybe (provided you don't lose your wallet). But once you want to convert BTC to USD, you'd still have to play by the rules set by the banking system. Maybe you could slip under the radar if you deal with small amounts, but once it is serious, there would be checks you'd have to pass.
It seems like, however, you will be more subject to taxation issues (Coinbase is likely going to report big transactions to the government) than to arbitrary evaluations (that lead to frozen accounts) made by payment processors.
Put another way, I think it will be relatively easy to do something like Patreon in cryptocurrency. Ingress will be simple. Converting that into a fiat currency will be hard, as you say.
But, if all of sudden I can start taking trips to Thailand and only need USD to buy the ticket, but can do everything else with crypto, then it will matter a lot less. And, this comment made me think that's more and more possible: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18530642
> It seems like, however, you will be more subject to taxation issues (Coinbase is likely going to report big transactions to the government) than to arbitrary evaluations (that lead to frozen accounts) made by payment processors.
Definitely both. Banks have tons of "know your client" requirements. And in most cases, you wouldn't be large enough client so they'd bother to even call you before freezing your account on slightest suspicion.
I stand corrected. It does seem like you are constrained in either case. Until you can do everything inside one of the cryptocurrency ecosystems, you will be indeed subject to the whims of the current financial system. That control bleeds into everything it touches.
MasterCard's publicly said they're going to exercise corporate censorship over people they disagree with. So many levels on which a platform can be hurt on, unfortunately.
Many people have replicated it. Ko-fi now has a similar offering. Enty is a similar service in Japan. And, there's more that I can't recall off the top of my head.
Some time ago the Armory 3D game engine also had this problem of suddenly being blocked, without notification or reason. The creator exactly solved it like this, with reoccurring payment, status on the website, and even a one-off donate button: https://armory3d.org/fund.html
SubscribeStar tried to do that exact thing, and they succeeded for a little while. Then PayPal decided to freeze their account. My guess is because many people started to contact PayPal and said that SubscribeStar wasn't censoring people with wrong-think like Patreon just started to do.
Sounds like they should have hooked up with a real payment provider. If InfoWars can get one for their store (through First Data even, much cheaper than PayPal), no reason SubscribeStar couldn't.
I don't see an issue with InfoWars having a platform or even to be on the same platform as me but I'd have serious reservations about having them as the platform manager, mainly because I'm not trusting them to have sane opinions (it's not like InfoWars strike me as vanguards of free speech in principle).
Lol, apparently the water turned frogs like me gay? I wouldn't trust InfoWars with my supporter's cash, Patreon, Kickstarter & ilk are in a position that demands a high level of trust, seeing as they deal with large quantities of money and the relationships that surround them.
Too disorganized, its an organization made up of contractors that come and go at a whim, similar to other businesses in Austin (like Apple, where nearly everyone is an easily firable contractor :P).
The tricky part of any Patreon like service is the payment. I guess somebody has to create one with Alipay and many other alternative payment providers to Paypal to have a truly free service. I would even consider some sort of crypto currency use here (this would be an excellent use case).
It's pretty trivial to set up a Stripe account and take payments directly. It's simple to set up if you're a beginner dev, and there are lots of plugins for Wordpress, etc. I don't even know why anybody would use something like Patreon. I'd rather give directly than to some 3rd party who's going to take a cut (yes, I'm aware of Stripe processing fees like any other cc processor would charge).
Although not really what you are talking about I think the issue is that stripe and paypal willccut people off also. subscribestar, a competitor to patreon, was banned from paypal and stripe for being allowing some of the 'banned' people on their platform this week.
Even trivial technical requirements are a major hurdle for non-technical creators, and it doesn't include all the community features offered, but the biggest problem is that people want a central place where they can find everything while paying tiny amounts like $1 across many accounts.
A big problem for these competitors is that the people running them aren’t payment processing experts, which you really need to be if your target market is payment processing for controversial content.
Technically it may be easy, but handling money would surely involve contact with banks, regulatory system, etc. and these things are never easy. And they are very intolerant to mistakes, even innocent ones - imagine getting your bank account frozen because you failed to comply with some obscure regulatory filing and then being unable to do anything until some bureaucratic entity (which are known for their agility and excellent customer service) figures out whether or not you are a front for Columbian narcocartel? A startup won't survive such thing.
I'm not saying it's not doable - but I suspect it's harder than it appears, if you don't want to rely on established payment processing infrastructure.
It's possible this is an account suspension (i.e. "We don't want you to have an account anymore because you do XYZ"), but it looks more like a fraud / financial flag (i.e. "We think someone has broken into your account and we're holding your funds temporarily.") As evidence, they still contact him about new subscribers and his page is still online, which it isn't in other cases when Patreon suspends an account.
Still an indictment of their communications process, and still a financial risk to the person, but it's a little odd that literally all the replies in that Twitter thread are people talking about Milo Yiannopoulous. Even if Patreon decided it wanted to go all in on hosting controversial political figures, they'd presumably still have some kind of fraud checks, so the points really do seem to be unrelated.
Patreon is very likely on mandatory US Holiday today. By the time they read this thread on Wednesday, it will be far too late for them to fend off the mob. They deserve one business day to reply, and they won't have had that until Wednesday at the _earliest_. Be kind.
EDIT: If your reply is "they should reply 24/7/365", ask yourself whether it makes financial sense to staff a support team on Christmas at triple-overtime pay; notice that essentially all US businesses do not staff support on Christmas; and then reconsider your reply.
If they are suspending accounts over the holidays, they need to have remediation available over the holidays. I'm fine being unkind to those taking away people's livelihoods over Christmas without notice or recourse.
They suspended it at some point several weeks ago. That’s part of the problem—since they never notified him, he’s not entirely sure when it happened. He just has a window based on payments.
I get your point that most businesses are closed but I didn't know it was mandatory or required triple pay. Is that true?
Disneyland is open on Christmas. Most movie theaters are open on Christmas. I think most convenience stores, many groceries stores, and most gas stations are open on Christmas.
I agree with your basic point about not grabbing the pitchforks out just yet, but wouldn't it be nice if online businesses had to be accountable in a reasonable timeframe to all of their customers (especially when it comes to handling money that is due to the customer) and not just people who happen to have large twitter followings?
Adhering to whatever union contract is applicable is a requirement of labor law, but the contents of a particular union contract don't establish a claim about what is required under generally-applicable labor law.
It's rare for an employer to want to dip into a triple time situation, for obvious reasons, but most of the contracts I see have provisions for it. It's usually for circumstances like the 7th consecutive day, beyond 8 hours, or when it lands on a holiday.
I hope Patreon support staff didn't have to work all through last weekend, but if they did, I hope they're making triple time today!
I worked in the analytical lab at a chemical plant for a while. And I always worked Christmas, for the massive overtime. And isn't this sort of a toxics issue for Patreon?
... to ban people just before you go on holiday, you mean? Where's the kindness in that? How about a business day of fair warning and letting a person react before you ban them as a Christmas present?
Why be "kind" to companies that never really own their shit, are ultimately not accountable at all, who offer weasel words to add some insult to injury? That's the track record.
I made my mind up based on other things, anyway: We need payment processors and platforms using them that ONLY respect the law. Not even accepting user reports, maybe with a button to let users report things to the local police. Not anonymously of course, so said police can deal with repeated nonsensical complaints like they would if you abuse calling 911, how about that?
Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and from what I can tell, the problem is anonymous reports. Let's get some "right to face your accuser" in there, on top of the accuser having to go to the police in the first place, and I bet you, 99.9% of it would clear up right then and there.
Patreon doesn't want that, so what else is there for them to say? Let them change or let us make and flock to platforms that respect us, period. And let us support those who discern more carefully what systems and companies to use and normalize, and what lines to draw.
If that means I have to accept that my neighbour on such a platform might be a racist, as long as they don't do anything illegal, just as something what they are, a bias they have, then I can live with that. Just like I can live in a big city, without freaking out all the time. What a crazy concept. I don't want to convince the people who can't fathom it, I want to build things with those who can.
I'm sick to have dozens of landlord who mostly are little children that don't speak English but just string words together without meaning, and only respond to the guttural sounds of groups of other children. Would you go to a supermarket where the cashier can simply deny some items to some customers, on a case-by-case basis, based on other customers booing and blocking the transaction -- instead of security and nobody else dealing with those who try to interfere? It's time for the web to grow up. Being oh so different isn't any good when it means regression.
I was actually planning to go on Patreon soon-ish, but after seeing the Matt Christiansen video about the PR rep phone call, I'm seriously re-considering that. That is, I'll have to come up with other stuff, and then at most go on Patreon as a bonus, an afterthought, that's for sure.
There's nothing to reconsider. They can still change, they can do that any day. But until that happens, there's just 3 reason to be on Patreon:
1.) not having found an alternative
2.) not being aware
3.) being okay with others getting censored nilly-willy, and lending power to mobs
Move people who are at #2 to #1, and don't waste time and money on those who stick with #3.
In technological terms, cryptocurrencies really have fixede this. However, the adoption is lacking behind somewhat. However, the few creators that do use cryptocurrency (even just in a rudimentary way of putting a bitcoin address in a video) - have gained from this.
Bitcoins ledger is public, marking every transaction from who to whom the money went.
Yes, it's originally only the wallet id that is public, but this id only needs to be matched once to a person...
And don't even start with exchanges. They have exactly the same problem as any private entity such as PayPal or patreon has
Couldn't one simply use the other currencies where ledger is not public, if the privacy is needed? Like Zcash, Dash or Monero (no affiliation, I'm just listing options to clearly show that public ledger is in technological sense not a problem).
I think that many of these problems stem from censorship, not need of privacy.
You can't for a simple reason: to use them you need a combination of hw, sw and connectivity that's largely proprietary and can't be considered safe...
You may trust your FOSS-only OS, your FOSS "wallet", but how you can trust your hw? How easy a country can look out citizens from internet services?
Mesh network and open hardware exists but mostly at a marginal and embryonic stage...
I fear that cryptocurrency will be even worse: imaging how big the blockchain can became if used as main currency; who can really operate on it the if not very few super-giants that offer "broker services" like today's online wallets services? Also see the actual hw trend: we get more and more closed platforms more and more stuffed with proprietary fw, how can you trust even your UEFI machine or even fw-enabled keyboard, no matter how strongly encrypted your files are... You can't even trust your mobile phone nearby your keyboard since we have enough POCs of how to determinate keys pressed with a simple audio analyze...
The sole currency I can trust is paper one: it can be stolen, sure, but if you have it in hand and is legal to use it you can exchange money so exchange values/goods without big dictators in the middle, it doesn't matter if they act for good or bad.
Like someone else suggested, this is likely a case of automated flagging by fraud detection systems, but it does not excuse such terrible communication on Patreon's part.
I have been following the recent Patreon backlash with interest, which I think was triggered by Patreon banning a youtuber who goes by Sargon of Akkad for using the phrase "white [n-word]" in a youtube video. Sam Harris, who was one of the highest earning people n Patreon, closed his patreon account and explained why he did so [0]. Jordan Peterson and Dave Rubin (popular internet personalities who spoke out against Patreon's trust and safety policies) are planning on launching an alternative [1] to Patreon that is more pro free speech. It would be interesting to see if they manage to build a free speech alternative since the problem usually is that the worst elements on the internet flock to it before regular people and the site/service will be labeled a hub for nazis/white supremacists and no bank/financial institution will want to do business with such a service. It also sounds like companies such as Stripe and Paypal can do little even if they wanted to support a free speech alternative to Patreon, since that would cause issues with their payment networks.
I am interested in learning a little about how the financial infrastructure works (banks, payment processors, regulations), who decides what types of service should not be allowed even if it's legal and what it would take to build a free speech alternative to Patreon, so if there are some good resources that you know about, please share them in the comments.
But notifying the owner is not a part of automated flagging? How hard is it to make it send out a short e-mail? This is basically very bad care and support for clients, however one spins it.
It's a video with the summary of discussion between a lot of people who are unhappy with Patreon and are looking for alternatives, from 9 days ago -- how is that not relevant?
And why are we not busy talking about and making alternatives, rather than downvoting an example of what should be going on here?
Being someone who pays ~zero attention to Twitter, and very little to "politics", I had no clue that there was a shitstorm happening over "censorship" by Patreon. (Although I think that it probably is censorship, I'm not sure, so scare quotes.)
Anyway, so searx.me shows me a NY Times article from today.[0] And it contains these ironic bits:
> Patreon takes a highly personal approach to policing speech. While Google and Facebook use algorithms as a first line of defense for questionable content, Patreon has human moderators. They give warnings and reach out to talk to offenders, presenting options for “education” and “reform.” Some activists hope this will become a model for a better and kinder internet. [emphasis added]
> “There are no automated takedowns,” Mr. Conte said. “As a creator myself dealing with these big tech platforms and getting an automated takedown notice, there’s no appeals process. You can’t talk to a human. And I never want to do that.” [emphasis added]
Funny, that.
Edit: And if this is truly a " fraud / financial flag", wouldn't one expect to see the same level of outreach?
A small note: how can ever a private company claim the right to decide about "hate speech", "illegal contents" etc? If they have suspects they have to go knock the police/other public authority door to signal what they suspect and after comply to the public authority decision.
Nowadays to many people do not comprehend really this super-important concept... And many countries try to take advantage of it pushing private power.
"Hate speech" doesn't have a legal definition in the United States that I am aware of. If it does, it's still covered by the first amendment and legal. So its not a question of Patreon determining what is legal, they're determining what is acceptable to them.
Ok, so my point is how a private company can ever determinate what is acceptable or not for them of their customers activities or idea. I do not know how USA legislation works, in EU a private company can't "discriminate" their customers based on their own personal assumption. If you run a company you may refuse a new customer or you may found a way to break a contract with an actual customer but nothing "suddenly", unnoticed and arbitrary or you face big troubles in curt.
Businesses in the U.S. for the most part can discriminate however they want as long as it isn't on the basis of race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation.
So you say that a company can legally lock out a customers without any reasonable notice and room to discuss?
In EU for instance telcos, banks etc often change conditions without "negotiation" they simply inform their customers that starting from the next month/year/end of auto-renewal period there are new conditions visible "there" and if their customers refuse the change can end the contract without penalties having, in theory, enough time to switch to another company.
This protection is not much effective in many cases since most telcos/banks etc offer nearly the same conditions and change them nearly at the same time so a "bad move" for a customer of company X typically is already present or about to arrive to others possible "competitors", regularly antitrust step into action but normally without enough strength and timing to really avoid many bad moves...
However no one can act without enough time from the over part to respond and certainly not without keep receiving money on behalf of anyone...
