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Comment by SolaceQuantum | Hacker News Reader

I'm really confused, culturally we didn't really have freedom of speech the way is being described here (the freedom to be in private spaces and say disagreeable things without being ousted). Being bullied out of social circles, shunned for behaving in socially unacceptable ways (like women wearing pants, being gay, accepting interracial marriage) including speaking socially unacceptable things (like women are objects, I choose not to vaccinate my child) have always had consequences in the public space including being shunned broadly by friends, families, and business partners.

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The difference is that the internet has discontinuously more scalable network effects, so technology companies often find themselves in a winner-takes-all dynamic. If some publisher, newspaper, or literary magazine refused to publish Walt Whitman, he could always try and find another publisher. But if Twitter bans Titania McGrath, there is no other Twitter for her to join because the next best alternative has 1/10000th the number of users.

This effect is new. These platforms are private entities, but effectively they operate as public commons. So culturally we must treat them similar to public commons where it isn't acceptable to kick out quirky characters because some of us don't like what they have to say.

Yes, and this was problem exists to this day in prevailing cable and newspapers. During the time they were prevalent, unpopular events and speech were not spoken on the biggest networks (still not spoken about) and significant silenced perspectives had to make do with smaller platforms, poorer cable times, smaller venues, and self-publishing newspapers assuming they could fund a printing press. There was not a push to force those networks to host these voices.

Yes, it’s an existing problem. I don’t understand why this is a new problem and am confused why this is unacceptable on the level that is new.

It's not new, but I do believe back in the day there was such a thing as public-access television, and anyone could in fact start their own newspaper without being somehow banned from taking cash payments.

They are still not banned from taking cash payments. They are banned from using a specific cash-taking service. It is still possible to set up a PO box to mail cheques to. Public-access television did not mean that anyone can have a show(or was entitled to being shown), either, iirc. They could still start their own newspaper, and the indie/local newspaper cycle is still being perpetuated in artsy or politically leftist circles.

>They are still not banned from taking cash payments. They are banned from using a specific cash-taking service. It is still possible to set up a PO box to mail cheques to.

That's a de facto ban and you know it. There have been zero cases in which an internet business has kept itself above-water via asking for checks to be sent to a post-office box.

Instead, there should just be a post-office payment processor, operating over the network like all the others, and legally required to serve any customer.

>I'm really confused, culturally we didn't really have freedom of speech the way is being described here

Well, what's to be confused about?

Culturally we only had "freedom of speech" to the degree that we had it the way it is being described here.

Everything else is the dominant ideas (with power in government, press, etc) throwing some other up-and-coming ideas a bone.

I’m confused why patreons behavior is newly unacceptable in a way that sparks controversy. I agree that it is likely a problem overall, but I don’t understand what has occurred that has made it new to discuss.

>I don’t understand what has occurred that has made it new to discuss.

A lot of people in the tech community and on HN sympathize with the ideology of people being deplatformed, particularly regarding alt-right and "anti-feminist" views.

Yes, but people have been deplatformed in the past, and are quite normally deplatformed for saying and doing socially unacceptable things outside of the platform. Plenty of news anchors get booted off for going on racist twitter rants or whatever. I fundamentally don’t understand the difference between this and booting someone from patreon for what they said on YouTube. I agree this is a problem- I don’t understand why this is a significantly new problem worthy of heated discussion.

Really? How many anti-feminists are there on Hacker News? Very few, I'd say, especially as such views tend to be immediately downvoted and flagged into oblivion.

There are however plenty of people who are disturbed by the systematic way certain minorities attack and destroy speech about ideas that are, objectively, commonplace and popular (just look at opinion polls).

Even the top voted comment on this whole thread talks about disquiet over censorship whilst ending by saying they're a left leaning socialist. Of course, this statement should not be necessary to make, but it is - it's a form of "don't shoot I'm on your side".

> Very few, I'd say, especially as such views tend to be immediately downvoted and flagged into oblivion

They do have to be here to be voted down, though. But they show up often enough in threads that deviate into gender politics (particularly as regards hiring and women in tech,) gender biology and, unsurprisingly, feminism. And codes of conduct. For some weird reason, a lot of people seem to believe software codes of conduct are a feminist conspiracy.

Maybe because they saw what happened when SQLite adopted a non woke Code of Conduct.

Because they tend to get promoted by feminists, and then used to attack and shut down project members who aren't. Look at the NodeJS incident for an example.

I think one of the bigger complaints as I understand it, is that Patreon is a de facto monopoly in this space and their rules for these circumstances are arbitrary and capricious.

The outstanding question seems to be whether this merits a degree of outrage, not whether we as a society should pass some laws that would protect creators from Patreon.

