Regarding Visa being neutral, I think there are cases where this is actually not true: https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/08/23/david-horowitz-vis.... Obviously, excuse the source, but I believe the core idea is still fact.

So, censorship is being exercised in areas even where you'd expect neutral carriers. I would call that worrying.

I have an unpopular opinion. I believe people should be able to fly nazi and confederate flags on their private property. (Even if their private property overlooks yours.) I believe football players should be able to kneel during the national anthem.

And I believe private companies should be able to exercise their freedom of Association rights based on their beliefs or their bottom line.

All of these are just people having opinions. If you don't like their opinions, don't associate with them. That's the freedom that you have. I don't think any of this is a problem. Certainly none of it is censorship. The man flying a nazi or confederate flag in his yard alongside his JEB Stuart statue is not censoring MLK by refusing to put up an MLK statue as well.

The people who want an MLK statue should go put the MLK statue someplace else. The people tossed from Patreon should go raise money elsewhere. They're all perfectly free to do so.

At the risk of starting a tangent, this doesn't work when it comes to business. Businesses (or any relationship of dependency) should not be allowed to have "an opinion" because before long it becomes collusion and shunning.

How well did "no, no, you have the freedom to go somewhere else" work for blacks just wanting to buy a hamburger in America pre-1968? We had to pass laws telling businesses to get the fuck over themselves and indeed, it's still challenged to this day when gays try to buy wedding cakes.

If you don't like mandatory arbitration clauses in every single contract you sign, you literally can't do business anywhere. Everything from your job to your car purchase has them. If you don't like being subjected to credit checks, you literally cannot procure the utilities required by law to make your dwelling inhabitable-- all utilities run credit or make it prohibitively expensive to go without.

It's an imbalance of power. You can't just "go somewhere else" when you depend on the service being offered or provided, that you are denied for arbitrary reasons.

When you need consideration for membership, there really is just no way you can claim that to be non-private. That includes Patreon, it's private. It's their rules. Full stop. It's like adwords, if you want to use it, you have to start giving Google more consideration. Normally to use the public parts of Google, you don't need to give any consideration at all. (Of course, Google takes the tracking information from you anyway with their public facing services, but they don't ask you to actively give them any consideration.)

No, you have two totally different opinions here.

Football players are not private individuals on their own private land. They're basically employees of a sort, so they're subject to the whims of those who employ them. I happen to agree with you, but I don't own a football team, so my opinion isn't important here. If I work at a company where I'd get fired for kneeling during the national anthem, I'm either going to not kneel, or start looking for a new job.

Now, if a guy or gal is invited to perform on a military base during a national holiday commemoration, then sure, they should be compelled not to kneel. But if we're talking about things happening on private property as a part of a private gathering, those people can do whatever they please.

If the owners have the guts, let them all fire the football players. That's their right. Either way, the only input we should have on the matter is to watch the football game, or to walk away and not watch it.

A performer on a military base is constitutionally protected from punishment for kneeling during the national anthem, because that base is public and they're acting as a citizen. A member of the military may have other requirements, I'm not really sure.

A professional (as opposed to high school or college, where this argument doesn't work) football player is playing on private property in the employ of a private citizen. That citizen could (and does) have the right to fine their employee for kneeling during the anthem. This isn't true for HS or college players who, by and large, are not acting under a private citizen owner, but are normally playing under the purview of a publicly funded school.

To put it succinctly:

>And they are taking these actions on private property.

Yes, and that private property is someone else's (in this case regulated by the NFL) who can set rules as they see fit.

Right.

Which is why I wrote:

>If the owners have the guts, let them all fire the football players...

But if the owners don't fire them, then whatever. Not our business. Watch them, or don't watch them. That's your choice. Nothing more.

My choice is to not watch them, but that's only because I think American football is a stupid sport, and that watching sports is, in general, a mindless waste of time.

I politely disagree. You're right in that it's not government censorship, but it is certainly cultural/corporate censorship, and my thesis is that this is a growing movement.

Yes, nothing is legally wrong here, or even morally wrong. Nobody is doing anything wrong. I do agree with you there. But zooming out and looking at the picture as a whole, I believe there is a growing tendency to silence ideas we don't like. I don't believe this movement will stop once it reaches some arbitrary boundary defined by law or private property. Yes, I am citing the slippery slope argument because I think it's actually applicable here.

The libertarian idea of "well, it's private property so it's not an issue" is an extremely simplistic way of looking at a much larger cultural phenomena that I think is a growing problem.

There may be a day when the deciding of what is acceptable or not does not stop at your private property line, so citing the first amendment and plugging your ears afterwards doesn't really work as a counterargument to what I'm saying.

