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Comment by cepp | Hacker News Reader

I use Patreon (albeit in a pledge capacity) sparingly. Many years ago they dropped Naomi Wu[1][2][3]. This situation was particularly scary: she was making a decent chunk of her living through Patreon pledges, but because of the limited size of her audience, and marginalized position she had no recourse.

While I agree that they're not currently cancerous I do think they illustrate part of the broader problem with modern society: over-dependence on central infrastructure-like sources that are private and can change on a whim. It's great that people can make a living on Patreon, but this should be tempered by the inherent risk of being on a platform you don't control.

[1]: https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Wu [3]: https://www.patreon.com/posts/18216256

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Regardless of the back and forth accusations with Vice, a no doxing rule seems reasonable. Online mobs can be dangerous and are one of the thornier complexities of managing social networks.

Yeah, Patreon has to maintain their rules for their service. It doesn't matter how someone feels wronged, they don't get a pass. Can you imagine the road they would've been going down if they'd let Wu stay? Every single ToS violation would've been litigated through social media. Whether or not Vice did something wrong is a matter for Wu & Vice to resolve, not Patreon.

Does she currently receive support on another crowd funding platform?

She doxxed a Vice editor when she felt they failed to maintain a privacy agreement.

What happened exactly? As you wrote it, your comment might also be read as "She failed to maintain a privacy agreement when a Vice editor doxxed her".

[edit] the third link above describes what happened

> She doxxed a Vice editor when she felt they failed to maintain a privacy agreement.

Why is it that you choose to use "failed to maintain a privacy agreement" to describe the Vice editors publishing her personal information without consent, while using the much more loaded term "doxxed" when she did the same to them?

Do you understand the difference in likely consequences for each party here?

Is there any rational argument that can be made to exonerate the totally shitty behaviour of Vice and it's writers/editors in choosing to invade her privacy after having agreed not to?

Vice shouldn't be exonerated but do we live in an "eye for an eye" rule of law?

(According to Wikipedia) she published Vice's editor-in-chief's home address. I assume she did that to "explain" how she felt threatened physically by ensuring that the editor in chief feels physically threatened as well?

She could have acted differently. She could have taken legal means; perhaps asking for help to her patrons. Supporters can support in many ways and not only with money.

Can somebody who knows more about the details explain why her behaviour should have been tolerated by Patreon?

Obviously her doxxing was a poor choice. However, she didn't have much legal recourse. She lives in China, and viewed herself as being at risk of retaliation from the CCP due to some of the personal details Vice choose to release. (Despite knowing (from her) the danger it would put her in.) Many (most?) people feel that the doxxing was her only means of retaliation given the circumstances.

Both actions are bad. But if I have to pick one to be "more" bad, I'd pick Vice's.

Those two points are probably what's at the root of the calls against Patreon here.

We don't live under eye-for-eye law. (Maybe China has some laws like that?) But people often view things in that light socially.

I think the problem for Patreon is that they have a policy and it’s best to enforce it consistently, rather than apply it based on some judgement of moral right.

She was interrogated by the police not so long after. She posted that she was going with them when event happened, I recall. But afterwards the Twitter history was scrubbed... Unknown if it had any relation to the Vice case.

If she has no recourse than the only form of justice she has available is an eye of an eye. She's a single person against a huge conglomerate like vice. Sadly, legal means are not relevant in that situation.

If you don't want to live in an eye for an eye rule of law, attack the causes, not the victims.

It's a shame we live in a society where most of the discourse has to be polarized. If you're a victim you can either be blameless or else it's victim blaming.

From the information I could find it appears vice engaged in immoral behavior and she responded in kind.

Furthermore she didn't so that in order to protect herself but in order to retaliate.

While I don't agree with the morality if her retaliation, that doesn't automatically make Vice's position any better. They are still much worse. For one they are a company with legal department etc and should know better.

As for whether she has legal recourse or not… a honest question:

According to Wikipedia she had an agreement with Vice which they broke. What kind of agreement is an agreement that cannot be upheld in court. Can an american company just do what they please anywhere in the world?

Retaliating is a legitimate form of protection. Of course, it doesn't help retroactively, but a realistic risk of retaliation keeps people honest. It's a key part of game theory in the tit-for-tat strategy to the prisoner's dilemma: https://ncase.me/trust/

Sure, after having tried other approaches. She has a fan base that can exert pressure.

People have personality. If her personality is to say "fuck you, I'll fight you back using your same weapon" then my personality can be "I don't like that, I prefer a society where people don't react to force with force and being jerks to jerks"

EDIT: just to be clear; she's free to choose her strategy, but here we were talking about whether patreon should side with her and exempt her from their policies. They are not in a position where they can fully judge who's right

This hopefully taught her an important lesson: NEVER, NEVER trust journalists. However, her reaction was pretty inmature and is not acceptable IMO.

> Supporters can support in many ways and not only with money

I don't think a witch-hunt would have been a better option. Honestly it was an ugly affair, but Patreon shouldn't have gotten involved. Much like MasterCard or Visa didn't get involved in Vice.

> Vice shouldn't be exonerated but do we live in an "eye for an eye" rule of law?

This is not about the rule of law and the issue is not whether Wu was right to do this; rather that presenting Wu's behavior as worse than the Vice editor's is extremely unfair. Furthermore, the consequences of doxxing for some north american influencer type vs those for someone living in an authoritarian dystopia are quite different. Finally, in one case the offense was arguably perpetrated in a state of panic while the other was done in cold blood so to speak.

Vice had not published the story yet, yet Wu believed they might doxx her when questioning details about a reddit controversy. Wu had preemptively doxxed the editor.

I’m very curious why you chose to phrase it that way. It sounds like to me she was doxxed by the editor, but you chose the phrase “failed to maintain a privacy agreement”

Vice had not published the story yet, yet Wu believed they might doxx her when questioning details about a reddit controversy. Wu had preemptively doxxed the editor.

Seems to me a fairer statement would be “she doxxed a vice editor in revenge for them doxxing her”.

Vice had not published the story yet, yet Wu believed they might doxx her when questioning details about a reddit controversy. Wu had preemptively doxxed the editor.

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