To add to this, I think YouTube is okay with having a ToS and denying service to people who violate their ToS (now uniformity of application of the ToS is a different subject). Using the service is not a platform and can't in and of itself create harm. Cash is not harmful. Using cash to buy a gun and using the gun in violence is harmful. Just because cash is a transaction enabler does not mean we deny access to cash to criminals.
People also dont usually buy goods off of felons because they are felond. They pay for it because they want the good. These creators got paid for their opinions and views.
Amazon is also well in their right to deny goods they deem harmful from beeing sold on their website
I argue that amazon banning firearms is fine. They dont want to support something they deem harmfull. Now if patreon deems these ideologies harmfull, why should they be required to support them?
The difference is that the felon example judges the people selling/buying, whereas patreon judges the goods.
That said, I think Amazon can decide whether or not to carry a whole category. Sears Catalogs used to sell guns. Congress passed laws and now sales would have to pass muster. But that's altogether different from selling or not selling a service to someone because you think they are "good" or "bad" or you agree or disagree with their point of view.
To me, Patreon is providing financial services, so I think this judgement is not in their purview in the same way Amazon should not judge who is buying or selling on their platform/services. It's none of their business. Is their business legitimate. That's about it.
But, on the question of Peterson being alt-right, his arguments for a willful re-adoption of mythical 'archetypes' as a basis for modern society is... well, excatly what happens with all far right ideologies, where a conception of social order is influenced by lobsters. (Cherry-picking bits of animal behaviour to explain human society is a mug's game, but if we were going to go down this route, why not create some vision of frozen gay ice cream orgies and child rearing, based on penguins?)
But the real smelly herring in Peterson's schtick is his conflation of Marxism, post-moderism, and general identity politics. It's an invented bogeyman, detached from any real analysis of the cornerstones of modern poltiics. Again, it's absolutely a key strain of any rightish movement.
A lot of this could be explained as him being more of a grifter than anything, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
No, "alt-right" is people who haven't gone "far-right" (yet) or who are hiding their "far-right"ness for an easier life / speaking gigs / patreon money / etc.
> Peterson
He certainly pals around with a lot of alt-right figures (Tucker Carlson, notably) and seems to have no problem appearing at Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit which has quite the strongly conservative/alt-right/far-right[1] list of speakers.
[1] Definitely Gorka and Farage.
> The alt-right, or alternative right, is a loosely connected and somewhat ill-defined grouping of American white supremacists/white nationalists, white separatists, anti-Semites, neo-Nazis, neo-fascists, neo-Confederates, Holocaust deniers, conspiracy theorists and other far-right fringe hate groups.
I don't see how Peterson fits in that category. In a way the fact that the term is abused by the left to refer to all sort of non extremist people seems to have given a new meaning that you are refering to. Kind of like far-left movements refering to "facists" anyone to their right in the 80s.
And being an opponent of some of the more ludicrous off-shoots of modern feminism is not "alt-right", it's just common sense (and mainstream: for example only 9% of women in the UK consider themselves feminist[1]). And science, etc. Now I don't necessarily agree with his stances, but they are nothing if not well-reasoned and supported by data.
Which is probably why he gets so much hate.
[1] https://metro.co.uk/2016/10/18/we-asked-women-why-they-refus...
Is this not him being a proponent of "race science"?
Anyway, since you are making the claim, it would be up to you to explain what in his words is "promoting" (what a proponent does) so-called "race-science".
First, you'd probably have to define what you mean with "race science".
If you're saying it doesn't apply here, that's possibly fair, but one incorrect application doesn't wipe out the term.
And to echo the point in my sibling comment, these new sites that emphasize free speech (definitely a good cause) tend to immediately face the question of, "how free is speech, really?"
I honestly don't know if Reddit or Twitter, if started today, would have survived the onslaught. I don't know if anyone's figured out what to do that feels both "adhering to free speech concepts" as well as not becoming the next alt-right forum.
And the reason "alt-right" and "racist troll" mean nothing is because they are used so liberally where they do not apply, and a few minutes of investigation would conclude that they do not apply. Consistent incorrect usage of language applied to something that it is not makes them lose their meaning.
A solution to the "adhering to free speech" would be to allow free speech on platforms, and make it clear what is or isn't allowed on the platform, instead of using vague terms like "hate speech", which could be literally anything that some person finds undesirable.