Do you think this is actually an unpopular opinion, or just one not well represented by the two dominant national political parties in America? You mention elsewhere that you are from small-town Wisconsin. I grew up there also (Ladysmith) and now live in a small town in Vermont. I feel like this attitude is still quite common in rural America.

The downside of this framework is that it's hard to justify things like the Civil Rights movement (which I presume you agree was a mostly a positive?). How does one draw a line between "restaurants must serve customers regardless of race" and "businesses can choose not to offer services to racists"? Or does one give up on the first as well, and hope that the force of capitalism is strong enough to fill the gap?

I believe the key difference is skin color is innate and being an asshole is not, you don't get to choose to be black, you do choose to be an asshole though.

I think that the shift in popularity for gay rights mirrors the shift in acceptance that homosexual feelings are more innate than chosen.

Of the 11 federally protected classes, religion stands out as the only one that isn't innate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group

Incidentally California prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of political activities or affiliations, which is a step further than the federal requirement: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/california-employmen...

Personally... I'm not religious, I was raised an atheist, I don't like religion, and I don't really think it should be protected, but I sorta kinda understand why it is, religion seems "special."

Veteran status is also protected under employment discrimination law, and military service isn't an innate attribute, however, its in the best interest for a country to protect those who have served it, especially those who were drafted.

Family status is protected under housing discrimination law, and having a ton of kids isn't innate, but some can say that the urge to have children is actually innate. (Though as a person who never felt an urge to reproduce, I have a hard time actually understanding this)

So yeah... we aren't 100% consistent.

I'd say being a veteran is, once you're a veteran you cannot change that about yourself. You could decide to not become a veteran, but you can't unveteran yourself.

Bingo!

You're free not to allow blacks into your night club. And a lot of night clubs and country clubs do just that. A large number of my friends and I won't be patronizing your establishment either, but you're free to do as you like with your business.

The people doing this are advocating for violent ideologies, that have as their foundation extreme racism, including the oppression of minorities and violence against them, literally to the level of genocide.

They don't stop at just putting up flags. They organize, march and perpetrate violent attacks. They invade subcultures and infiltrate their ideologies into them. They plan for the creation of a fascist white ethnostate. None of this is exaggeration on my part.

How do you propose we stop this tide of hate-fueled ideology? The "marketplace of ideas" approach does not work, they simply use the exposure to further spread their viewpoints, feeding on the controversy.

How can we fight these ideologies, if not by exposing them and deplatforming them, and constantly keeping them on the back foot?

Heh, well I hope so. But that recent NYTimes story[0] about how mass shootings used guns and ammo bought with a credit card makes me unsure about that. I'd have thought using cash vs credit was more or less interchangeable, and either the person should be allowed to buy the firearms or not. But given the focus on how it was bought, makes me think there's some movement towards expecting Visa and the like to not be simply neutral facilitators of transactions.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/24/business/deal...

For me that's flipping the bozo bit for that individual. It's not "fascism" or "trump" that we should be afraid of. It's the mob rule.

Oh, people should really be concerned about fascism. It's just not coming from the groups outed trying to bring it (what should be obvious, outed groups do not succeed).

But there are people pushing hard for individual-erasing collectivism, explicitly labeling people in ethnics belief and sex, and suppressing every unaligned idea to the point where it's not viable for the people that have them to even speak.

(A late edit: I don't think Pathernon is on this group. They did nothing wrong, they just happen to be in a place where no move was a good one.)

If you don't have anything to fear from Trump, that's nice for you, but given that he's openly calling for me and people dear to me to have our civil rights revoked, it's pretty shitty of you to tell me that I shouldn't be afraid of him.

By new kinds business I mean that lots of internet companies seem to be awkwardly half-way between neutral infrastructure (like Windows, and your water company) and being publications (which of course have an editorial line).

Hellfire would rain down on any Network (Visa, MC, Amex, Discover) who thought about refusing to process firearm purchases. The NRA, any republican, and liberals like myself who support fundamental rights would be rightly pissed that a hard-to-avoid service such as the Visa network was making a decision on what I can or cannot do with my money. Because the minute you start making those decisions, it's a slippery sloap.

Their business prints them money, so why would they want to kick the hornets net? This is why I'm extremely weary of anyone who declares that Cash is Dead, or the future is Credit/Debit cards

https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/card-payment-gu...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/19/business/banks-gun-sales....

https://nypost.com/2018/06/11/gun-businesses-scrambling-afte...

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/could-credit-card-companie...

I'm not sure, but I can offer two hypothesizes that aren't mutually exclusive.