I know very little about Sargon of Akkad, but as I understand it, his comments were made in a video in which he was being interviewed, not a video that was being funded by Patreon. There's some question about the context of the comments, as to whether he was making them as an example of something a nazi might say or whether they were directed at a particular group. I don't really know.

Patreon's response was that when one of their creators exhibited behavior they didn't approve of outside of their platform (i.e. videos funded through them) that they would demand contrition and be the sole arbiter as to whether that contrition was sufficient.

Sounds worthy of a little outrage to me.

Patreon is not a de facto monopoly. There is twitch (for subscription/donation), ko-fi (direct donation), mailing a check, PayPal, stripe...

Patreon may not be a de facto monopoly but the MasterCard Visa cartel are and they leaned on the downstream payment processors to ban the Patreon competitor SubscribeStar as soon as they took on Carl Benjamin.

https://twitter.com/nickmon1112/status/1076886857445711872?s...

And MasterCard and Visa operate their cartel in cooperation with banks and federal regulators. To what degree does the first amendment apply to entities that are regulated and protected by the federal government?

Just FYI, you're linking to a Nick Monroe tweet. Monroe is a well known internet harasser who fancies himself a journalist because he digs up information to doxx people. What he characterizes deep dive investigations are mostly just him publishing the personal details of people, primarily on the left, and calling them pedophiles. He also, from my experience, seems to have pretty severe psychiatric issues.

It's possible you are linking him because you believe he's a good source. It's possible you aren't aware of this and got the link to him via someone you follow. It's possible you just did a global search because you remember the story and his tweet came up. I'm not making an inference about you.

I am instead assuming you didn't know this, and that you might want to be told about it so you can be cautious about to what extent you trust his ability to relay the situation. This doesn't mean he's intrinsically wrong, but in the same regard that if Alex Jones says something he's not intrinsically wrong, but you might voluntarily opt not to cite him as evidence that Queen is a lizard.

I don't see why this character assassination was needed - are the facts in question here? Here's a transcript of the interview that the "well known internet harasser" linked: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U0mQjUA0T5INc_GDkwPJ2mfh...

You can clearly see the lines he quotes in it. The words are by Patreon's own Trust and Safety representative:

MATT: Are you telling me that this was Patreon’s decision then, or someone pressured you into this?

JACQUELINE: No - this was entirely Patreon’s decision.

MATT: Well then I don’t understand passing the buck off to somebody else.

JACQUELINE: 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.

MATT: Well if it’s your mission, then payment processors are irrelevant. It’s your mission. That’s what you’re pursuing.

JACQUELINE: We’re not visa and mastercard ourselves - we can’t just make the rules. That’s what I’m saying - there is an extra layer there.

Ok, let's make it hypothetical (and I think it's worth discussing because there are other examples / it will happen soon anyway) - is the blocking by payment processors on more-or-less arbitrary grounds good idea? Don't THEY have the monopoly? (not treating BTC & co. seriously, sorry)

Because I (as I think most people) would be fine with the Patreon ban, had the payment processors' cartel stayed neutral (in our theoretical case). But once they side with Patreon, it is truly complete deplatforming, that you can't really solve by going to "another, more permissive, website".

And that is the real problem.

I assume every word of what you wrote is true and it still does not mean he’s not a journalist. Sarah Jeong is a racist and harasser and she’s on the board of the New York Times.

More importantly, some nobody with a twitter account did a better job of investigative journalism than the New York Times and you’re criticising the nobody?

The winner-take-all phenomena of tech is described elsewhere in this topic at length.

Patreon has no viable direct competitor for subscription based donations. You may not consider that to be a de facto monopoly, but that’s a semantic argument that’s orthogonal to my point.

>A lot of people in the tech community and on HN sympathize with the ideology of people being deplatformed, particularly regarding alt-right and "anti-feminist" views

In other words "a lot of people in the tech community" are alt-right and anti-feminist (and thus, implied, bad people with bad ideas), but weaselly put.

How about, "a lot of people in the tech community" sympathize with people being deplatformed, period? (Ever heard of the EFF? The story of the Pirate Bay and its support? DeCSS? Support for Assange?)

Sure, this which would still include people being sympathetic to "alt-right and anti-feminist". Do people have to follow your particular politics and ideological preferences wholesale to be acceptable? Perhaps those are just pure truth, and everything else is evil?

Being bullied out of social circles, shunned for behaving in socially unacceptable ways (like women wearing pants, being gay, accepting interracial marriage) including speaking socially unacceptable things (like women are objects, I choose not to vaccinate my child)

If Patreon were trying to cultivate a "brand" on the side of shunning homosexuals, shaming women who wear pants, and denigrating interracial marriage, would you have a different take on their shutting down speech? Or would you say it's Patreon's right to cultivate their public image in whatever way they see fit?

