BitChute Suspended By Patreon
bitchute.info
bitchute.info
Still, I guess this does provide a good use case for cryptocurrencies and what not.
edit: Looks like they're more than just a "website", but both this site and the platform site really don't do a good job of explaining that.
It's more like "don't depends on Silicon valley's ecosystem" these days. Because all these tech corporations went crazy since Trump got elected and clearly decided they'll use their audience and market shares for political goals... which they have all the rights to do by the way, and it's actually a good thing, if leads to a more diverse landscape of tech services. There are opportunities for competition but still a lack of VC that can fund that competition...
EDIT: I obviously do not support violent or "racist" views. But since now even radical feminists get booted out of social media and what not because they don't subscribe to a specific ideology, it proves that at the end of the day it has nothing to do with "fighting Nazis".
And if you aren't terrified of that you damn well should be.
Ironically I think that Trump would LOVE to deploy this against his enemies. Perhaps he will at some point.
That's why we need to strengthen political and financial "common carriage".
Part of freedom is the responsibility to accept consequences of your actions. If you choose to say such vile things that people quit doing business with you, that's just people exercising their freedom. If you think it's unfair, you are valuing your freedom higher than everyone else's.
When you complain about "deplatforming" you aren't asking for more freedom. You're asking for the freedom of others to be removed.
The part where activist mobs can force you not to do business with people targeted by the mobs.
> Part of freedom is the responsibility to accept consequences of your actions.
That's a meaningless platitude - being personally destroyed or run out of business merely because somebody set a hate mob on you is not "consequences of your actions". This is creating climate of hate and intolerance, and that's in substantial the climate we're living in now. Some time ago, it was "if you don't like it - don't read it". Now it's "if you don't like it - destroy his life, his business, and anybody he is associated and does business with". Describing it as "accept consequences" is either extremely naive or disingenuous. I certainly do not want and will not accept such climate of permanent war as something proper.
> You're asking for the freedom of others to be removed.
No I did not. My comments are just above that, and anybody reading them can clearly see I have not asked for any freedoms to be removed. If you're going to distort my opinions, it's probably not smart to do it right next to it - too obvious.
Nobody stole your freedom. People just don't want to interact with you. That is okay though, it is their right to elect to avoid interaction.
Why not just mail out a DVD of all these wacko videos to subscribers instead?
Back when 9/11 conspiracies were still quasi-mainstream, somebody in our neighborhood went door to door and gave every house a copy of Loose Change.
Because he wants to talk on the internet? Is that not allowed anymore because you don't like it?
So your counter-argument to my argument that Internet freedoms are being destroyed is "well, you can still mail out DVDs"? Are you sure it's the strongest counter-argument you could master? In fact, how long did you work on it before considering it's a counter-argument at all? Because for me it certainly looks like confirming my point.
> Back when 9/11 conspiracies were still quasi-mainstream
You mean, never.
> somebody in our neighborhood went door to door and gave every house a copy of Loose Change.
And this connects to my argument... how exactly? I was talking about specifically the Internet.
> Because this one is fresh out of freedom.
Let's not be so pessimistic, but instead marvel at the how cool it is that the internet was built from the get-go to be decentralized
Except in this case it isn't censorship. Nobody can be forced to do business with BitChute if they don't want to. That is just as much of a right as anything else.
BitChute is still more than able to host all the trash it wants. They will just have to find another payment provider. And they do exist. I mean, porn sites manage to figure out how to collect payment. It's expensive as hell because people constantly chargeback porn and virtually every porn hoster is sketchy as fuck too.
Even then they could just get a PO box and have people mail in checks or hell, even cash. It might be old school, but that is how it was done back when all the wackos and conspiracy newsletters were actual things you got in the mail.
Patreon, and other payment processors (like Stripe.com) are having their arms twisted from the highest levels by Visa and Mastercard.
Think for a moment if it would be ok with you if Visa and Mastercard were doing this because they wanted to silence people who advocated for women's rights. Would you still be so libertarian about it?
I think there's also a fundamental difference between an organization that bans people who increase the rights of marginalized groups and one that bans people that are looking to further marginalize people, so your analogy doesn't do anything for me.
It's not just Patreon. If anyone sets up a similar service, and does business with someone that Visa does not want, they will use their monopolistic power to shut you down.
Imagine if they were doing this about a cause you disagreed with. Imagine if our financial industry was run by Trump supporters, and they were slowly squeezing their critics out financially. This is bad.
The only question is what is the precise coefficient of friction on that slippery slope.
