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Comment by grumdan | Hacker News Reader

> In the case of Patreon, there is a man who people want to give money to. He wants to accept that money. There is no criminal activity on either side of the transaction. Yet Patreon is preventing these people from doing what they want because Patreon dislikes one paragraph of the man's boorish utterances.

Patreon isn't "preventing" the transaction, they are merely choosing not to facilitate it. Respecting individual rights does not oblige anyone to help others to do what they want to do.

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> Patreon isn't "preventing" the transaction, they are merely choosing not to facilitate it.

What is the distinction between these two terms?

If Wells Fargo refuses to let me deposit checks because of something I said, are they preventing a transaction or merely choosing not to facilitate it? After all, I could open an account at another bank.

If FedEx returns packages addressed to me because of something I said, are they preventing a transaction or choosing not to facilitate it? After all, other shipping companies exist.

I can't find a bright distinction between the two terms, but there is a distinction between behavior directly related to business (such as where the money came from or what's being shipped) and unrelated things (such as what someone said in a livestream months ago).

In my mind, banks are infrastructure. There are a limited number of them, and you have to get a pretty specific charter to operate one (that I don't think is even being granted anymore?) Patreon isn't. Anyone can create a website where people donate money to creators.

That's pretty vague. Where's the dividing line of "difficulty to set up" that differentiates banks from Patreon? There's actually more banks(even in my country) than websites dedicating to donating money to creators, as far as I know. Patreon supports recurring donations, so I'm guessing they have PCI compliance - your line is above "any guy with a website" but below "bank", but can you try pinning it down? Are Mastercard and Visa infrastructure?

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