Top Patreon creators launching an alternate crowdfunding platform
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
I think it's safe to say that he is financially independent, and he doesn't strike me as the "can't ever get enough" kind of greedy.
Although I'd rather see some sort of open source project or crypto based platform instead of another centralized service that can be taken down by their payment processor. Brave browser and BAT could be the answer
>normal customers also like the add that "normal" can change pretty quickly, ask women in post-revolution Iran. Within living memory alt-right would be considered normal by a large chunk of the population and people would be chasing people of color and LGBT off these platforms. The tools used to censor opponents today could be used against you tomorrow
But it's obvious to any user what the difference is between Twitter and a site like Gab. You have to dig to find white supremacists and holocaust denial on Twitter, through a mountain of celebrity gossip and banal conversations. Meanwhile, that stuff is showcased --- is the dominant conversation! --- on the alternative site.
And it's obvious why that's bound to happen: the users that get the most value from supposed non-censoring platforms are exactly the ones that want to broadcast hateful and alienating messages.
Unless you're comfortable talking about recipes or your new book or an upcoming lecture sandwiched between lectures about Jews controlling the media and sending all the black people back to Africa, you're not going to stick around on that platform. Peterson won't be able to do it; it'll destroy his brand.
So again my question is: how is this supposed to work? Maybe it's not really a Patreon competitor but something more like the old Deck blog advertising network, where you'll have to be yea cool to join.
Yes, Twitter does censor people but in an extremely selective and politically motivated way.
I guess my general point was that just because someone publishes on Platform X, that doesn't mean they necessarily hold the same views as the majority of users on that platform.
I take your point about regular content being swamped by the crazies though. Maybe it's a problem of scale? Attract enough regular people to drown out the extremists.
If you join a platform that is obviously dominated by people talking about how Jews are lizard people, others will draw conclusions about you whether you approve of them or not. Which, of course, makes it even harder to attract the regular users that you weren't going to attract anyways because nobody wants to talk about their life next to someone yelling about "the Jews."
The antidote to bad speech is more speech. Instead of attacking people, attack their arguments.
No one has been shut down from continuing the "conversation" on their own platforms. You're not allowed to wander into Wal-Mart and sell whatever you want. You're also not allowed to wander onto Patreon and sell whatever you want.
It took a couple of days for SubscribeStar to have their paypal access removed once the loonies began their next witch hunt.
How far do we take the witch hunts before we decide enough is enough?
If everyone in the world decided not to trade with people they didn't agree with on everything, there would exist no trade.
You really need to stop making judgements about people.
But thank you for playing the role of "guy who argues in bad faith." I think we're done, here.
We have legal systems which can deal with accusation of crimes. If you suspect somebody to be a child molester, you can report them. The legal system makes the judgement. It also prevents you from falsely accusing somebody of molestation if you do so without evidence or reasonable motive.
The same legal system should apply to anyone being or claiming to be white supremacist. Their action is not a crime unless they are inciting crime (ie, calling for racial genocide). If the latter is the case, then they should be prosecuted following the due process. Witch hunting is not due process.
I also think the same legal process should be applied to the far-left, who are frequently falsely accusing people of something they are not. Unfortunately, most people do not have the resources to fight anonymous twitter trolls for libel.
This case with Sargon can be seen as a pretty good example of your argument falling apart. He is frequently labeled as some kind of alt-right white supremacist, when it is precisely this he denounces publicly. (Yes, his words were not the most appropriate, but words are meaningless without context. Patreon specifically ignored the context.)
What has become of the left, is not that they're shunning white supremacists, but they are shunning anybody that they perceive to be a white supremacist. A whole different story. If you have loose definitions like "hate speech", then it is justified to take down anyone you perceive to be your political opponent according to your standards.
Another example case was the witch hunt against Kavanaugh. It seems the left are determined to dismantle the idea of due process and putting people before judge and jury for the sake of virtue signalling and social "justice" (an oxymoron).
