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Comment by JackCh | Hacker News Reader

They can and have, but it seems happen a lot less. This is an instance where the shades of gray are important.

Furthermore you have to consider the non-binary nature of being demonetized. Youtube may demonetize only 50% of your videos, leaving your channel active but severely impacting the predictability of your income. Patreon provides stability and therefore a sense of security that creators are desperately looking for. You might lose significant income seemingly at random because your neighbor turned up their radio a little bit too loud and triggered ContentID, but so far Patreon isn't taking away creators' income for chickenshit stuff like that.

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Not really. Patreon is just as arbitrary and widespread on sudden suspensions of entire accounts (with 100% of a creator's revenue going with it) based on capricious criteria as YouTube is. Patreon has been absolutely burning credibility with creators over the last twelve months.

All these anti-Patreon comments in a row and nobody's given any sort of non-weasel wordy statement.

The only thing I can find is that they removed adult content. Presumably because they use Stripe and Paypal to process payments and both of those are very hair-trigger when it comes to payments for adult content, which are deemed "High Risk" by the underlying payment processors.

So essentially Patreon's bannings (unless anyone has any further information) are a technical and customer service issue. They could probably process adult content through a high risk processor but that would mean adult content creators get less money per pledged dollar due to the higher transaction fees

They banned people, because they were on other end of political spectrum as Patreon management folks are.

Source?

To shorten my previous comment

Who was banned?

Lauren Southern and Faith Goldy on one side.

It's Going Down on the other. This one was due to pressure after banning Lauren Southern and "don't be hypocrites, if you are going to invent new rules on the spot, at least apply them consistently".

Sidestepping the issue of whether or not those two women deserved to be banned: that's just two women. As I said earlier, the shades of gray are important here. A handful of people being banned from Patreon versus a great many people getting randomly demonetized on youtube.

Whether or not you've got a political grudge against Patreon, the simple fact of the matter is that Patreon does currently provide a sense of security for creators who feel very insecure on the capricious youtube platform.

I never claimed that Youtube is any better in this regard. Only that the same risk exists, even if the chance of it happening is different for each platform.

The lower chance of it happening on Patreon is important. It's the reason why youtube creators are using Patreon to provide themselves with relative stability in light of Youtube's capriciousness.

wait - does on the other end of the political spectrum mean like 'nazis'? Or were they identified as nazis by Patreon but Patreon was totally misunderstanding the nazi-like identifying traits?

Do you mean "nazis" as "anyone I don't agree with, but I don't have an argument, so let's ad hominem them"?

no - I don't know who's been banned, but people are seeming sort of evasive about who has been banned and well, I was thinking who would be likely to be the opposite of Patreon on the political/opinion spectrum and that have had an upswing in social visibility in the last year or so and 'nazis' came to mind.

I certainly don't think all the people I don't agree with are Nazis, although I do think all of them are to some degree wrong.

If you would like I can expand on my definition of nazi but I think it is likely to be a pretty middle of the road European definition of nazi, in the end.

I'm also an European, and in we have certain laws, wrt nazism, fascism and communism (in short: promoting them is a crime). Therefore, from this point of view, who is a nazi or who is not is up to the courts to decide, based on some evidence. Unless a judge says so, addressing anyone as a nazi is a libel.

For the people who were banned, it was more of digital mob lynch than any appearance of rational thought.

I usually do not put people who do I do not agree with into the being wrong box. Maybe they considered some argument I didn't, and that's how they came to their conclusion. Of course, the opposite is also possible, therefore the discussion, with exchange of the arguments, is the best approach.

Pre-labeling someone with the intent to smear their character damages the discussion. Preventing them to say their argument ("de-platforming") does the same.

well I suppose Patreon is an American company, and they can be sued for libel under American law - unless some of the people banned are European in which case they can be sued also under whatever European law is relevant. At any rate I thought maybe Patreon said they were banning people for being 'nazis' and wondered if that was the case? Or if there is a list that can be provided of the people banned and the reasons given.

The reasons why Patreon banned them are very murky and unclean; they never said exactly why. Saying exactly why gives the opponent a way to argue; being unclear doesn't. Something about "manifest observable behavior", which in short is "whatever we do not like", without explicitly defining what it exactly is.

AFAIK, the people who were banned were Canadians.

It's not that Youtube is any better; they are also banning and demonetizing people without being able to point out objective specifics.

Edit: the brigade is here.

>The reasons why Patreon banned them are very murky and unclean; they never said exactly why.

And yet you're certain the reasons were politically motivated.

> And yet you're certain the reasons were politically motivated.

Ideological. Between the point of view that these banned were arguing for, ideological leaning of Patreon management and the shifty argument for the ban, it doesn't take much brainpower to figure it out. In other words: it it wasn't ideologically motivated, they wouldn't have a problem with giving a straight answer.

Which people? Is it when they banned Lauren Southern for actively interfering in rescue operations in the Mediterranean (i.e., trying to get people killed)? Or is it when they banned a leftist/antifa group (IGD) for doxxing, as well as advocating for and publishing instructions for various acts of sabotage?

"Rescue operation" is a very dishonest label for doing taxi from Libya to Europe for economic migrants. Nowadays, Italy or Malta do the same as Lauren was last year.

any source/information on this? news to me would love to know more

Frankly I think that's a load of shit. I've not seen or hear of patreon cracking down on anything except for fringe (in an objective sense) political content or pornography.

I'm sure creators of such content are much aggrieved, but compared to the scope of the demonetization on youtube, it amounts to approximately jack shit. How many times has Patreon kicked CodysLab or TheReportOfTheWeek off for non-political non-sexual content? I've not heard of anybody kicked off Patreon for profanity or any similarly chickenshit reasons youtube regularly demonetizes people for.

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