Patreon suspended my account. They have not notified me
twitter.com
twitter.com
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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...
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...
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.
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).
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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...
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.