People who shun white supremacists are not morally equivalent to white supremacists.
I'm not suggesting anything of the like. In fact, I will join you in shunning white supremacists, as I would shun supremacists of any race.
When "shunning" becomes more than denunciation, but taking action to unperson people and have them fired, cut off their finance, and make false accusations about their peers, I draw the line.
If you want to keep believing in the moral superiority of that kind of social justice, be my guest.
That is just a foolish phrase by a Supreme Court Justice. Unfortunately, most Americans seem to take it as Gospel.
Many people all over the world disagree, including centrist and far-left people.
His protest was against government compelled speech.
http://sds.utoronto.ca/blog/bill-c-16-no-its-not-about-crimi...
" In other words, pronoun misuse may become actionable, though the Human Rights Tribunals and courts. And the remedies? Monetary damages, non-financial remedies (for example, ceasing the discriminatory practice or reinstatement to job) and public interest remedies (for example, changing hiring practices or developing non-discriminatory policies and procedures). Jail time is not one of them."
Conveniently leaving out what happens if you don't pay a fine: you can end up in jail.
Another thing is they state things need to become really bad before you get prosecuted so it won't happen. Well that all depends on the political climate. Plenty examples in the world for that.
Lastly they mention other places in the law where speech is limited. But they point at places where certain speech is forbidden, not where it is compelled.
The entire article looks disingenuous.
Unfortunately the definition of what is a "character that ruins the brand" keeps moving further and further to the left.
They usually also run into problems with payment processors.
They should be able to go off and build their own home that suits their needs when others won't change their home to serve one specific community's conflicting preferences.
The people there, like Jordan Peterson, Sarah Vaughan, Sam Harris, Dave Rubin, Lindsay Shepherd and Claire Lehmann are definitely not alt-right, not only by their own accord, but also by my personal reading and viewing of their work. Have been following that site, and so far spotted no white supremacists, racists, bigots etc.
EDIT: First sentence was contradictory.
My disagreement is not out of ignorance of who these people are and what they think. I promise we're not going to agree here. Nothing can come of pursuing a subthread trying to agree on definitions for political alignments.
To add to this, I think YouTube is okay with having a ToS and denying service to people who violate their ToS (now uniformity of application of the ToS is a different subject). Using the service is not a platform and can't in and of itself create harm. Cash is not harmful. Using cash to buy a gun and using the gun in violence is harmful. Just because cash is a transaction enabler does not mean we deny access to cash to criminals.
People also dont usually buy goods off of felons because they are felond. They pay for it because they want the good. These creators got paid for their opinions and views.
Amazon is also well in their right to deny goods they deem harmful from beeing sold on their website
I argue that amazon banning firearms is fine. They dont want to support something they deem harmfull. Now if patreon deems these ideologies harmfull, why should they be required to support them?
The difference is that the felon example judges the people selling/buying, whereas patreon judges the goods.
That said, I think Amazon can decide whether or not to carry a whole category. Sears Catalogs used to sell guns. Congress passed laws and now sales would have to pass muster. But that's altogether different from selling or not selling a service to someone because you think they are "good" or "bad" or you agree or disagree with their point of view.
To me, Patreon is providing financial services, so I think this judgement is not in their purview in the same way Amazon should not judge who is buying or selling on their platform/services. It's none of their business. Is their business legitimate. That's about it.
Edit: Of course when I say something might "seem" disingenuous, I'm not blaming parent in any way for it! But this is a sort of claim that is sometimes made in an arguably insincere manner, as part of some partisan controversy or another, and it's important to be able to point this out.
But, on the question of Peterson being alt-right, his arguments for a willful re-adoption of mythical 'archetypes' as a basis for modern society is... well, excatly what happens with all far right ideologies, where a conception of social order is influenced by lobsters. (Cherry-picking bits of animal behaviour to explain human society is a mug's game, but if we were going to go down this route, why not create some vision of frozen gay ice cream orgies and child rearing, based on penguins?)