You can argue that wedding cakes should be baked for gay couples but that websites should not be hosted for nazis for reasons A, B, and C. But claiming that businesses have some sort of broad right to free association is not merely specious, but completely and obviously wrong.
Businesses do have a very broad right of freedom to serve who they please. The one exception is when historically many businesses have used that power to participate in oppression against specific downtrodden groups. So a business can happily decline to serve US congressmen, freemasons, and people who have thrown up on their floor previously. But they can't decline to serve black people as a group.
The specific groups who have been legally recognized for this are called protected classes, and it's pretty settled law in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group
Unless we live in a 100% free market, then what you are saying is totally invalid. We actually ARE forced to use the established banks and payment processors, we have no choice. The government provides all sorts of privileges and protections to them that make it impossible to just build your own.
When the government strips payment processors of all of their privileges, and when the Communications Decency Act no longer protects media companies masquerading as communications platforms (eg Twitter, YouTube and Facebook), then and only then will your assertions begin to make any sense.
Unless you are trying to send money to ISIS, then payment processors should be obligated to support you.
And indeed, payment processors and banks are far more worried about you donating money to people who's politics they disagree with than actual violent terrorists or child pornographers.
Yes, all payment processors have special privileges, but so to would the one you start tomorrow. But instead you want to force another to serve you. Why?
But in addition to that, the barriers to entry are extreme, to the point where they are essentially monopolies. And they are using their disproportionate powers to play politics.
Would it be okay for the US postal service to deplatform them as well?
I’m always curious about this argument that “just mail it” because the freedom to send anything though the postal service has not always been some sacrosanct right (e.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comstock_laws ). And in other countries that don’t have such a permissive First Amendment I imagine it may still be okay for the post office to censor mail.
to bake the cake or not to bake it? that is the question
BitChute annoys me because the video streaming is decentralized through bittorrent tech, but the repository of videos is totally dependent and centralized with BitChute.
You might imagine that with how endemic some people allege YouTube's censorship is, there would be a variety of interesting and censored content on BitChute.
Which is why when you check the front page you get and click popular you get... FOX News clips for posting on Voat (a far-right reddit clone), conspiracy theories about the magnetic poles, conspiracy theories about the Mueller investigation, conspiracy theories about the Mexican border, a far-right news source complaining about Jeff Flake, neo-nazi videos, Brazilian spam, anti-semitism, people complaining about YouTube censorship, etc.
I was under the impression that voat was created due to censorship that reddit applied on all kinds of things, including anime porn for example. Not exclusively for far-right content.
I certainly do not doubt that most of bitchute's or voat's users are far-right however. It only makes sense that the groups that are censored from other platforms move to censorship-free* alternatives. That being said it would be great to see other creators who have suffered by youtube's content-id system move to decentralized and censorship-resistant alternatives.
* I do doubt that it is fully censorship free still. Chances are that they are willing to take down copyrighted content from their site for example, even if they can't affect the webtorrent distirbution.
There was a lot of scaremongering around the time that voat was launched, the "under 18" part was often left off when people were using that ban in an argument.
Of course, all of this makes for a charming community.
As opposed to, you know, the New York Times or even the Supreme Court.
Bitchute isn't the home of people posting Trump critiques. It's the home of people explaining why all criticisms of Trump must be dismissed as conspiracies initiated by the real enemy: Jewish New World Order reptilians https://www.bitchute.com/hashtag/trump/
It's almost like what is being discussed has nothing to do with free speech. BitChute didn't have its free speech rights harmed in any way. No jack booted government thugs pointed their guns at the owners faces and told them to unplug from the internet.
All that happened is their current payment provider determined that their business relationship wasn't profitable and terminated the business relationship. BitChute is free to find another way to seek payment.
Jack booted thugs most certainly will point guns at anyone who tries setting up a payment processing system to compete with the company that blocked them.
> All that happened is their current payment provider determined that their business relationship wasn't profitable and terminated the business relationship. BitChute is free to find another way to seek payment.
BitChute is NOT free to find another way to seek payment, because of a state-enforced monopoly on the payment market.
It would be like if your water company decided to cut off water to your house, to compel you to stop speaking, at the behest of activists. Sure, you're "free" to carry buckets of fresh water to your house, I suppose.
No, this is not some business decision, this is systematic economic pressure intended to coerce someone into silence. And frankly I think it is good grounds for a RICO case.
It's also not about protecting any opinions (popular or unpopular) from private refusal to assist in propagating them.
Free speech is not the same as anyone else being obligate to provide assistance with distributing your speech, in fact, such an entitlement would violate freedom of speech for those compelled to participate in speech they disagree with.
Yes. If these platforms and payment processors want to continue to enjoy the state-enforced privileges they receive, then they must, within reason, offer their services to all.