Oh, to clarify I hear about cases arrived in curt with motivation like "we have received (as proved by Postal Service) that communication, but inside the envelope there are only to white sheets..." and things of that level but still person to person actions with a formal responsible from both sides.
> So you say that a company can legally lock out a customers without any reasonable notice and room to discuss?
Generally, limited by terms of the contract with the customer, sure. But most consumer online services have contracts that provide broad discretion to providers.
Some particular services are subject to additional public regulation.
Hum, nice to know, thanks. I know that for instance a telco can lock a customers phone if it was an active spammer that with it's activity compromise/endanger telco service itself, however this can apply ONLY as a safety measure against immediate threats otherwise it can led to and adverse court decision because even if telco claim is valid it must demand communication to the costumer like "cease and desist letter" with proof that's it was received and a reasonable time after that event cut the service.
Either one of defining hate speech at the federal level or preventing businesses from enforcing their own hate speech policies would require a constitutional amendment in the us.
I highly doubt such an amendment could ever get popular or political support.
Seems like policing speech is a bad precedent to set, and even if you don’t think it’s a slippery slope, how do we make sure the government’s definition of the phrase is/remains reasonable? Ideally the extreme left wing will be marginalized (i.e., no more dominating universities and newsrooms or tech companies) just like we marginalized right wing extremists.
Part of the problem may be that you're off the opinion that tech companies are the extreme left.
I've met people on the extreme left, they're not average Facebook or Google employees. No one on mainstream TV is "extreme" left. You have to get to theyoungturks or chapotraphouse. (And these are marginalized, given that you've probable maybe heard of Cenk and TYT, but CTH is a podcast and subreddit and nothing else).
If your ideal is that the US's center left (which is globally center or center right) is considered the extreme left and marginalized, your personal overton window is so far to the right that you probably shouldn't be making these decisions. And as you say, the government probably shouldn't be either, it would allow a government that believed that CNN was far left to censor it.
Let me set the record straight so you don’t have to guess about whether I’m conflating far left and center left:
1. I’m a moderate liberal by every measure.
2. I don’t view CNN as far left; while it is shamefully partisan, no more so than Fox News.
3. I don’t want the government to censor anyone, I’m more or less a free speech absolutist.
4. I don’t think tech companies in general are far-left; only that a handful appear to contain a sufficiently powerful contingent of far left ideologues who feel comfortable using their company to suppress dissent (social media platforms censoring moderate liberal and conservative viewpoints, Google firing Damore under patently false pretenses, Mozilla pushing out Eich, etc).
A small intervention: to my (western) European eyes saying that CNN is far left or even saying that far left exists in the USA is a fascist affirmation...
That's to add a different "relative" measure.
Apart of that far left and far right are essentially the SAME, their "lower labor force" are fanatic people used as a weapon/Ford models workers by the very same "sponsors" who want dictatorship instead of free society.
If you read about or know someone who have visited both Franco's Spain and Chernenko's Soviet Union you will see that they are equally oppressive and use essentially the very same language, only with a little color variation in flags.
Do not forget that Lenin was massively financed by Kaiser's Germany, Stalin by UK crown etc just to stop socialism transforming it in a dictatorial regime with same symbols, not different by the hitler financing by German élites against socialism in Germany, mussolini financed by UK crown against a socialist Italy etc.
"left" is socialism, "center" is liberalism, the rest are only a grayscale of dictatorship movements disguised in various ways.
Then why did you originally claim it was dominating universities, tech companies, and the newsroom?
Those things are maybe left of center under some metrics, but not far left, and certainly not extremely far left, so why claim that?
Again, if you're now going to claim that the people like Sargon and Milo and co being censored are moderate liberals, I'm gonna say that you're just patently incorrect, and your left-right scale is broken. That you equivocate fox and CNN only cements this. Compare morning Joe (one of the most partisan shows on CNN) to Hannity or Carlson, and there really isn't a comparison.
“The far left dominates universities, newsrooms, and tech companies” meant that these three categories of organizations are more likely to push a far left agenda. It doesn’t mean the organizations themselves are completely or even majority far-left. It also doesn’t mean every organization in the category behaves this way. It only means the power balance leans far left.
As for why “far left” and not “moderate left”—because moderate leftists don’t have the authoritarian bent that we see from these organizations. They don’t seek to suppress moderate voices.
I don’t know much about Sargon, but nothing on his wiki page seems to suggest he is far right, and I never claimed Milo was a moderate anything. You keep throwing out these straw men as though you’re desperate to have a very particular argument when it seems like you and I likely agree on quite a lot...
RE Fox vs CNN, I don’t follow your point. They’re both patently moderate organizations; seems like you’re conflating partisanship with extremism and your sense of partisanship is based on two data points. In any case, I’m not interested in splitting hairs between Fox and CNN so long as we can agree that neither is extreme-anything (and if we can’t then you’re too far off the reservation to have a productive conversation with).
There's "hate crime". Which is basically "crime" plus evidence of illegal discrimination (at least, regarding race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation). So there are increased penalties, if convicted. But speech itself is rarely illegal, with exceptions for inciting riots or panics, "fighting words", interfering with police, and so on.
However, individuals and businesses are free to refuse service, censor speech, etc. As long as they're not discriminating on the basis of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or disability.
> A small note: how can ever a private company claim the right to decide about "hate speech", "illegal contents" etc?
Very easily; private parties are, in fact, in many cases subject to punishment for failing to avoid involvement with illegal activity, which necessarily requires them to identify it.
> If they have suspects they have to go knock the police/other public authority door to signal what they suspect and after comply to the public authority decision.
No, this is generally false; the only time they have to do that is if they want consequences reserved to public authorities to be applied, or if they are engaged in an area of business activity subject to unusual legal protection (usually, regulated monopolies and similar.)
> Nowadays to many people do not comprehend really this super-important concept...
This concept is bizarre and has never been generally accepted, and is contrary to th foundations of most modern systems of law.
> private parties are, in fact, in many cases subject to punishment for failing to avoid involvement with illegal activity
That's true IF and only IF they know a crime and do not reported it to the competent authority. They are nor police nor curt to decide autonomously. Impromptu autonomous decisions should happen ONLY in case immediate of danger-life situations that's hard to happen for an internet company.
> the only time they have to do that is if they want consequences reserved to public authorities to be applied
Might be my limited English but... I do not understand what you say... If you know a crime you have to report it and competent authority act and instruct you on how to act...
> This concept is bizarre and has never been generally accepted
Mh, in the EU and in general since the ancient Roman law it's actually generally accepted... We decide after French Revolution to split power in executive, legislative and judicial authorities and those are the sole that can act.
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.
Oh come on, they have a ToS like all other companies. It's not "censorship" to not do business with someone. Also, "the right" here is people like Milo and Lauren Southern who are out in the real world causing harm.
Their CEO Jack Conte a year ago said this exact thing was not covered by their TOS [1]. Patron also admitted that their current TOS text reasonably is worded to only cover what you do on platform. This was not on platform.
Regardless, it is very relevant that a payments platform has arbitrary subjective rules for taking people’s living away. Especially when those reasons are ideological.
I think censorship is changing a lot these days as speech moves from being a thing you do with your mouth towards a dialogue you establish throughout online communities. Not saying a company can’t have control, but to full out deny that their control can be equivalent to censorship is letting them off the hook for future problems that will become more and more of an issue for a free thinking society.