But the real smelly herring in Peterson's schtick is his conflation of Marxism, post-moderism, and general identity politics. It's an invented bogeyman, detached from any real analysis of the cornerstones of modern poltiics. Again, it's absolutely a key strain of any rightish movement.
A lot of this could be explained as him being more of a grifter than anything, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
If you're saying it doesn't apply here, that's possibly fair, but one incorrect application doesn't wipe out the term.
And to echo the point in my sibling comment, these new sites that emphasize free speech (definitely a good cause) tend to immediately face the question of, "how free is speech, really?"
I honestly don't know if Reddit or Twitter, if started today, would have survived the onslaught. I don't know if anyone's figured out what to do that feels both "adhering to free speech concepts" as well as not becoming the next alt-right forum.
And the reason "alt-right" and "racist troll" mean nothing is because they are used so liberally where they do not apply, and a few minutes of investigation would conclude that they do not apply. Consistent incorrect usage of language applied to something that it is not makes them lose their meaning.
A solution to the "adhering to free speech" would be to allow free speech on platforms, and make it clear what is or isn't allowed on the platform, instead of using vague terms like "hate speech", which could be literally anything that some person finds undesirable.
You can rail against suppression of speech all you want, a company whose loudest and most active users are white supremacists either has to lean-in to that culture, remove it from the site entirely, or hide it. The first option is moral bankruptcy, the second option is an uncomfortable practicality on the limits of free speech, and the third option makes your new site look dead from the outside.
You act like this is a simple problem to solve, but it's far from simple, and getting it even slightly wrong means startup death, period.
In a free market, the majority of people would not entertain far-right or far-left forums and would congregate on the services which are providing engaging and meaningful content.
This is the case for say, Youtube right now, but if they have an asymmetric approach to censorship (failing to ban far left ideologues), then they'll end up a far-left cesspit that people will leave in droves.
A free market would (and does) kill a startup that allows such toxic members of any affiliation, regardless of what payment processors decide to do.
I care very deeply about fundamental human rights such as free speech. Many people do not seem to understand what free speech is.
I also care about due process and putting people before a jury of their peers. The witch hunting needs to stop.
I'd consider myself moderate right. I used to lean to the left, but there is no way I can associate myself with what the left has become.
I'm with you on free speech, but I also don't know what I'd do if I were in Twitter/Reddit's shoes, because I don't think "do nothing and let the hatred continue" is viable (both from a business and kindness perspective), but I also don't think suppressing it is morally justified.
The divisions are only getting wider, and it is helpful to neither side. When people say racism is on the rise, they couldn't be more correct. White-racism is on the rise, and tolerated. The increase in white supremacists I see as largely a reaction to this. I'm not a selective racist and I despise racism in all of its forms.
Sexism too. Sexism against men is also very real, especially in tech. A diversity quota is a sexism quota. A person's gender should not factor into a hiring decision at all.
Every new social media company is basically planting their flag very far in one direction or another (either blocking hate speech or leaning in entirely).
The best thing for people to do is reject both this idiocy, and the idiocy of the far-right which wants to revert things back to the old way. This is what the people in the IDW are aiming to achieve - to bring people back to having discourse rather than bickering and widening the polarisation.
We have racists and sexists on both the left and right. We need to denounce racism and sexism in all of their forms, else the problem is only going to increase
It's stronger than simply "trolls". "Alt-right" is just the latest PR rebranding used by neo-nazis/white-supremacists. Obviously, generalizations about any group of people is problematic; trolls and other not-explicitly-neo-nazi people use the label "alt-right".. Those people might want to consider that if you hang out with neo-nazis and repeat their memes/trolls, people might start to assume you are a neo-nazi. If someone likes to spend time in hang out with ${sport} fans, uses slang associated with ${sport_team}, most people are going to assume they are fan of that sport even if they claim* otherwise.