What makes Twitter far worse than Gab is that Twitter actually took the time to have a human review it, and gave it the green light. Gab at least is not attempting to police its content. That makes Twitter much worse.
This is all hypocrisy. The "outrage" of Gab is completely fake. There is no legitimate argument against Gab that does not include Twitter.
[1]: https://www.ajc.com/news/national/twitter-won-suspend-louis-...
There's still a (naive?) liberal side to me that thinks free expression, even of profoundly stupid ideas, might be a net good for society, but I don't want to be a part of a community that is innundated with nasty weirdos who were kicked off of every other platform, so "free speech" is almost a red flag to me at this point. That's kinda sad.
Assuming the motivations behind them are genuine (a big assumption), then there's nothing inherently wrong with BitChute, Voat, Gab, etc. But the actual content on these platforms is the polar opposite of the "diversity of thought" they claim to promote. That may not necessarily even be the site owners' faults (again: a very generous assumption), but a set of circumstances that arises from who actually takes advantage of "free speech" in practice.
I don't have any good answer for how to address that contradiction.
If you want to publish non-racist videos, you can publish them on BitChute without endorsing the racist videos.
The platforms are fundamentally good ideas. There just needs to be a way to bootstrap a diverse community before they're killed in the cradle by angry nerds.
To observe the ideological flipside of this conundrum, I invite you to browse many Mastodon instances, where discourse is driven by the most unbearable carelords imaginable.
Perhaps because the videos that get censored are only shitty to people who aren't you?
I want to say that it's rooted in practicality rather than idealism. I'm uncomfortable with for-profit entities being arbitrators of acceptable content, because various "divisive" or "extreme" viewpoints outside of racism are threatening to their bottom lines as well. A distributed, censorship-proof network would have the side effect of allowing racism to propogate, but it could also protect viewpoints that lie outside of the stifling pro-market center-right consensus that grips most mainstream media platforms. The problem is that these alternatives only attract assholes for the time being.
It's a definite tradeoff where I can't stand behind any one position definitively yet.
It totally is! Stupid ideas are very dangerous. You don't want to hear about them from people with pitchforks at your door.
I was thinking today about the high costs of the stupid idea of anti-vaccinations, in this case children that are not at fault will die because of this ideas, should we block them or we should put billions of dollars into educating this people instead of using this money for better things.
it is not a black or white problem but in this case I personally think is better to block this idea.
Instead of blaming the actual bad party you are trying to blame the schools and the idiots that belive the stupid thing, I am not arguing putting people in jail , I want to have a discussion of ways to keep the "expensive stupid ideas" down, it could be a solution that does not involve laws and governments.
There is a saying in Romanian I am not sure if there is an English equivalent:
"An idiot drops a stone in the lake and 10 geniuses are struggling to find a way to get it out"
Those banned from one distributor or another will of course wave the banner of free speech, because that sounds much nicer than, "Why won't people just leave me alone to organize purging society of all the Jews?" But it's not like the government is suppressing them; it's just that distributors have decided that they don't want to associate with a very small number of people. And that banner-waving has always struck me as a bit false; it's not like, e.g., Nazis are known for their tolerance of dissent, so I have to suspect that their fondness of "free speech" would evaporate the moment they had any real power.
Which is why it's better when giant platforms themselves allow free speech rather than relegating it to niche communities. Of course, good luck convincing them of that.
I don’t think it’s fair to compare the content on a startup platform to a well-established corporate behemoth.
That being said I checked out bitchute for videos on fringe chemistry demonstrations that wouldn’t survive on YouTube. Some pretty cool stuff in that category. But still haven’t been back there because the production values of most are just terrible and painful to watch.
I don’t know why YouTube thinks I want to watch nutcase conspiracy theorists and alt-right whackjobs and compilations of “SJWs getting owned” but it seems to have plenty of them to show me.
As an extreme example, it would be the same as saying 4chan and voat attracted the same type of users in the beginning (as much as 4chan involves some fringe groups)
Corollary: a known, named extremism will have an opposite extremism that can be as bad as the thing it purports to oppose, though it will operate in an orthogonal way and it might not be always have a specific name.
One presumes that people are not in any way obligated to use garbage platforms they don't like to consume content they don't want in service of some higher commitment to a platform that does not exist but might emerge later under ideal circumstances. Rather it is typically the platform operator's job to manage the platform in a way that attracts content of interest, right?