You can rail against suppression of speech all you want, a company whose loudest and most active users are white supremacists either has to lean-in to that culture, remove it from the site entirely, or hide it. The first option is moral bankruptcy, the second option is an uncomfortable practicality on the limits of free speech, and the third option makes your new site look dead from the outside.
You act like this is a simple problem to solve, but it's far from simple, and getting it even slightly wrong means startup death, period.
In a free market, the majority of people would not entertain far-right or far-left forums and would congregate on the services which are providing engaging and meaningful content.
This is the case for say, Youtube right now, but if they have an asymmetric approach to censorship (failing to ban far left ideologues), then they'll end up a far-left cesspit that people will leave in droves.
I care very deeply about fundamental human rights such as free speech. Many people do not seem to understand what free speech is.
I also care about due process and putting people before a jury of their peers. The witch hunting needs to stop.
I'd consider myself moderate right. I used to lean to the left, but there is no way I can associate myself with what the left has become.
I'm with you on free speech, but I also don't know what I'd do if I were in Twitter/Reddit's shoes, because I don't think "do nothing and let the hatred continue" is viable (both from a business and kindness perspective), but I also don't think suppressing it is morally justified.
The divisions are only getting wider, and it is helpful to neither side. When people say racism is on the rise, they couldn't be more correct. White-racism is on the rise, and tolerated. The increase in white supremacists I see as largely a reaction to this. I'm not a selective racist and I despise racism in all of its forms.
Sexism too. Sexism against men is also very real, especially in tech. A diversity quota is a sexism quota. A person's gender should not factor into a hiring decision at all.
Every new social media company is basically planting their flag very far in one direction or another (either blocking hate speech or leaning in entirely).
The best thing for people to do is reject both this idiocy, and the idiocy of the far-right which wants to revert things back to the old way. This is what the people in the IDW are aiming to achieve - to bring people back to having discourse rather than bickering and widening the polarisation.
We have racists and sexists on both the left and right. We need to denounce racism and sexism in all of their forms, else the problem is only going to increase
A free market would (and does) kill a startup that allows such toxic members of any affiliation, regardless of what payment processors decide to do.
It's stronger than simply "trolls". "Alt-right" is just the latest PR rebranding used by neo-nazis/white-supremacists. Obviously, generalizations about any group of people is problematic; trolls and other not-explicitly-neo-nazi people use the label "alt-right".. Those people might want to consider that if you hang out with neo-nazis and repeat their memes/trolls, people might start to assume you are a neo-nazi. If someone likes to spend time in hang out with ${sport} fans, uses slang associated with ${sport_team}, most people are going to assume they are fan of that sport even if they claim* otherwise.
I suspect a lot of people might think I'm misinformed because someone in the "alt-right" said they were not nazis, and would never support racial violence. Remember that neo-nazis lie. Is your opinion abased on their public PR-focused interviews? If you have any doubt whatsoever that these are neo-nazis dreaming of bringing back the holocaust, I suggest watching this[1] video at 41:12, which is footage from a popular "alt-right" discord stream inside the Charllottesville rally. In their own words:
Speaker: Did Hitler do anything wrong?
Audience: [loud "no"]
Speaker: One more, I want everybody to repeat after me..,
,,,this is the first precept of the true alt-right:
Gas the [slur]s, race war now!
Audience: [even louder cheering]
Although whatever they do is often miscast as alt-right in part because the IDW defends free speech even when they don't agree with the content. Indeed Sam Harris deleted his Patreon account to protest the censoring of those he does not agree with. It's a principled stance and an important one.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
They should be able to go off and build their own home that suits their needs when others won't change their home to serve one specific community's conflicting preferences.
The people there, like Jordan Peterson, Sarah Vaughan, Sam Harris, Dave Rubin, Lindsay Shepherd and Claire Lehmann are definitely not alt-right, not only by their own accord, but also by my personal reading and viewing of their work. Have been following that site, and so far spotted no white supremacists, racists, bigots etc.
EDIT: First sentence was contradictory.
My disagreement is not out of ignorance of who these people are and what they think. I promise we're not going to agree here. Nothing can come of pursuing a subthread trying to agree on definitions for political alignments.
Edit: Of course when I say something might "seem" disingenuous, I'm not blaming parent in any way for it! But this is a sort of claim that is sometimes made in an arguably insincere manner, as part of some partisan controversy or another, and it's important to be able to point this out.
They usually also run into problems with payment processors.