Patreon loses lawsuit with Owen Benjamin fans
nationalfile.com
nationalfile.com
Regardless of the merits (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Benjamin#Views) of the comedian in question, I'm enjoying watching arbitration - intended to fuck over users - come back to bite companies in the ass.
DoorDash learned this the hard way, too. https://www.vox.com/2020/2/12/21133486/doordash-workers-10-m...
> Under Judge William Alsup’s order in Abernathy v. DoorDash, DoorDash must arbitrate over 5,000 individual disputes with various workers who claim that they were misclassified as independent contractors, when they should be treated as employees. It also must pay a $1,900 fee for each of these individual arbitration proceedings.
Arbitration is disadvantageous to users in the case of class actions.
In cases of individual grievance, it’s vastly cheaper to bring and settle claims in arbitration over courts. A lot of the conflicts-of-interest issues in arbitration, moreover, can be avoided with competent counsel. The same counsel one would require to get started in state or federal courts.
Cheaper, sure. You get less out of it, though.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/05/03/google-wo...
"Arbitration produces clear winners and losers. Employees win less frequently and receive lower damages in arbitration than in litigation. Employers win more frequently, especially if they use the same arbitrators repeatedly. That’s hardly surprising, given that the employers typically choose the arbitrators."
For customer-vendor relationships, the field is more even. These suits tend to be simpler. And they are, on average, less material. Lowering the bar to litigation is a fair compromise for slightly-lower payouts.
I disagree. If a company screws a million people out of $10, it's not at all worth the trouble of arbitration for the individuals. That's where class actions shine.
Correct. Arbitration is good for moderately high-value customer-vendor disputes. Bigger disputes should go to courts. Smaller ones be organised into a class. (Though someone arbitrating a $10 dispute will get far more, including, usually, their arbitration costs, than that person settling in a class.)
In the middle, about $500 to $25,000, arbitration is the better option for the public. It’s faster and cheaper. And the amounts are material enough to not warrant paying out 90% of it to lawyers.
He was the one who learned Java in order judge to Google v. Oracle case better.
Fun fact: his middle name is Haskell.
In short: Patreon has to front $10,000 in legal fees per arbitration claim. The source of the suit is only about 100 people but if a sizable portion of the supporters of some of the larger names who have been banned from Patreon file suit as well then Patreon could be facing the requirement to put aside hundreds of millions of dollars to pre-fund arbitration cases... which could, theoretically, force them to file for bankruptcy and/or cease operation.
The above-mentioned news clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHzEJ6ESRY8
I'm excited to see forced arbitration hurt companies that intended to use it to hurt their users.
I'm a bit disappointed to see it benefit a Holocaust denier at the same time.
The existence of auschwitz is undeniable; you can visit it. If someone wants to look like a fool, let them. If you believe the fool, equally a fool. If fools are responsible for the suppression of fundamental rights, the system is broken and an immune response should be expected.
I also subscribe to the concept of the paradox of intolerance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance) - that having a tolerant society requires intolerance of certain beliefs. There's some good evidence that deplatforming works. (https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bjbp9d/do-social-media-ba...)
Be legal? I suspect so.
The Orion Welles “War of the Worlds” recital should feature more in the discussion of the ethics of free speech, along with study of propaganda and the predisposition of humans to believe the first version of a story they hear.
Holocaust denial does hurt people, just because you don’t see the harm being done doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Typically what happens is one person with a public position denying the Holocaust happened empowers their audience to engage in anti-Semitic behaviour, which ultimate devolves to abuse of semites (typically Jews more than arabs).
As an example of how unlike the rational actor with perfect information most humans are, just one newspaper report here in Australia regarding two POC violating quarantine has friends who are also POC starting a petition wanting the quarantine violators thrown in jail — no regard for the rich white COVID-positive couple who returned from Aspen Colorado and hosted multiple dinner parties while in “quarantine.”
Some folks are so focussed on their perceived rights they have no time o pay attention to social obligations such as duty of care.
Meanwhile in the real world we are not all born psychopaths with the privilege of only working with people like us who like us. In addition we live in the same world where “only following orders” is still a thing: so one person’s public suggestion that you are not a nice person is someone else’s call to action to punish you for being you. Accusations that a woman used sexual favours to get better reviews for a computer game led to complete strangers turning up on her doorstep threatening violence.
Words aren’t just words. What people are scared of isn’t just the words but the retribution they have learned follows those words as surely as night follows day.
“Just be an emotionless robot” misunderstands the complaint completely.
The Patreon arbitration is the beginning of the revolt against cancel culture and the censorship of conservative voices on various platforms.
DoorDash's arbitration clause enabled the same attack, with no free speech concerns at play.
Let's be clear, he's a holocaust denier, and that's not just an unpopular "political view".
He has every right to say it to whoever will listen, but private companies should not be forced to amplify that shit.
From what little I've seen, Owen Benjamin rejects that description of himself, so I'd be interested to hear why you think he is.
Worth noting that outlets that reported him as a "holocaust denier" also claimed that he would definitely lose this lawsuit, which was clearly false. Not only did Patreon lose, but the judge went so far as to point out that the cases they cited undermined their own case.
> He has every right to say it to whoever will listen, but private companies should not be forced to amplify that shit.
Private companies have an obligation to honor their Terms of Service, which Owen did not violate, and why he and his fans filed for arbitration in the first place.
California shouldn’t have ~ banned class action lawsuits.