The platform, in this case and many, has its own reputation and business interests to consider primarily.
Are the people in charge of these platforms doing the right thing for society at large? no. Are they doing what is best for their businesses health? There are definitely arguments for both sides in that case...
If their largest demographic is liberal-ish millennials, they have a business interest to take a partisan view, which in the case of a public company can be argued as a legal obligation.
I doubt these bans are purely mercenary. The CEO of Patreon seems to be doing this because he believes it's the right thing. If you watch his video responding to the ban of Lauren Southern last year[1] (a decision I agree with, BTW), he seems totally sincere. He also understands the magnitude of his responsibility to patrons.
I think Patreon is being penny wise and pound foolish. Their social signalling helps them grab a larger chunk of a smaller pie. Every high profile ban alienates a small fraction of users, but it's a different fraction every time. It doesn't take many before Patreon's reputation is bad enough to dissuade new creators from using it. It might already be too late for them to turn around.
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.
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).
My points were 1. the parent's concept of free speech missed the mark and 2. Patreon has a double standard and a political bias, and that's not good for them or for society.
I'm also not saying there should be laws policing Patreon's behavior. I'm saying that while Patreon and other tech companies believe they are doing good by removing content and sanctioning its creators, they are making a mistake. If they branded themselves as a utility (similar to a power company or bank), they could guarantee themselves a larger platform in the long term. At the same time, they'd let everyone read and hear what they wanted to read and hear. They'd reduce political polarization (which seems to be creeping into every aspect of life), eliminate the Streisand effect (I'd never heard of the Daily Stormer or Gab before hosting providers refused to take their money), and make it much harder for extremists to get sympathy.
What makes you think that their bias is not good for them as a business? To me, it seems quite possible that were they to take the "principled" stance you advocate, they would soon find themselves facing much larger problems. Either their payment processors would cut them off, or they would face a larger and better organized boycott by those who prefer their current bias. Even if I'd prefer them to take a different stance for the long term benefit society, I don't see it helping them in the short term to do so.
Well it caused me to cancel all of my subscriptions. It caused Sam Harris to cancel his account. It caused a lot of people to look for alternatives. I'm pretty sure this decision hurt Patreon's bottom line.
> Either their payment processors would cut them off, or they would face a larger and better organized boycott by those who prefer their current bias.
I don't think that's true, at least not with most of the Patreon bans. Nobody was organizing a boycott of Patreon for this, and Patreon's blog post didn't say they were pressured by payment processors. Another example: When Cloudflare stopped hosting The Daily Stormer, it was because Cloudflare's CEO didn't like them claiming that Cloudflare was a secret supporter of their racist ideology. And today Cloudflare seems to have no trouble with payment processors or boycotts despite hosting the Westboro Baptist Church's website.[1]
https://twitter.com/nickmon1112/status/1076886857445711872?s...
Thread where a journalist finds evidence to that effect.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U0mQjUA0T5INc_GDkwPJ2mfh...
Transcript of a call from the Patreon censorship department with a creator.
I doubt that they did this for any reason other than using power against people they don’t like.
> John Milton, Thomas Paine, and John Stuart Mill all made the point (in various ways) that every time you stop someone from saying or publishing an idea, you are also preventing others who want to hear or read that idea from doing so.
But no one who wants to hear or read racism is prevented from doing so — they just can't do it on Patreon. The parent's concept of free speech is fully compatible with this point, specifically because alternatives exist (and will always exist, given liberal enough laws protecting freedom of speech).
> The parent's concept of free speech is fully compatible with this point, specifically because alternatives exist (and will always exist, given liberal enough laws protecting freedom of speech).
This argument proves too much. Alternatives always exist; they just vary in how inconvenient they are. By the same logic, it would be OK if every online payment service banned Sargon and every bank refused to let him open an account. After all, an alternative still exists: His patrons could mail him cash every month.