Not that our society is all that great at free thinking, but I don’t think we should be setting it up to continue making free thought harder. Even if it comes with some things we don’t like, we need to honor the pursuit of intellectual curiosity and exploration.
It is most definitely censorship. It is not state censorship, and it is not prohibited by the law, but it's definitely an activity targeted to suppress expression of ideas Patreon censors do not like, and it is clearly fitting every reasonable definition of censorship.
The fact that it's not state censorship and thus not aided by state repressive apparatus makes it less abhorrent, but still harmful enough. Especially given that this censorship effort is not solely done by Patreon: most major providers - each of them enjoying near-monopoly in their field - are currently engaged in a concentrated effort to suppress speech they deem offensive. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google, Apple, Patreon, Paypal, Visa, Mastercard - they all take concerted and persistent effort to make views and expressions they dislike unavailable on the Internet, or at least very, very hard to reach.
The effect, while not as drastic as censorship in a totalitarian state - you won't get jailed or shot for sharing a spicy joke, though you could lose your business, your job and your career - is definitely of the same kind and direction as the efforts of any totalitarian state. The goal is to make only conformant expression possible and to make people who do not conform, who want to challenge the reigning dogmas, feel afraid and be excluded from any Internet platform of notice. And until we have viable alternative to censorship platforms, the effects of this would be similar - though, obviously, less drastic - to the effects of state censorship.
But the fact that we are not in North Korea yet is not the reason to continue on the road to this direction - it's a wakeup call to turn around and walk away from it. Including walking away - as much as possible - from censorship platforms.
Again, you are confusing "something is not currently prohibited by US government" with "something is moral and ethical thing to do". US government is prohibited from exercising content-based censorship by US constitution. This does not mean a private business - which everybody knows is not prohibited by the US constitution from exercising censorship, so you can stop reminding everybody about it and pretending it somehow is a serious argument that somebody didn't hear first 1000 times - is right to produce censorship. The fact that doing this is legal is the lowest bar, but it's not an excuse that magically makes it OK. It just makes whoever does it to avoid jail. Fine, they're not in jail. They should still stop their attempts to institute censorship, even though we can't jail them for it.
> If you want to fight that, you have to fight capitalism.
Bullshit. People regularly fight legal actions by private corporations, and regularly win. Society has hundreds of ways for corporations to stop doing something that is legal but is seen by society as harmful. Capitalism is still alive and well.
Do these platforms have a social responsibility? You're technically correct. What about the people who depend on it who genuinely don't know any better?
In the call with Matt they said that what they did here conform with their corporate values and goals, as they don’t want to allow creators they politically disagree with for branding reasons. If therefore doesn’t matter if this was true in some of the many cases.
See the transcript of Matts conversation with Patreon [1]. They said this was entirely their decision, and they did it because they didn't like Sargons brand whatever that means.
Read the transcript [1] of the call between Patreon and Matt, and Patreon said it was entirely their decision. Another rather scummy thing is to act ideologically while obscuring your reasons, reasons you are perfectly capable of expressing in private.
MATT: Are you telling me that this was Patreon’s decision then, or someone pressured you into this?
PATREON: No - this was entirely Patreon’s decision.
MATT: Well then I don’t understand passing the buck off to somebody else.
PATREON: No, I’m not passing the buck off. The thing is we have guidelines, but I’m trying to explain, #1 it is our mission to fund the creative class and obviously some people may not want to be associated.
More likely this is what happens when you create a trust and safety department run by ideologues that censor according to some elusive concept of “hate speech”. Who defines hate? Ideologues should at least not
Maybe it just has to do with the fact that as a company heavily involved in payment processing they’d be crazy to not be exceedingly careful about who they work with?
Joe Rohan covered this well [1]. What Sargon is supposedly being banned for according to patreon is using the n-word against Nazis that had been attacking him for a while. Patreon said context didn’t matter and that they didn’t like his “brand” whatever that means. He didn’t say this on patreon or even his own YouTube channel, and let’s remember again he used the language of literal Nazis against them.
Supposedly context doesn’t matter if you violate social justice beliefs, because somehow sharing the platform with someone that does wrongthink also taints you. It is a very dangerous way of thinking and we should not tolerate it from tech platforms.
We are here talking about some hypothetical negative publicity. The outrage about what Sargon said is rather contrived and I suspect most of it is an act.
It just doesn't make sense for patreon to care about whether this outrage is contrived or not, any negative publicity over their customers could hurt their margins a lot.
Payment processing is hard. I'm not saying it should be so, but Patreon isn't to blame for that.
More than what the outrage over the censorship of other viewpoints are? To me what they are doing seems more like an act of faith in social justice that is most likely really bad for their business
I rather doubt that outrage over Patreon banning users to keep their payment processors happy would hurt their relationship with said payment processors.
Patreon allows domestic terrorists on their platform. If they are being exceedingly careful about who they're working with, maybe they should evaluate that.
(Please excuse that source, like I said they have deleted the most offensive tweets recently. Originally this was part of a discussion surrounding Sam Harris leaving patreon, which is where I read about it.)
These bans and suspensions shaft both the creators and the supporters since neither seem to be notified and yet they often charge supporters. It's shady. Corporations that handle peoples' money should be bulletproof.
I would very much prefer if companies just flat out came out and said they don't want someone on their platform instead of trying to twist both their rules and past events to create some kind of coherent narrative. I wouldn't be happier but if I had to choose between being lied to or not being lied to, I prefer honesty.
In the US, it's easy to request card chargebacks if there's been fraud. And charging supporters for banned or frozen creators is arguably fraud. I'm not sure what actually happened with Sargon etc. But according to TFA's OP, Patreon was still collecting money, and hadn't notified either him or his supporters. That's clearly fraud.
Man stifling people who think “the wrong way” is pretty horrifying to me at the moment. I’ve largely separated myself from leftist ideals in the last couple years because, with very little hyperbole, I’ve noticed that the time to be labeled a racist or Hitler is way the hell too small.
Don’t get me wrong - racists are not something I tolerate in my personal life. Not at all. There’s no need for that kind of crap in our society and I’m not going to go down the rabbit hole of trying to change someone’s mind when rationality isn’t the basis of their thinking. But there’s a hell of a lot of grey area between racism and simply thinking about things in a different way. And right now it seems like the freedom to think differently, even if it’s just to come to a valid conclusion instead of believing what you’re told, is under a lot of fire. Somehow a lot of people (or maybe just the noisy people) are all too willing to throw away freedom to enact a totalitarian view of how they think the world should work.
That’s not right. Humans need freedom. And sometimes that means the freedom to make mistakes. The people imposing this censorship aren’t perfect. They aren’t better than the rest of us nor are they more moral. So to me, it’s totally unacceptable that they’ve established themselves as moral chaperones.
"What if we just oppress and persecute minorities a little bit?" is not a valid argument. The truth isn't in the middle, as centrists hopelessly seem to believe.
If you want to fight corporate control over speech, you have to fight against capitalism.
It is not capitalism that restricts speech, it is the religious in social justice that does that through seeking institutional roles and abusing their power in those roles. A tool of favor is to couple that with mobs pretending to be outraged in order to pressure a social justice belief into a corporation.
Our society has a separation between a secular state and religious practice for this purpose, and we must restrict social justice abuses using those tools.