And surely interesting content emerging is not a given. Voat is 4 years old (older than reddit and YouTube were when I started using them, at a point where most of their content was not fringe stuff). The front page is: Far-right politics, libertarian politics, some weird political thing about the french, a guy complaining about YouTube censorship, MAGA memes, MAGA memes, a picture of a cute cat cuddling with Nazis, an attempt to bandwagon someone who wrote a code of conduct, a meme about how George HW Bush is in hell because he doesn't support Trump, PewDiePie, Linux is over because of code of conduct, a meme about how there are only two genders, a meme about how liberals don't believe in fumigating ant hills because they're weak, a video about how George HW Bush is a piece of shit because he likes Israel, a post rhetorically asking why anyone is sad about George HW Bush dying, a Washington Times article about "illegal immigrants", a conservative article alleging Hollywood are all pedophiles, a nazi webcomic, an article about how Democrats stole all the California house seats, a post about how it would be good if someone lynched Emmanuel Macron and how that would be enjoyable, and a meme about how right-wingers should ironically wear burqas to own liberals while they are beating liberals up, a meme of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez saying she's a stupid idiot (this is a "parody" -- not actually clear what it's a parody of, but whatever).
There are a couple I didn't copy-paste here because the titles have racial slurs in them and I couldn't figure out a way to summarize the content without repeating them. So I hope you'll provisionally yield that Voat has not yet grown beyond what you call the "startup platform" phase.
I guess it's possible that Voat is just about to turn the corner, but if I had to guess...
But hey, that's true of any right protecting service or platform. The initial adopters will usually be the people who need that protection earliest, which often translates to criminals, extremists and nutcases. See also most privacy focused tools and platforms (like Tor) which attract the exact same audiences.
It's one reason marketing a service or platform based on privacy or free speech is usually doomed to fail.
But it's not an unsurmountable obstacle. These services just need to attract average Joes with mundane topics as early as possible, and build up communities about non political, non controversial topics as their main priority. That way, while the nutcases will still join en masse, you'll attract enough 'normal' people that people's perceptions will be of you as a neutral provider rather than crazy fringe community.
That isn't possible unless you filter out the bullies and nutcases. If you don't filter out those folks, the place will eventually get taken over by them. The irony is, if you filter them out those very same people will cry about "censorship" and "FREE SPEECH".
You can't have Truly True Free Speech on the internet. It is too cheap for a few folks to spoil things for everybody else. In order to keep a good level of discourse, some people, some times, just have to get lose their right to access certain platforms.
I mean, what is spam filtering besides "censorship"? Everybody filters spam... Thriving communities with good, open content have to filter out bullies and troublemakers the same way.
Surely you meant the actual conspiracy theory Mueller is investigating?
This comment on the linked post nicely sums up BitChute’s niche.
For this type of platform to succeed it must focus on self-replication rather than too-big-to-fail uncensorability, propagating through a hydra effect that makes it easy to clone and re-spin when major hubs get brought down.
This is basically what happened with BitTorrent. The trackers and indexes come and go, as whenever one obtains too much prominence the hammer comes down, but the core platform remains and it's reasonably easy for any interested party to pick up the pieces.
If someone really cared, they'd run the most blase service on top of such technology and actively kick off anyone slightly controversial. As they obtained mainstream acceptance, they'd be able to focus on developing the resiliency and portability of the underlying technology. With some work into ensuring this tech becomes known and depended upon primarily for its association with positive things, associations with undesirables can be written off as an unintended side effect, but the ultimate outcome would still be free publication without requiring the control or approval of any breed of censorious supervisor.
Not unlike the internet itself, really.
What's the appeal to users of a more inconvenient version of YouTube that has even more draconian moderation policies?
The appeal of BitChute is precisely its lack of censorship.
You'd first have to define controversial, a difficult task when dealing with the 'net:
* Communism - fine in Sweden, frowned upon in former Soviet satellite states
* Marihuana - forbidden in Sweden, allowed in Canada and parts of the US, tolerated in the Netherlands
* Women in revealing clothing - fine in western Europe, forbidden in islamic countries (for a recent example see [1])
* Antisemitism - forbidden in most of western Europe, daily fare on TV in many islamic countries
* ...
This list goes on, where do you draw the line? It would end up being a very bland service when everyone who is even slightly controversial is kicked off. So bland, actually, that the service would never obtain mainstream acceptance.
[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/12/01/egyptian-actress... - not exactly revealing to 'western' standards, enough for 5 years in prison according to the Egyptian prosecutor
Free Speech does not mean they have to promote the content that is uploaded, only that they do not censor it. Allow conspiracy theorists and extremists (right or left) to post what they want.. but you don't have to feature all recent uploads on the front page. You actually don't have to feature popular or recent uploads on the front page at all.