I suspect a lot of people might think I'm misinformed because someone in the "alt-right" said they were not nazis, and would never support racial violence. Remember that neo-nazis lie. Is your opinion abased on their public PR-focused interviews? If you have any doubt whatsoever that these are neo-nazis dreaming of bringing back the holocaust, I suggest watching this[1] video at 41:12, which is footage from a popular "alt-right" discord stream inside the Charllottesville rally. In their own words:
Speaker: Did Hitler do anything wrong?
Audience: [loud "no"]
Speaker: One more, I want everybody to repeat after me..,
,,,this is the first precept of the true alt-right:
Gas the [slur]s, race war now!
Audience: [even louder cheering]
No, "alt-right" is people who haven't gone "far-right" (yet) or who are hiding their "far-right"ness for an easier life / speaking gigs / patreon money / etc.
> Peterson
He certainly pals around with a lot of alt-right figures (Tucker Carlson, notably) and seems to have no problem appearing at Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit which has quite the strongly conservative/alt-right/far-right[1] list of speakers.
[1] Definitely Gorka and Farage.
> The alt-right, or alternative right, is a loosely connected and somewhat ill-defined grouping of American white supremacists/white nationalists, white separatists, anti-Semites, neo-Nazis, neo-fascists, neo-Confederates, Holocaust deniers, conspiracy theorists and other far-right fringe hate groups.
I don't see how Peterson fits in that category. In a way the fact that the term is abused by the left to refer to all sort of non extremist people seems to have given a new meaning that you are refering to. Kind of like far-left movements refering to "facists" anyone to their right in the 80s.
And being an opponent of some of the more ludicrous off-shoots of modern feminism is not "alt-right", it's just common sense (and mainstream: for example only 9% of women in the UK consider themselves feminist[1]). And science, etc. Now I don't necessarily agree with his stances, but they are nothing if not well-reasoned and supported by data.
Which is probably why he gets so much hate.
[1] https://metro.co.uk/2016/10/18/we-asked-women-why-they-refus...
Is this not him being a proponent of "race science"?
Anyway, since you are making the claim, it would be up to you to explain what in his words is "promoting" (what a proponent does) so-called "race-science".
First, you'd probably have to define what you mean with "race science".
Although whatever they do is often miscast as alt-right in part because the IDW defends free speech even when they don't agree with the content. Indeed Sam Harris deleted his Patreon account to protest the censoring of those he does not agree with. It's a principled stance and an important one.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
1) End to end encrypted, with clients sharing keys as needed
2) Distributed hash tables route every activity to a few servers (per activity) which run consensus
3) Automatic rebalancing when some server is taken out
Simple? Well, this is the future. Not blockchains, but this.
MaidSAFE, Holochain, Intercoin and others are building it.
You can even make realtime push via sockets in this model, though anything realtime compromises anonymity.
This has me wondering about the long-feared Balkanisation of the Internet. It's always been assumed that nation state conflicts would bring this about [1,2], but this incident has me wondering if we might not see it come about based on ideology instead.
With all the fuss made about how people on social platforms live in filter bubbles, at least those bubbles coexisted on the same platforms and there might be at least some chance of piercing them. What's going to happen if we create two (or more) entirely separate service ecosystems for people to sort themselves into on political bases?
On the flipside, maybe this is a _feature_ of the market rather than a bug and everything'll work out fine [3]? It might even lead to a drive to develop resilient, distributed services that don't run the risk of a single provider being strongarmed or being able to revoke service on ideological grounds that everyone can benefit from.
I'll be interested to see how this all develops.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXRx98gpuRY
[2] https://www.rt.com/russia/446502-russia-legislators-internet...
[3] http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/07/archipelago-and-atomic-...
This refutes any dialogue and is used mainly by people profiting off ideology (on all sides of arguments, not just right wing). Make sure 'you' belong to a special group and point to everyone which is not part of that group as bad and make sure the active followers feel the same way by making any claims needed (lies included).
I'm wondering when he starts selling vitamin supplements on the "new" internet. Just to give an example.