The problem is a lack of other options, driven by the incentives and actions of payment processors like Mastercard. This isn't just theoretical; those who tried switching to Subscribestar after the Sargon incident immediately lost their income again as PayPal cut ties with Subscribestar. The whole "it's a free market, build your own platform" excuse for deplatforming gets increasingly weak as the deplatforming moves upstream towards regulated oligopolies like the international payments system.
One of the reasons why crypto currencies are useful. Same thing happened back when Wikileaks needed donation money and every established platform cut them loose.
Yes, this is showing the problematic aspects of large centralized corporate control on our capability to continue engaging in enlightenment thinking and a healthy democracy.
The whole backlash against Patreon didn't start now as they've done stuff like what that person on Twitter complains about but it culminated in the strange circumstances involving the banning of one Carl Benjamin, aka. Sargon of Akkad. People are upset about this, even outside of politics not because they support or even agree with Carl Benjamin but because of what Patreon did, and still does.
They banned the guy over a 10 month old livestream on an obscure channel where he criticised the alt-right using their own vernacular. If you ignore context, then sure, it is "hate-speech". The issue here is, however, that Patreon explicitly said that they only enforce their policies on their own platform in their terms. (Jack Conte said the same thing, explicitly on a podcast.) And yet, they suspended a creator, without warning and shoddily still allowed new people to pledge money to him. For other creators this does shows that their livelihoods can be shut down any time, any moment, for any reason, on a whim of someone on that "Trust & Safety Council".
Let us not mention the blatant hate-speech they allow _ON THEIR OWN PLATFORM_, even among their top 20 creators.
If you entrust your livelihood to a platform, you want someone neutral and someone who takes the time to notify you about changes related to your income, even if it's via automated messages.
I'm unclear whether this is due to an account being suspended, or an account on hold due to some kind of fraud detection.
I'd say the one clear indictment here is Patreon's absolute shit communications. Traditional companies have a phone number you can call to talk to a human and sort everything out, but that seems to have gone the way of the Dodo, replaced with a way less effective but cheaper solution.
With modern "web platforms" we are not customers but only lemons to be juiced and dropped, puppets, slaves. Nothing more.
Now think REALLY well about our future, especially imaging at actual trend a future with a banking system lead by big of IT instead of banks and of course usable only via proprietary services.
Think about the past when we have bankbooks with any transaction written and signed by the bank in our hand vs today when we only have to relay on bank's servers itself. Think about how you can pay with physical money and how you need to pay with electronic one, especially observe the hard dependencies that both systems have.
Add to the soup the fact that power corrupt and interdependence force cooperation instead of wars.
Add to the soup the fact that in the past knowledge generally used to be in universities, so in public hand while now it's mostly in super-big-corps secret hands.
Add to the soup the fact that when we totally depend on something, including basic things like food supply/production/distribution there is no need of strong power to create a dictatorship simply because people can't live without the product of de-facto "dictator"...
Opinion: first big enough country that will force neutrality of payment processors will get all content creators, startups and the trillions in sound money and cultural value that come with them
I'm not going to focus on the free speech part of this, or even the purpose of art. It's gotten to the point that watching well-funded companies go down this road is just painful. All of that money and education. Such idiots. I'm embarrassed to be part of the same tech community with them. Go buy a copy of On Liberty and take a time-out until you grok it. (Rawls can wait until later)
Instead, I'm curious as to a few other things.
1. This looks prima facia like fraud. You say one thing, the TOS says one thing, you do another -- and you take money while acting that way. If that's not fraud, I don't understand the term.
2. As I noted in a recent essay, the way that software generalizes communication, combined with a system/platform that has massive adoption, always leads to a bad place even when this has nothing to do with politics or content. Even if we get past the speech and fraud part of the problem, we still have a huge problem. http://tiny-giant-books.com/1.html?EntryId=recEUbufzhAvph8K1
3. Are we a bulletin board or a publisher? I understand these companies want to take both stances simultaneously, and that the law allows this, but heck if it makes any sense to me how it's going to work out well. Yes, it's legal, but that doesn't make it any more tenable. Algorithms don't amount to magic sauce, no matter how much you wave your hands around.
4. We are in need of anti-trust legislation when it comes to the marketplace of ideas. On the net, either there is no such thing as a public square or some legislative intervention is required. I don't think arguing that there's no such thing as a public square works for rational observers of the marketplace. Sounded pretty cool ten years ago, sure. And perhaps most of the public might still buy it. But its days are numbered.
Interesting place we have ended up. I note that "interesting" can have terrible connotations.
172 comments
[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 170 ms ] threadPerhaps a more feasible and maybe probable approach is for another service like WordPress or SquareSpace to offer patronage functionality (as in, offering recurring payments and exclusive contents for patrons).
"Hey if you like my stuff consider adding my <public bank account key> to your monthly payments.
I guess Patreon provides a walled garden of premium content for patrons, but I'm skeptical that's universally desired by creators. The few I know don't do any of that.
One thing that Patreon does have that would be harder to recreate is the gamification of patronage. Like comparing subscriber counts on YouTube, Patreon makes it easy to compare different creators' Patreon income which I think serves as a rough estimate of clout.
Banks specifically DON'T want you doing that because they don't want undesirable businesses funneling money in and out of their banks. I'm sure there are different legal liabilities for different places for different undesirable businesses with that kind of thing. It's probably a potential minefield to let anyone do that indiscriminately.
Probably have to track everyone, and then roll back or cancel accounts when you catch the pornographers, or cartels or what have you.
(Of course, that brings you back to the problem of randomly cancelled accounts.)
My credit union offers free unlimited bill pay to anyone. Certain businesses can do it via a direct deposit, but I can send a set amount of money to ANYONE and they will mail a check on the Nth day of the month.
Not sure I understand this objection - the recipient of such a transfer would already have to have an account at another bank, and that bank would have to do the full AML/KYC checks anyway. There should be no issues with someone with an account at reputable bank A sending a regular payment to an account at reputable bank B for any purpose.
While Patreon isn't Silk Road, people can and will try to take advantage of any payment system with weak controls.
The problem is that it has to be international.
There’s a lot of people who mostly use it as “automatic tip jar”, too.
Here in Europe a lot of content creators do this. You can simply set up a recurring payment to any IBAN, transaction fees are usually low.
I think the real problem is upstream: The payment processors.
These companies set the rules and everybody else has to play along or risk being cut off from customers.
Any competitor will face the same issues sooner or later.
First, many exchanges (at least in the US) allow you to purchase with bank transfer, not a credit card. That completely changes the context of the risk profile. Credit card companies are much more concerned about fraud since CC's are so much easier to perpetrate fraudulent transactions. Its relevant for any kind of "riskier" transaction, like those on something like Patreon.
More importantly, once you have purchased cryptocurrency, you can easily transfer to a wallet which you control. Install MetaMask, then move currency to your new wallet on your Mac/Windows/PC. If you keep everything in Coinbase, you are right you are subject to their rules when you attempt to transfer money. If you keep funds in your own wallet, you are 100% free to transfer money to ANYONE without restriction. This is what people mean when they say "decentralization."
It seems like, however, you will be more subject to taxation issues (Coinbase is likely going to report big transactions to the government) than to arbitrary evaluations (that lead to frozen accounts) made by payment processors.
Put another way, I think it will be relatively easy to do something like Patreon in cryptocurrency. Ingress will be simple. Converting that into a fiat currency will be hard, as you say.