There's no bright line here, and of course I don't think Patreon should be compelled to do business with Sargon, but I tend to worry when popular platforms erode free speech norms by policing content. Patreon is the latest example of this, and they're particularly worrying because they're responsible for people's livelihoods. I'm not alone in this worry. As the article mentions, Sam Harris has cancelled his Patreon account. He's willing to forgo tens of thousands of dollars per month today rather than let his patronage grow and risk losing more in the future. That's quite the condemnation of Patreon's judgement and of similar policies by other companies.
Patreon, like Facebook, has a de facto monopoly. The outstanding question is what is to be done about it.
But if you take a slightly wider look at supporting creators whose content you enjoy, then not at all. You have Twitch subscriptions, YouTube supports/members/whatever they are calling it these days, PayPal, multiple variations of crowdfunding platforms, etc...
It also seems way easier to start up something like Patreon than a FB competitor.
Here's another competitor to Patreon. They have been crippled by PayPal and Stripe refusing to process payments for them. They sound optimistic about finding replacement payment processors, and it's certainly their duty to their customers to try their best, but so far it hasn't happened. https://www.subscribestar.com/posts/5617
Elsewhere in this thread there are people pointing to indications that Patreon's banning choices were due to pressure from their own payment processors.
It's probably easy to create a Patreon competitor. If you want it to not get shut down, though, I imagine you'll have to implement ban policies at least as strict as Patreon itself. So maybe Patreon isn't a monopoly, but on the other hand, it doesn't make sense to say "It's fine if Patreon chooses whatever policies they like because, if the policies are bad, you can just start up a competitor with better policies".
The relevant monopolies/oligopolies seem to be the payment processors.
I think you're probably right. I feel like it's a semantic argument, but it's still worth having, especially when it comes to creating legislation.
There are other options and it's probably not that difficult for another company to disrupt Patreon's business model. There's still the winner-take-all phenomena in tech that makes more or less difference depending on whether your platform has a broad or narrow userbase. If one were creating anti-monopoly legislation, then this distinction might be critical.
The goal of the sort of people doing this is that there are no alternatives. Not competing platforms, not self hosting, nothing. They want to erase all such thought from all public spaces and will not stop until they do.
That is the problem.
Haven't various hosting and mirroring platforms refused to service some of these websites? I recall Gab in particular running into some trouble on that front.
>Insofar as they want to support someone monetarily, no one can prevent them from using Bitcoin.
Except for Bitcoin being non-convertible into legal tender without going through... oh look, a privately-owned payment processor.
If one wants to save up or speculate, well, thats a different matter.
Bitcoin is an anarcho-capitalist currency, and the mainstream aren't anarchists. The mainstream doesn't object to it because they object to free speech, they object to it because they like banks with their FDIC insurance and laws.
Bitcoin is failing on its own (lack of) merits, not because people are mounting some campaign to destroy it.
That's technically correct, but it doesn't get at the core of the concept. If you read the original arguments in favor of freedom of speech, you'll see they don't focus on the rights of the speaker as much as the rights of the listener. John Milton, Thomas Paine, and John Stuart Mill all made the point (in various ways) that every time you stop someone from saying or publishing an idea, you are also preventing others who want to hear or read that idea from doing so. In addition, censorship requires delegating a censor. Effectively, that means you are letting someone else decide what you're allowed to read and hear. I don't know about everyone else, but there is no government body or private company that I trust with that power. Disclaimers, warnings, and age verification steps are fine, but memory-holing ideas? No thank you.
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. This is in direct contradiction to their stated policy (where the person has to endanger the safety of others) and there's a suspicious amount of partisan bias in the application of these policies.
Patreon isn't the first company to behave this way, just the most recent. These actions increase political polarization, erode public trust in institutions and companies, and confirm the persecution complexes of many on the ends of the political spectrum. I'm sure the people in charge of these platforms feel like they're doing the right thing, but I think they are mistaken.