Edit: Just in case it's not obvious, I consider vulnerability to takedown as a backdoor.
BitTorrent couldn't be shut down, and that certainly didn't fail. Various torrent websites have been shut down and the protocol sill runs as good as ever.
What is needed isn't just a company delivering a patreon alternative, but people to build a protocol for crowdfunding, much like Bittorrent. This can be done now thanks to Bitcoin. If exchanges and webhosters get shut down, it will cause a slight disturbance in the protocol, but it won't bring the protocol down.
These protocols can offer better privacy than their centralized counterparts, and censorship becomes a non-issue. Given the clear advantages, I suspect that it is the centralized, politically charged providers who are doomed to fail, eventually.
If emailing was considered illegal and google, microsoft et al would shut down their servers, you would still be able to email people.
Though far from anyone, and you might need to remember that odd IP because the DNS queries for popular people might be blocked depending on where you live.
If that was the case, would email be dead? Yes.
Would email as a protocol be dead? No. But it would be dead in the eyes of the public.
And that kind of defeats the "censorship becomes a non issue". By that logic censorship in china is also a non-issue. Because you can circumvent the great firewall with VPNs. Never mind that you have to be tech savvy and take personal risks, but despite that it isn't a non-issue to the public. And that's enough.
In place of DNS, you have distributed gossip protocols which map public keys to IP addresses, and where the messages in that protocol are digitally signed using the private keys for that public key, such that you couldn't have the equivalent of "DNS spoofing".
You can also use the same public keys to perform an authenticated DH key exchange and then have all of your communications encrypted and MITM resistant.
A public key would be like a phone number. You give it out to the people you want to have it directly.
We're effectively in an arms race right now where one side is determined to tightly control internet traffic like the Chinese firewalls, and the other side is developing distributed protocols which resist these censorship efforts. The latter has had a significant boost with the invention of Bitcoin, which can now be used without an internet connection, over SMS, satellite, radio and whatever else. This isn't going to be a trivial thing to shut down.
Any such traffic that are not destined for that central service is dropped at all ISP borders.
If internet censorship becomes too widespread, people will use other communication mechanism to conduct trade. As I mentioned, Bitcoin is broadcast over satellite and radio in some locations. You can send a transaction as an SMS message. A bitcoin transaction is ~250 bytes and can be encoded as a sequence of 16 emojis. I can print a bitcoin transaction on paper and the recipient can scan it.
Even despite that the great firewall has not succeeded in preventing the use of proxying services it still is a massive success. And despite all the ways you can circumvent it censorship very much continues to be an issue, I'd argue more so for every day.
The instant such SMS message transactions become popular a quick filter will kill that if the need for it arises. And SMS is hardly the technique for privacy minded communication (neither is bitcoin).
What remains is perhaps ham radio. Still easy to triangulate, jam and is not accessible to anyone but the most extreme. Making triangulation even more desirable and paints an even greater target on your back.
Printed copies are hardly something to look forward too, it also excludes pretty much everyone. Cash would be quite superior unless you are transferring huge amounts (which most won't).
Edit: So let's say that you enjoy porn. But all the ISPs are blocking it. And let's say that there was a system where you could get what you wanted, in exchange for routing other stuff. Like some mix of Tor, I2P and Freenet, except as covert content in innocuous HD video.
Consider Freenet, Tor, I2P, etc.
Looking at a similar story of voat here, which quickly became very rightwing and unwelcome to tame ideologies
If you run a platform where your members pay you a percentage though, you're not beholden to advertisers. You'd be beholden to law enforcement though.
Thats gonna cause a non-negligible drop of users and revenue
Considering the people who are behind it, that is very unlikely [1]
High-karma posts and topics help to deter or teach new comers. They also serve to create a narrative and local extrema that begins to differ from more broadly held views.
Next, consider that a sequestered board also limits (even eliminates) any empathy a user may have had. No one thinks differently from them, no one has a differing opinion.