But, if all of sudden I can start taking trips to Thailand and only need USD to buy the ticket, but can do everything else with crypto, then it will matter a lot less. And, this comment made me think that's more and more possible: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18530642
Definitely both. Banks have tons of "know your client" requirements. And in most cases, you wouldn't be large enough client so they'd bother to even call you before freezing your account on slightest suspicion.
https://amp.businessinsider.com/jordan-peterson-says-hell-la...
All I have seen is "coming soon" or "we are working on something" with no exact time table or dates
It's been tried before. You have to play ball to a certain extent or upstream service providers can and will cut you off.
I'm not saying it's not doable - but I suspect it's harder than it appears, if you don't want to rely on established payment processing infrastructure.
Still an indictment of their communications process, and still a financial risk to the person, but it's a little odd that literally all the replies in that Twitter thread are people talking about Milo Yiannopoulous. Even if Patreon decided it wanted to go all in on hosting controversial political figures, they'd presumably still have some kind of fraud checks, so the points really do seem to be unrelated.
EDIT: If your reply is "they should reply 24/7/365", ask yourself whether it makes financial sense to staff a support team on Christmas at triple-overtime pay; notice that essentially all US businesses do not staff support on Christmas; and then reconsider your reply.
Disneyland is open on Christmas. Most movie theaters are open on Christmas. I think most convenience stores, many groceries stores, and most gas stations are open on Christmas.
> This suspension came between 18 and 47 days ago based on my missed payouts. No review has taken place in that time...
Patreon has had weeks to do this review, yet they haven't communicated or done anything.
But maybe they've given up paying attention, given the other stuff going on. Or maybe overwhelmed and frustrated.
No, neither of those things is true. Triple pay would be very odd under any circumstances.
> The holiday premium for time worked on the six named holidays shall be paid at three times (3X) the straight time rate of pay.
https://ufcw324.org/holiday-pay-and-holiday-week-overtime-fo...
I hope Patreon support staff didn't have to work all through last weekend, but if they did, I hope they're making triple time today!
... to ban people just before you go on holiday, you mean? Where's the kindness in that? How about a business day of fair warning and letting a person react before you ban them as a Christmas present?
Why be "kind" to companies that never really own their shit, are ultimately not accountable at all, who offer weasel words to add some insult to injury? That's the track record.
I made my mind up based on other things, anyway: We need payment processors and platforms using them that ONLY respect the law. Not even accepting user reports, maybe with a button to let users report things to the local police. Not anonymously of course, so said police can deal with repeated nonsensical complaints like they would if you abuse calling 911, how about that?
Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and from what I can tell, the problem is anonymous reports. Let's get some "right to face your accuser" in there, on top of the accuser having to go to the police in the first place, and I bet you, 99.9% of it would clear up right then and there.
Patreon doesn't want that, so what else is there for them to say? Let them change or let us make and flock to platforms that respect us, period. And let us support those who discern more carefully what systems and companies to use and normalize, and what lines to draw.
If that means I have to accept that my neighbour on such a platform might be a racist, as long as they don't do anything illegal, just as something what they are, a bias they have, then I can live with that. Just like I can live in a big city, without freaking out all the time. What a crazy concept. I don't want to convince the people who can't fathom it, I want to build things with those who can.
I'm sick to have dozens of landlord who mostly are little children that don't speak English but just string words together without meaning, and only respond to the guttural sounds of groups of other children. Would you go to a supermarket where the cashier can simply deny some items to some customers, on a case-by-case basis, based on other customers booing and blocking the transaction -- instead of security and nobody else dealing with those who try to interfere? It's time for the web to grow up. Being oh so different isn't any good when it means regression.
I was actually planning to go on Patreon soon-ish, but after seeing the Matt Christiansen video about the PR rep phone call, I'm seriously re-considering that. That is, I'll have to come up with other stuff, and then at most go on Patreon as a bonus, an afterthought, that's for sure.
There's nothing to reconsider. They can still change, they can do that any day. But until that happens, there's just 3 reason to be on Patreon:
1.) not having found an alternative
2.) not being aware
3.) being okay with others getting censored nilly-willy, and lending power to mobs
Move people who are at #2 to #1, and don't waste time and money on those who stick with #3.
The US doesn't have mandatory holidays, and neither do most, if any, US states.
> ask yourself whether it makes financial sense to staff a support team on Christmas at triple-overtime pay
Except for a very small fraction of union jobs, triple-overtime for holiday work isn't a thing in the US.
The sad realization was that private companies can control who gets to speak very effectively.
Lots of people hoped cryptocurrency would fix this, but so far it hasn't.
https://blog.teddyhyde.com/2017/10/11/take-back-your-blog-ju...
https://poetry.teddyhyde.io/jaberwocky-3/
Bitcoins ledger is public, marking every transaction from who to whom the money went. Yes, it's originally only the wallet id that is public, but this id only needs to be matched once to a person...
And don't even start with exchanges. They have exactly the same problem as any private entity such as PayPal or patreon has
I think that many of these problems stem from censorship, not need of privacy.
You may trust your FOSS-only OS, your FOSS "wallet", but how you can trust your hw? How easy a country can look out citizens from internet services?
Mesh network and open hardware exists but mostly at a marginal and embryonic stage...
Modern bitcoin wallets use HD tech. Each transaction has a seperate public wallet
The sole currency I can trust is paper one: it can be stolen, sure, but if you have it in hand and is legal to use it you can exchange money so exchange values/goods without big dictators in the middle, it doesn't matter if they act for good or bad.
It's rather a sad realization that a vocal online minority can control private companies (and public figures) very effectively.
I have been following the recent Patreon backlash with interest, which I think was triggered by Patreon banning a youtuber who goes by Sargon of Akkad for using the phrase "white [n-word]" in a youtube video. Sam Harris, who was one of the highest earning people n Patreon, closed his patreon account and explained why he did so [0]. Jordan Peterson and Dave Rubin (popular internet personalities who spoke out against Patreon's trust and safety policies) are planning on launching an alternative [1] to Patreon that is more pro free speech. It would be interesting to see if they manage to build a free speech alternative since the problem usually is that the worst elements on the internet flock to it before regular people and the site/service will be labeled a hub for nazis/white supremacists and no bank/financial institution will want to do business with such a service. It also sounds like companies such as Stripe and Paypal can do little even if they wanted to support a free speech alternative to Patreon, since that would cause issues with their payment networks.
I am interested in learning a little about how the financial infrastructure works (banks, payment processors, regulations), who decides what types of service should not be allowed even if it's legal and what it would take to build a free speech alternative to Patreon, so if there are some good resources that you know about, please share them in the comments.
[0] https://twitter.com/SamHarrisOrg?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctw...
[1] https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/10772442911251742...
Dave Rubin has a personality?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GWz1RDVoqw4
I wonder how they handle the payment part.
And why are we not busy talking about and making alternatives, rather than downvoting an example of what should be going on here?
Anyway, so searx.me shows me a NY Times article from today.[0] And it contains these ironic bits:
> Patreon takes a highly personal approach to policing speech. While Google and Facebook use algorithms as a first line of defense for questionable content, Patreon has human moderators. They give warnings and reach out to talk to offenders, presenting options for “education” and “reform.” Some activists hope this will become a model for a better and kinder internet. [emphasis added]
> “There are no automated takedowns,” Mr. Conte said. “As a creator myself dealing with these big tech platforms and getting an automated takedown notice, there’s no appeals process. You can’t talk to a human. And I never want to do that.” [emphasis added]
Funny, that.