1) Gun owners have been marginalized on social media and their hellfire is going unnoticed on alternative platforms, or simply isn't promoted by algorithmic timelines.

2) Gun owners are already predisposed to purchasing guns with cash, for privacy reasons, so many don't feel particularly inconvenienced by this development.

But that is exactly what is happening. Visa is saying to Patreon - don't let people give money to XYZ persons via your platform.

It will be really interesting to see if 2019 brings a change in the outrage that is currently directed at public facing platforms over their content policies to the actual architects of many of those decisions, which are Visa/MC and a handful of advertising brokers.

We can argue about the role of individual platforms, but Visa/MC in particular have a cast iron, long term monopoly with much stronger effects on the public than any national government does. Their editorial policies should be under huge public scrutiny.

The lines had to announce the subscriber's name and the recordings could be required to be taken down if found defamatory.

When 900 numbers with paid recordings, like messages from celebrities or gambling advice, became available, they had to announce their fee structures upfront before people were connected to the paid programming.

This is how oppression operates. First it's, "Well, we'd live and let live, but we can't afford the consequences if we serve you." Then it will be, "We can't afford the consequences if we're at all associated with you." Then it will be, "We can't afford the consequences if we don't loudly support the 'right' things." Finally, it will become, "We can't afford the consequences if we don't turn you in."

I'd argue this is the natural selection of ideas at work. If you don't like it, raise hell, and gather enough people to make a difference, that's what everyone's done since it became an option to do so.

If you can't harness the momentum perhaps it means that your idea just isn't cut out for life on the grand stage of society. Life after all, is not fair.

When it comes to control of information, I don't think it's only the government that we have to worry about.

stop trying to construe it as some great 'issue of our time'.

This is the great issue of our time.

I'd argue this is the natural selection of ideas at work.

No, that would be those ideas getting downvotes and no one listening to them. That would be the circumstance where no one wants to fund them. Instead, people want to fund them, but a few powerful people want to throw roadbocks in their way. This is a powerful organization that controls financial transactions pulling the strings to suppress ideas they don't like.

If you can't harness the momentum perhaps it means that your idea just isn't cut out for life on the grand stage of society

The ideas have momentum. It's that large organizations are pulling the strings and pulling the plug. It would be as you say, if individuals were pulling the funding. Instead, it's a big company not letting many, many individuals fund as they would like.

Your talking point is just another example of this: People in media trying to sell the idea that this is "the marketplace of ideas in action." No. It's the marketplace of ideas being manipulated.

(And if you want to see the long arc of history bend in the right way, the wrong thing to do is to manipulate the marketplace of ideas. That is precisely what gives ammunition to the toxic extremists and the flim flam artists.)

Bell in its monopoly days was a common carrier [0], regulated by law to treat all phone lines equally.

> Or Visa likewise today -- it's understood that other people will use the same plastic to pay for things you morally disapprove of, just as they could use cash. But it's positioned as a neutral carrier, and nobody cares (I think).

Visa and Mastercard are not common carriers - they can and do discriminate.

One of the weirdest ironies in this debate is that the people Patreon is ending business relationships with tend to be libertarian/conservative types who are generally skeptical of government regulation of business. And yet what they really seem to want is regulation of Patreon, Twitter [1], Cloudflare [2], etc as common carriers.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier

1: https://qz.com/1381708/twitter-finally-banned-alt-right-cons...

2: https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/

The recipe for boiling the frog in introducing totalitarianism is the same: First you go after the least popular people and get tacit approval. Then you extend that to someone else, then someone else. Eventually, you get to a point where everyone is at least a little leery of speaking up. Then you turn it up just a little more. Rinse and repeat.

This is where we are now. We are in the middle of the process above. It doesn't matter how idealistic the people who are implementing it. Control thought and speech, and you lock in absolute power, and absolute power corrupts. All of the worst totalitarian regimes throughout history had idealistic, flowery sounding language to justify their actions. All of them.

Isn't businesses deciding what they want exactly less regulation?

The line they are walking is pretty thin at Patreon but my image of the company is mostly supporting general content creators in the non-ideological spectrum of content. If these people do not fit with their point of view (specified in general in the terms) they may simply be polishing up their image to what they want to look like. It is their choice as they throw away some, at this point still marginal, income. Though as stated in the article, the people leaving could use it as a rallying point and maybe even get out better in the end (subscriber/monetary wise).

For the little guy there is no practical difference between a government service and a homogeneous oligopoly. I believe that given enough time these services would get regulated as infrastructure and hence banned from refusing customers, just that our legal framework is too rigid to adapt to the fast pace of technological progress.