HN is in stark contrast to these other systems. The entire site may be self-contained, but there is no place for users to hide (in PMs, in sub-boards, etc.). If we want to be here (which I think we do) we have to deal with each other, listen to differing opinions, have real conversations. There is a karma system, and I'm not quite sure how it fits in...
\edit - stray characters
IMO, it has already happened. The far-left have already crossed lines that are tremendously damaging for society, while at the same time they point the finger at countries like China for engaging in the same kinds of actions they themselves are engaged in.
Free-speech is not just some alt-right or far-right conspiracy to oppress people. It's a fundamental value that our societies are built on. The idea of free-speech means that some people will say some extreme things, and free-speech is what enables you to point out their extremism so that people can be better informed.
Big tech has become extremist in its calculated attempts to deplatform (unperson) people. The people calling out this extremism sometimes have the undesirable effect that they catch the association of reactionaries on the opposite side (the far right). The people on the IDW have consistently made cases against extremism on the right, and in many ways, they are the limiting the extent of a potential radical right backlash that would otherwise come as a result of crackdowns on liberties from the left.
Enough people leaving if they do not agree with Patreons views
> IMO, it has already happened. The far-left have already crossed lines that are tremendously damaging for society, while at the same time they point the finger at countries like China for engaging in the same kinds of actions they themselves are engaged in.
Right. We also need to look at ourselves in terms of surveilance and social score systems, which no doubt also exist in some form in european countries and the US.
> Free-speech is not just some alt-right or far-right conspiracy to oppress people. It's a fundamental value that our societies are built on. The idea of free-speech means that some people will say some extreme things, and free-speech is what enables you to point out their extremism so that people can be better informed.
Agreed. Free speech is important. Everybody should be able to say what they want, or stay quiet if they choose. However, this does not mean that I have to let my racist neighbour hold a talk in my living room.
The actions of the left are more akin to investigating which bank your neighbour uses, then going to that bank and asking them to close his account down or you will cause a scene.
If a bank gets made aware that they accidentially support a cause they despise morally, why shouldnt they cancel their account?
Because a person's political views have nothing to do with banking.
Because consumer protection laws exist.
Because people are innocent until proven guilty.
Do you really want to see what will happen if you continue to take this to the extreme and deny all services to anyone who disagrees with you?
Exactly.
But what if it is the "Lets kill all the purple people" fund, in a country where purple people have zero rights. Now its not anymore about the persons political views, but where the money gets used.
I dont support patreon banning people with different personal views, but I do support them in their right to not support unwelcome content.
In societies without rule of law, then I think it's fair that a bank could cut off access for another, but we also have a legal framework for dealing with this, the UDHR and the ICJ.
We built these legal frameworks specifically for the purpose of ending the witch-hunting mentality of our medieval ancestors. It's a shame that so many people want to undo centuries of developing frameworks that protect them for their quick virtue signalling.
The real question the far-left needs to ask themselves is, if we throw away legal processes in favor of witch hunts, then who is going to protect them when the tide changes?
I guess I still dont understand. Why should a private company be required to support a cause they dissagree with?
By that argument, you could conclude that anyone has the right to refuse services to any race, gender, sexuality. We have deliberately made laws to prevent this kind of exclusion. Now you suddenly want to bring it back?
Of course, the difference is that if you are white, male and straight, you're not part of the "protected" persons, and you can be denied service by anyone.
And people wonder why there might be an increase in white people shifting further to the right?
You mean like making a cake for a same-sex wedding?
Good call. Sounds like you agree w/ OP that an alternative to Patreon might be worthwhile.
[0] https://intellectualdarkweb.site/vanguards-of-the-intellectu...
Similar to the "alternative influencer network" that they coined for YouTubers.
The whole thing is grasping at straws really. The medias seems to think that everyone who is in the edgy/troll/internet/meme culture are working together for some nefarious purpose.