Edit: And if this is truly a " fraud / financial flag", wouldn't one expect to see the same level of outreach?
0) https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/24/technology/patreon-hate-s...
Nowadays to many people do not comprehend really this super-important concept... And many countries try to take advantage of it pushing private power.
In EU for instance telcos, banks etc often change conditions without "negotiation" they simply inform their customers that starting from the next month/year/end of auto-renewal period there are new conditions visible "there" and if their customers refuse the change can end the contract without penalties having, in theory, enough time to switch to another company.
This protection is not much effective in many cases since most telcos/banks etc offer nearly the same conditions and change them nearly at the same time so a "bad move" for a customer of company X typically is already present or about to arrive to others possible "competitors", regularly antitrust step into action but normally without enough strength and timing to really avoid many bad moves...
However no one can act without enough time from the over part to respond and certainly not without keep receiving money on behalf of anyone...
Oh, to clarify I hear about cases arrived in curt with motivation like "we have received (as proved by Postal Service) that communication, but inside the envelope there are only to white sheets..." and things of that level but still person to person actions with a formal responsible from both sides.
Generally, limited by terms of the contract with the customer, sure. But most consumer online services have contracts that provide broad discretion to providers.
Some particular services are subject to additional public regulation.
Then fix that, instead of using it as a loophole to ruin the web, and then still not having fixed that.
I highly doubt such an amendment could ever get popular or political support.
I've met people on the extreme left, they're not average Facebook or Google employees. No one on mainstream TV is "extreme" left. You have to get to theyoungturks or chapotraphouse. (And these are marginalized, given that you've probable maybe heard of Cenk and TYT, but CTH is a podcast and subreddit and nothing else).
If your ideal is that the US's center left (which is globally center or center right) is considered the extreme left and marginalized, your personal overton window is so far to the right that you probably shouldn't be making these decisions. And as you say, the government probably shouldn't be either, it would allow a government that believed that CNN was far left to censor it.
1. I’m a moderate liberal by every measure.
2. I don’t view CNN as far left; while it is shamefully partisan, no more so than Fox News.
3. I don’t want the government to censor anyone, I’m more or less a free speech absolutist.
4. I don’t think tech companies in general are far-left; only that a handful appear to contain a sufficiently powerful contingent of far left ideologues who feel comfortable using their company to suppress dissent (social media platforms censoring moderate liberal and conservative viewpoints, Google firing Damore under patently false pretenses, Mozilla pushing out Eich, etc).
That's to add a different "relative" measure.
Apart of that far left and far right are essentially the SAME, their "lower labor force" are fanatic people used as a weapon/Ford models workers by the very same "sponsors" who want dictatorship instead of free society.
If you read about or know someone who have visited both Franco's Spain and Chernenko's Soviet Union you will see that they are equally oppressive and use essentially the very same language, only with a little color variation in flags.
Do not forget that Lenin was massively financed by Kaiser's Germany, Stalin by UK crown etc just to stop socialism transforming it in a dictatorial regime with same symbols, not different by the hitler financing by German élites against socialism in Germany, mussolini financed by UK crown against a socialist Italy etc.
"left" is socialism, "center" is liberalism, the rest are only a grayscale of dictatorship movements disguised in various ways.
Those things are maybe left of center under some metrics, but not far left, and certainly not extremely far left, so why claim that?
Again, if you're now going to claim that the people like Sargon and Milo and co being censored are moderate liberals, I'm gonna say that you're just patently incorrect, and your left-right scale is broken. That you equivocate fox and CNN only cements this. Compare morning Joe (one of the most partisan shows on CNN) to Hannity or Carlson, and there really isn't a comparison.
As for why “far left” and not “moderate left”—because moderate leftists don’t have the authoritarian bent that we see from these organizations. They don’t seek to suppress moderate voices.
I don’t know much about Sargon, but nothing on his wiki page seems to suggest he is far right, and I never claimed Milo was a moderate anything. You keep throwing out these straw men as though you’re desperate to have a very particular argument when it seems like you and I likely agree on quite a lot...
RE Fox vs CNN, I don’t follow your point. They’re both patently moderate organizations; seems like you’re conflating partisanship with extremism and your sense of partisanship is based on two data points. In any case, I’m not interested in splitting hairs between Fox and CNN so long as we can agree that neither is extreme-anything (and if we can’t then you’re too far off the reservation to have a productive conversation with).
However, individuals and businesses are free to refuse service, censor speech, etc. As long as they're not discriminating on the basis of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or disability.
Very easily; private parties are, in fact, in many cases subject to punishment for failing to avoid involvement with illegal activity, which necessarily requires them to identify it.
> If they have suspects they have to go knock the police/other public authority door to signal what they suspect and after comply to the public authority decision.
No, this is generally false; the only time they have to do that is if they want consequences reserved to public authorities to be applied, or if they are engaged in an area of business activity subject to unusual legal protection (usually, regulated monopolies and similar.)
> Nowadays to many people do not comprehend really this super-important concept...
This concept is bizarre and has never been generally accepted, and is contrary to th foundations of most modern systems of law.
That's true IF and only IF they know a crime and do not reported it to the competent authority. They are nor police nor curt to decide autonomously. Impromptu autonomous decisions should happen ONLY in case immediate of danger-life situations that's hard to happen for an internet company.
> the only time they have to do that is if they want consequences reserved to public authorities to be applied
Might be my limited English but... I do not understand what you say... If you know a crime you have to report it and competent authority act and instruct you on how to act...
> This concept is bizarre and has never been generally accepted
Mh, in the EU and in general since the ancient Roman law it's actually generally accepted... We decide after French Revolution to split power in executive, legislative and judicial authorities and those are the sole that can act.
Matt Christiansen had a call [1] with Patreon to discuss their banning of Sargon of Akkad. Sargon was notified of the banning by his patrons, not Patreon, and had no recourse to challenge the decision. In the call Patreon made it clear that their platform is;
1) explicitly anti free-speech
2) is not a free market (they can ban you for arbitrary reasons, for things posted anywhere including leaked private messages)
3) their rules are enforced in a subjective manner by design
Considering that they have banned many people that disagree with progressive PC ideology, which seems to be a moving target of increasing religious [2] fervor, I can't see why anyone would trust their platform at this point and rely on it to build their income.
Even progressives might like the so-called TERFs fall on the wrong side of the party-line at some point, so I can't see how anyone can trust their platform as a source of income. Unless you of cause love staking your income on the arbitrary whims of the ideologues at Patreon.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv7hvZee-PQ&feature=youtu.be
[2] https://areomagazine.com/2018/12/18/postmodern-religion-and-...
Regardless, it is very relevant that a payments platform has arbitrary subjective rules for taking people’s living away. Especially when those reasons are ideological.
[1] https://youtu.be/mujKMPS2FcQ
Not that our society is all that great at free thinking, but I don’t think we should be setting it up to continue making free thought harder. Even if it comes with some things we don’t like, we need to honor the pursuit of intellectual curiosity and exploration.
The fact that it's not state censorship and thus not aided by state repressive apparatus makes it less abhorrent, but still harmful enough. Especially given that this censorship effort is not solely done by Patreon: most major providers - each of them enjoying near-monopoly in their field - are currently engaged in a concentrated effort to suppress speech they deem offensive. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google, Apple, Patreon, Paypal, Visa, Mastercard - they all take concerted and persistent effort to make views and expressions they dislike unavailable on the Internet, or at least very, very hard to reach.