When you decide that a private platform deciding what is acceptable and worthy of promotion on their own platform violates free speech (which is the basis for the “free speech” challenge against YouTube that justifies BitChute), then exercising editorial control of what is given prominent placement on your own platform would be a violation.
So, yeah, they are being consistent with their own (boneheaded) concept of free speech when they are hands off with their platform recommendations.
Patreon may well be within its rights and contracts to sabotage business partners it disagrees with, but the artificial barrier to market entry of a license for processing payments makes their righteous posturing a bit vainglorious.
I get these people don't do principle, but it's worth considering the broader impact of dispensing with it.
Thanks!
The classic example in this is porn, and now it's fringe right wing things.
Consider that porn was gone after and deplatformed because of it's legal grey area in many jurisdictions. I guess that means right wing things are now up to be declared illegal now?
The problem with porn is two-fold:
- Some classes of advertisers don't like it (don't want their ads associated with porn). Removing porn from your platform might be necessary depending on your business model and target audience.
- Websites that will commonly have minors will usually avoid the risk and outright ban porn. Still, it's not like they wouldn't take it if they could. Steam for example has recently started approving porn games.
- https://www.bitchute.com/channel/white-genocide/
It has nothing to do with the "political climate". It has everything to do with the fact most people don't want to listen nut-jobs all day. In fact, in a free market it would appear people seem to prefer platforms that banish the nut jobs.
if you don't want to listen to "nut jobs", you don't have to, nobody's shoving Alex Jones in your face, but banning people you find objectionable sets up a dangerous precedent
Maybe Mr. Jones can build his own content distribution channels? If he can't, maybe his ideas just aren't that popular and his business should fail?
And for what it's worth, Alex Jones supporters spread like a cancer through sites that allow it. The community surrounding him and those like him are often more toxic then the founders.
If you’re genuinely interested in understanding the principle of free speech, I recommend this as an introduction:
If you want to express something I don't like, then I'm not gonna try to silence you, but other than that you're on your own.
I'm sorry, but I don't see where @dmerfield says what you are arguing against.
Quoting @dmerfild for posterity:
> No it doesn’t. Free speech means allowing nazis to express themselves so you and others can understand nazism.
---
Interestingly, in most of Europe, "Free Speech" does not include this right. It is pretty uniquely American.
> Free speech means no one is forced to do business with nazis.
Actual free speech would, quite obviously, not depend on the content of the speech.
No it does not. The principle of free speech says nothing about who you are forced to do or not do business with. It only affects expression after all.
Isn't that pretty self explanatory...?
Hell, antifa have a patreon account and they are classified a terrorist organisation by the US government https://www.patreon.com/intlantifadefence
Has alex jones been classified a domestic terrorist? Is infowars a domestic terrorist organisation?
Source?
Really?
OK, how about this: he's a polarizing nutcase who has adopted controversial and unsupportable standings on several calamitous events in the past two decades.
Most people that see a mainstream business supporting him assume that business adopts those same ideas, rightly or wrongly. So, the perception of supporting Alex Jones can be incredibly damaging to the reputation of a business.
They don't want to be associated with any political stance that might not agree with the vast majority of the population because they want to have as many clients as possible.
Wasn't there a scandal a few months ago where YouTube was classifying videos talking about LGBTQ issues as adult content, and demonetizing them? https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/4/17424472/youtube-lgbt-demo...
Is/was it the platform maintainers applying their own morals, or is it the money (advertisers) who don't want to be associated with these topics?
The walled gardens are already quite ridiculous, with FB censoring Michaelangelo's David and the Napalm Girl, giving us a kindergarten version of the Internet (although funnily enough, they can't censor fake news, so the "children"'s minds got brainwashed there).
This has turned to a bit of a pointless rambling.
The good news is that the continued censorship will fuel adoption of crypto and speed up the demise of parasitic middlemen who take a cut off every transaction
Remember, all that you have to do is make alt currencies inconvenient enough to use for normal payment needs, and this will discourage people from getting involved. Lower participation deprives the alt economy of goods, services, and the ability to exchange currency for "real" cash.
That doesn't mean that crypto is totally useless, just pointing out that there is not a technical "silver bullet" solution to this problem. Technical solutions must be part of the answer, but these must be backed by political force.
Most business owners do not have the technical ability, interest, or logistical overhead to actually accept "crypto" (or cash) without "parasitic middlemen". This is why Coinbase, BitGo, et al. are very successful in this area, and account for virtually all cryptocurrency commerce. The function of Coinbase or BitGo is not parasitic; no business wants to cope with the arduous requirements to be able to accept and store cryptocurrencies.