Their latest smearing campaign is against free thinkers, podcasters and debaters... or using their words, the "Intellectual Dark Web".
The only relation those people (both thinkers and influencers) have is that they use the Internet to 𝐚) spread their content and 𝐛) reference each other and sometimes collaborate together. Both of those actions are done by every content creators online no matter their intentions. Collaborations and networking is the basis of the internet.
How could anyone think that "intellectual dark web" is any accurate to describe him?
There's nothing secret about what he does. He has podcasts, public talks and university classes that he uploads to his youtube channel.
It seems that the only way to create controversy around him is to clickbait stories and not actually listen to or describe his actual content.
Other than a profile / link aggregator called "intellectualdark.website" that hosts his profile, I don't see any relation at all.
Am I missing some details? Anyone has the full explanation?
---
Edit:
This is about the article's full title: “Top Patreon creators, of the 'Intellectual Dark Web,' say they're launching an alternate crowdfunding platform not 'susceptible to arbitrary censorship'”.
I am scouring the internet in the search of any snippets of information that actually links those youtubers / podcasters together.
Other than being at the center of controversies and having a lot of public notoriety, I'm not seeing anything. Even their ideologies and philosophies are not the same.
From my point of view, it almost seems like a huge misunderstanding... or perhaps a smearing campaign but I'm not one to cry wolf.
The situation is somewhat similar to that time mainstream media was implying relationship between youtubers based on 3rd degrees connections that occurred after collaborations. "X worked with Y. Y also worked with Z who is evil. X must be evil".
Would Sir Roger Scruton, The Cambridge Centre for the Study of Platonism and the Ralston College be considered part of the "Intellectual Dark Web" for hosting Jordan Peterson? (I'm not well versed in Peterson's career, this is the latest video on his youtube channel).
Perhaps Channel 4 News is also part of the conspiracy for hosting him on TV. Channel 4 is operated by Channel Four Television Corporation which is a public corporation of UK's Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. Does that means that the UK is at the head of the "dark intellectual web"? ...
I'm obliviously kidding, but there's no limit on how far you can spin this situation.
Thanks for answering. I'm leaving it at that, now I know more but this is not a rabbit hole I want to dive in any further.
They all seem to share an interest in science and truth.
They also seem to share a willingness to enter debate, and an aversion to smearing.
The intellectual dark web isn't about having the same ideas. It's about being willing to talk about and debate those ideas in a civil, calm way. They invite each other onto their Youtube channels/shows/podcasts, and are invited together into more formal events to do the same.
That's basically it, as far as I can tell. They're heretics that weren't sufficiently shut-up by the societal forces working against them.
I think Scott Alexander explains the phenomenon pretty well: http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/23/can-things-be-both-popu...
Peterson mostly discusses religion (from a philosophical point of view), self-improvement, identity politics. He tends to be more on the conservative side but outside of identity politics doesn't discuss politics that much. His videos are all on his youtube channel [1]. A good way to make your own opinion is to watch the channel 4 interview, which I think is the way many people discovered him [2]
Harris is a Democrat, furiously anti-religious and anti-Trump, talks about quite a variety of topics. You can browse through his podcasts [3]. He also doesn't like identity politics and islamist extremism. To get a good idea of his position on a touchy topic, you can try his interview of Charles Murray [4], which is very interesting and I think is a good example of how a relatively balanced point of view can get unfairly attacked.
I am less familiar with Rubin [5]. My understanding is that he is more of a libertarian.
Also less familiar with Eric Weinstein (and his brother Bret Weinstein). But you can listen to his discussion on the Intellectual Dark Web with Sam Harris [6]. Harris also has some interesting discussions with Bret Weinstein.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCL_f53ZEJxp8TtlOkHwMV9Q
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcjxSThD54
[3] https://samharris.org/podcast/
[4] https://samharris.org/podcasts/forbidden-knowledge/
[5] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJdKr0Bgd_5saZYqLCa9mng
[6] https://samharris.org/podcasts/112-intellectual-dark-web/
As for where Peterson fits: he's the father figure of the alt-right. His rhetoric is slightly more palatable to the main stream, so he can be the face of alt-right media while also providing shelter to his rowdier alt-right children (in this case, Milo Y). This arrangement provides the necessary veneer of legitimacy to the platform while ensuring the protection of hate speech.