The effect, while not as drastic as censorship in a totalitarian state - you won't get jailed or shot for sharing a spicy joke, though you could lose your business, your job and your career - is definitely of the same kind and direction as the efforts of any totalitarian state. The goal is to make only conformant expression possible and to make people who do not conform, who want to challenge the reigning dogmas, feel afraid and be excluded from any Internet platform of notice. And until we have viable alternative to censorship platforms, the effects of this would be similar - though, obviously, less drastic - to the effects of state censorship.
But the fact that we are not in North Korea yet is not the reason to continue on the road to this direction - it's a wakeup call to turn around and walk away from it. Including walking away - as much as possible - from censorship platforms.
If you want to fight that, you have to fight capitalism.
> If you want to fight that, you have to fight capitalism.
Bullshit. People regularly fight legal actions by private corporations, and regularly win. Society has hundreds of ways for corporations to stop doing something that is legal but is seen by society as harmful. Capitalism is still alive and well.
I have seen zero actual evidence for MasterCard, and no speculation for Visa, so I would love to see citation for your evidence?
There was Speculation for MC in the JihadWatch banning, but MC has publicly said they were not behind it I believe.
PayPal on the other hand probably is, PayPal has been on a moral Authoritarian left war for over a decade now
[1] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U0mQjUA0T5INc_GDkwPJ2mfh...
Mastercard / Visa / Paypal pretty much control the entire system. Wikileaks was "deplatformed" years ago.
MATT: Are you telling me that this was Patreon’s decision then, or someone pressured you into this?
PATREON: No - this was entirely Patreon’s decision.
MATT: Well then I don’t understand passing the buck off to somebody else.
PATREON: No, I’m not passing the buck off. The thing is we have guidelines, but I’m trying to explain, #1 it is our mission to fund the creative class and obviously some people may not want to be associated.
[1] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U0mQjUA0T5INc_GDkwPJ2mfh...
Why would this have anything to do with ideology?
Supposedly context doesn’t matter if you violate social justice beliefs, because somehow sharing the platform with someone that does wrongthink also taints you. It is a very dangerous way of thinking and we should not tolerate it from tech platforms.
[1] https://youtu.be/2wsQPFyZghc
Payment processing is hard. I'm not saying it should be so, but Patreon isn't to blame for that.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U0mQjUA0T5INc_GDkwPJ2mfh...
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/worl...
https://www.patreon.com/chapotraphouse
https://www.reddit.com/r/ChapoTrapHouse/comments/9k14nf/why_...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_violence
I see no racism not calling for enforced monogamy or the taking of rights away from trans people or minorities, or anything of the sort.
That's a good thing, that kind of stuff should be called out.
They also openly call for violence, including executions, of people that they don't like (although those tweets seem to have been deleted now): https://www.redstate.com/brandon_morse/2018/12/13/patreon-al...
(Please excuse that source, like I said they have deleted the most offensive tweets recently. Originally this was part of a discussion surrounding Sam Harris leaving patreon, which is where I read about it.)
I would very much prefer if companies just flat out came out and said they don't want someone on their platform instead of trying to twist both their rules and past events to create some kind of coherent narrative. I wouldn't be happier but if I had to choose between being lied to or not being lied to, I prefer honesty.
Don’t get me wrong - racists are not something I tolerate in my personal life. Not at all. There’s no need for that kind of crap in our society and I’m not going to go down the rabbit hole of trying to change someone’s mind when rationality isn’t the basis of their thinking. But there’s a hell of a lot of grey area between racism and simply thinking about things in a different way. And right now it seems like the freedom to think differently, even if it’s just to come to a valid conclusion instead of believing what you’re told, is under a lot of fire. Somehow a lot of people (or maybe just the noisy people) are all too willing to throw away freedom to enact a totalitarian view of how they think the world should work.
That’s not right. Humans need freedom. And sometimes that means the freedom to make mistakes. The people imposing this censorship aren’t perfect. They aren’t better than the rest of us nor are they more moral. So to me, it’s totally unacceptable that they’ve established themselves as moral chaperones.
If you want to fight corporate control over speech, you have to fight against capitalism.
Our society has a separation between a secular state and religious practice for this purpose, and we must restrict social justice abuses using those tools.
See Areo article here for a more in depth argument for this: https://areomagazine.com/2018/12/18/postmodern-religion-and-...
They banned the guy over a 10 month old livestream on an obscure channel where he criticised the alt-right using their own vernacular. If you ignore context, then sure, it is "hate-speech". The issue here is, however, that Patreon explicitly said that they only enforce their policies on their own platform in their terms. (Jack Conte said the same thing, explicitly on a podcast.) And yet, they suspended a creator, without warning and shoddily still allowed new people to pledge money to him. For other creators this does shows that their livelihoods can be shut down any time, any moment, for any reason, on a whim of someone on that "Trust & Safety Council".
Let us not mention the blatant hate-speech they allow _ON THEIR OWN PLATFORM_, even among their top 20 creators.
If you entrust your livelihood to a platform, you want someone neutral and someone who takes the time to notify you about changes related to your income, even if it's via automated messages.
I'd say the one clear indictment here is Patreon's absolute shit communications. Traditional companies have a phone number you can call to talk to a human and sort everything out, but that seems to have gone the way of the Dodo, replaced with a way less effective but cheaper solution.
Now think REALLY well about our future, especially imaging at actual trend a future with a banking system lead by big of IT instead of banks and of course usable only via proprietary services.
Think about the past when we have bankbooks with any transaction written and signed by the bank in our hand vs today when we only have to relay on bank's servers itself. Think about how you can pay with physical money and how you need to pay with electronic one, especially observe the hard dependencies that both systems have.
Add to the soup the fact that power corrupt and interdependence force cooperation instead of wars.
Add to the soup the fact that in the past knowledge generally used to be in universities, so in public hand while now it's mostly in super-big-corps secret hands.
Add to the soup the fact that when we totally depend on something, including basic things like food supply/production/distribution there is no need of strong power to create a dictatorship simply because people can't live without the product of de-facto "dictator"...
Instead, I'm curious as to a few other things.
1. This looks prima facia like fraud. You say one thing, the TOS says one thing, you do another -- and you take money while acting that way. If that's not fraud, I don't understand the term.
2. As I noted in a recent essay, the way that software generalizes communication, combined with a system/platform that has massive adoption, always leads to a bad place even when this has nothing to do with politics or content. Even if we get past the speech and fraud part of the problem, we still have a huge problem. http://tiny-giant-books.com/1.html?EntryId=recEUbufzhAvph8K1
3. Are we a bulletin board or a publisher? I understand these companies want to take both stances simultaneously, and that the law allows this, but heck if it makes any sense to me how it's going to work out well. Yes, it's legal, but that doesn't make it any more tenable. Algorithms don't amount to magic sauce, no matter how much you wave your hands around.
4. We are in need of anti-trust legislation when it comes to the marketplace of ideas. On the net, either there is no such thing as a public square or some legislative intervention is required. I don't think arguing that there's no such thing as a public square works for rational observers of the marketplace. Sounded pretty cool ten years ago, sure. And perhaps most of the public might still buy it. But its days are numbered.
Interesting place we have ended up. I note that "interesting" can have terrible connotations.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DvQ75bUX4AMLblW.jpg:large