No. But would take a stand against Patreon, and only Patreon, if such a thing were to occur. Patreon is "free" to cultivate their public image as they see fit and I am free to stop using them, discourage others from using it, etc. Nothing to do with their take on free speech.

I think the lesson of the past, is that people who do the kind of suppression which Patreon is engaging in, which Pay Pal is engaging in, which people who ran "restricted" clubs engaged in -- the people doing these things are the ones who have decided that certain people are "undesirables" and are motivated by the darker side of human emotion. It's those who are on the wrong side of history.

The right side is the side that would engage ideas. Instead, people with power are suppressing ideas and hoping they'll go away. If you need to suppress and cannot engage, then you are on the wrong side of history.

That is not the same thing. The white supremacists are thrown off Patreon because of what they do not because of who they are. Their ideas aren't being suppressed.

Your statement is ironic as the person being discussed here was banned for denigrating the alt-right during his long-standing vendetta with them. Was he banned for "what he is"?

The white supremacists are thrown off Patreon because of what they do not because of who they are.

The problem is this: The power you talk of is arbitrary. People like Sargon of Akkad, who are not white supremacists, are being thrown off Patreon, while the media are giving them cover by spinning a narrative. This is the classic pattern of oppression. You vilify people with a label, which becomes meaningless as the label is expanded to conveniently cover everyone who isn't toeing the line. This is exactly what happened with "counter-revolutionaries" and those who engaged in "economic sabotage" under the iron curtain.

Their ideas aren't being suppressed.

Lots of people want to fund Sargon of Akkad, who is a center-left classical liberal. Patreon, though it is a "funding platform," refuses. That is not only an example of suppression, it's an example of this kind of dishonest "expansion" of labels with media cover through inaccurate and convenient narratives. It's an example of the kind of dishonesty which happens when people in power think they can control speech and thought.

I have no idea what your point is. Sargon of Akkad is ostensibly being kicked of Patreon because of what he has said not because of who he are. Comparing that to business refusing to serve customers because they are black is completely delusional. I'm as much in favor of free speech as you are, but I'm also in favor of property rights. "MY site, MY rules" is an old adage that has never been truer.

I have no idea what your point is

This whole pattern of behavior with de-platforming and un-personing -- I recognize it from my past. In my personal history, it's the behavior of people who are toxic with a tribal outlook. In my youth, it was the homophobes and racists who acted like this towards me -- coercing and silencing, instead of applying universal principles and engaging in arguments.

"MY site, MY rules" is an old adage that has never been truer.

A company owned a company mining town, right down to the sidewalks and streets, then tried to apply that logic to prevent people they didn't like from distributing pamphlets. The 1st amendment should take precedence over property rights.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBozijndSLc

If you have freedom of commerce, but no individual freedoms outside of that, like freedom of speech, then you basically have China. So it's a very reasonable trade off to make: give up a little freedom of commerce to ensure more basic personal freedoms.

First, it's not hypocrisy to believe in protected classes but not wanting fascists to be one of them. I don't think businesses should be able to turn down customers on the basis of their race, I do think businesses should be able to turn down customers on the basis of their shirt saying "Race War Now" on it. No hypocrisy here.

Second, even if we set aside protected classes, I don't think Patreon should be obligated to host projects it doesn't agree with, whatever they may be. It is their right to cultivate their public image in whatever way they see fit.

Of course, I also believe VISA is under no obligation to process transactions for Patreon, and so I'd sincerely hope that they'd cut off a hypothetical Patreon that exists just to enrich 4chan weirdos, and I'd work to achieve that goal in society. I would help any effort to shut down such a site.

First, it's not hypocrisy to believe in protected classes but not wanting fascists to be one of them.

It's the height of dishonesty to purposely label people as fascists when they are not. It's also dishonest if you know someone isn't a fascist, but you go along with the the narrative because it's easier. At best, the case with Sargon of Akkad is that Patreon was honestly fooled.

I don't think Patreon should be obligated to host projects it doesn't agree with

Then Patreon and PayPal should bill themselves as something other than a "payment platform."

I'd sincerely hope that they'd cut off a hypothetical Patreon that exists just to enrich 4chan weirdos, and I'd work to achieve that goal in society. I would help any effort to shut down such a site.

You'd have a very different POV if it were people of your own tribe(s) who were being shut down in this fashion. (Which was pretty much the analogous case in the 60's when Berkeley was at the center of the Free Speech movement.) Then you would be singing the Free Speech message loud and clear. The reason why the concept of the right of Free Speech exists, is so that people who have power can't simply shut down everyone else.

Beware what political tools you let people have. One day, they may be turned against your side.

You do get to tell me you disagree with my answer. You don't get to tell me what my answer is, sorry dude.

"Beware what political tools you let people have. One day, they may be turned against your side."

I'm not telling you what your answer should be. I'm pointing out how your chosen answer can be turned around to bite you one day.

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