I'm sure Peterson sees himself as a conservative and a moderate, just as I'm certain Carl Benjamin used to think of himself as "actually a leftist". But the "moderates" and "centrists" obsession with "SJWs" has shifted the Overton window and some former alt-right creators have recognised this and since reoriented themselves.
Peterson and Harris are useful figureheads because they register as moderates or centrists if not liberals in most people's minds, but they're extremely close to conspiracy nuts like Paul Joseph Watson, race realists like Stefan Molyneux, or people like Ben Shapiro.
I used to watch a lot of YouTube "skeptics" (mostly former YouTube atheists who left that movement over the "Atheism+" debate) and I experienced the progression first-hand, with anti-SJW panic, Buzzfeed obsession and other nonsense resulting in self-described centrists aligning themselves with the right by seeking out the more presentable right-wing extremists (and maybe a few center-left moderates "for balance"). Quickly there were videos about race realism, white genocide, and even "the Jewish question".
Luckily I managed to jump off that train but it wouldn't have take much to nudge me over that "centrist" stop gap (especially with Peterson and Damore normalising the rational disconnect I experienced).
Also it's worth mentioning that even at my most "centrist" I never got as much hate online from "SJWs" for incredibly dumb statements as I got from "liberals" as I shifted back to the left. Leftists just blocked me. "Liberals" trolled me, downvoted me and drowned me out with vapid memes (all in the name of "free speech").
EDIT: Case in point, here's YouTube atheist CultOfDusty who joined the alt-right until he realised that put him in the company of people supporting Mike Pence, who stood against everything he believed in. Note that he's still "anti-SJW" but other YT atheists don't make that distinction and have since tried to slander him by taking him out of context or putting words in his mouth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thliETccJss
> Now, here’s the issue. We know that things can go too far on the right, and we know that things can go too far on the left. But we don’t know what the markers are for going too far on the left. I would say that it’s ethically incumbent on those who are liberal or left-leaning to identity the markers of pathological extremism on the left and to distinguish themselves from the people who hold those pathological viewpoints — and I don’t see that that’s being done.
I think when sites like Patreon, Twitter, etc. start banning other view points in the name of "social justice" or "political correctness"... all the while being complete hypocrites to their own values... is when the left goes too far.
It's just faux-activism, which doesn't address the actual system of oppression marginalized groups face.
Extreme leftism is when workers control the means of production and run companies democratically.
If the platforms were concerned about extremism, they would be clamping down on the communists too, who have a human rights record as bad, if not worse than the fascists.
Yea, planned economies suck and systematic mismanagement can have devastating effects, but you think that is comparable to an ideology of racial cleansing?
You think that the idea of democratic workplaces is the same as the idea of creating a master race? Governments do a lot of awful things, but at their core can you really say the ideas and tenets of communism are the same as Nazism?
It's not ironic that the symbols of communism aren't abhorred the same way as those of fascism, it's just that there's a little more nuance than "anti-capitalism is evil".
I'm not comparing the specific details which differentiate the two ideologies, I'm comparing the traits which make them strikingly similar - the authoritarianism. Whether a commie or a fascist, it is the support of the use of state force to compel others into ones ideology that is the awful trait shared between the two camps.
This on the other hand is exactly the kind of situation where bad publicity helps the characters in question. This Patreon competitor is pure vaporware; Peterson has zero interest in business and tech, and doesn't even try to describe the feature set. He knows that as far as his audience is concerned, he only has to make it look like he's playing the big man and going to battle against the "oppressive censorship of the far left" for the money to keep coming in, either via book sales or speaking engagements.