I don't like lots of what I hear. But the right to free expression is more important than what I like, or don't.

From the ACLU:

> Can my free speech be restricted because of what I say — even if it is controversial?

> No. The First Amendment prohibits restrictions based on the content of speech. However, this does not mean that the Constitution completely protects all types of speech in every circumstance. Police and government officials are allowed to place certain narrowly drawn "time, place and manner" restrictions on the exercise of First Amendment rights — for example, permit requirements for large groups using public parks or limits on the loudness of sound amplifiers. Any such restrictions must apply to all speech regardless of its point of view.

https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/demonstrations-and-pro...

Also, it's funny that much of what's now "politically correct" was totally unmentionable and censored in the 50s. If those who were "politically correct" then had done a better job at censorship, we wouldn't even be having this discussion.

There is no protection, whatsoever, from any private individual or corporation being required to aid you in broadcasting, distributing or otherwise conveying your speech.

False. This is another of the false narratives promulgated by authoritarians on the left, hoping people will just give up and go away. Free Speech is a fundamental human right, and it doesn't stop at the borders of government vs. private property.

A Jehova's witness was trying to distribute pamphlets in a mining town, where basically all of the houses, all of the roads, and all of the sidewalks were constructed and owned by the company. The company said, "my town, my property, I don't want you to distribute your media." However, in the earlier history of the United States, it was jurisprudence that Free Speech holds priority over private property rights. The company was forced to allow it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBozijndSLc

(Re: Silencing and hoping people will just give up and go away. Again, the obnoxious religious conservatives used to do this sort of thing to homosexuals. All sorts of bigots who held position and power used these sorts of cheesy tactics against racial minorities, alternative lifestyles, basically all kinds of non-mainstream people, because they had no logical, principled, meritocratic arguments. In the end, it was all about feels and people shunning others based on tribalism. That's not what a free society looks like. You need real discourse, not treating ideas like they're armbands.)

And yes, it's true that the Constitution only applies to government action. So private individuals have more freedom to discriminate and censor. Those rights are generally limited, however, for those who provide public services.

For example, if you're seeking a housemate, or inviting people over for dinner, you're free to discriminate. Even over protected categories, such as race, religion and gender status.

But if you're renting or selling an apartment or house, or running a restaurant, you are far less free to discriminate. In particular, over those protected categories. Indeed, you will be required to accommodate needs of those with differing abilities.

The relationship of discrimination and censorship is admittedly complex. In most of the US, for example, shopping malls cannot legally discriminate against protected classes. However, they can freely censor speech. And exclude people who say or do stuff that's against their rules.

Given all that, Patreon is indeed free to censor and exclude. Just as shopping malls are (except, as I recall in California). But even so, there is the expectation that operations that are effectively public spaces (even though they are not governmental) ought to respect rights to free expression. That was typically so for newspapers. And there's been considerable litigation over protests in shopping malls.

So can Patreon legally discriminate and censor, based on politics? Yes, clearly. But can they legitimately be criticized for doing so? Also yes.

In what way? I don’t recall police and other authorities being overly restrained from extremes of violence against civil rights demonstrators, arresting and imprisoning them, and even killing them. If anything progress was made despite the lack of any freedom whatsoever, through civil disobedience. In the case of homosexual rights in the US, it didn’t exactly kick off with a sternly worded letter, it was the Stonewall Riots.

Coverage by national mass media generated widespread public support for federal intervention. And arguably, federal action wouldn't have happened without it.

And indeed, there's quite the contrast for the establishment of homosexual rights in the US. Because there was, for some years, virtually no coverage of the matter in national mass media. I mean, most people arguably considered homosexuality to be far more disgusting than racial mixing.

It was the fight against racial segregation, and the protest movement against the Vietnam War, that set the stage for establishing homosexual rights. And increased coverage in national mass media played a huge role.

So is Patreon comparable to the national mass media? I think that it is.

And yes, I get that those fights for civil rights were "good fights". And that racists and Nazis are "bad people". So it's supposedly just fine to censor them. But that's a dangerous game. It's the old "whose ox is being gored" thing.

Edit: Yes, I'm wrong about "didn't take long" for civil rights. It did take decades. But the main point stands. There wasn't much progress until the national mass media started covering it. And it did take maybe a decade longer for the national mass media to start covering the fight for homosexual rights.

Your sense of how the Civil Rights movement went is... interesting. It isn’t accurate though, and seems oddly idealized. Here’s the reality.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_civil_rights...

For some context, the movement really kicked off in 1954, the famous bus boycott wouldn’t occur for another two years, after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in late 1955, shortly after Emmett Till was murdered. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr wouldn’t give his famous speech in Washington for eight more years, in 1963, the same year Dr. King was arrested again earlier that year. The same year that George Wallace, “Calls for "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" in his inaugural address.”

So no, it didn’t go quite how you think it did. “Some censorship” and “some police and other authorities,” while technically correct understates the reality. Whole regions and their entire governments fought tooth and nail, ultimately requiring the deployment of the national guard. Media helped to an extent, and the federal government acted in slow motion as it always does.

It did take decades. Several decades, now that I think of it.

But do you think that federal intervention would have occurred in the absence of national mass media coverage?

Edit: Yes, there were huge protests, both locally and in Washington, DC. But if the national mass media had not covered those protests, would there have been any action?

I think not.

More than a decade of social upheavel was never going to be swept under the rug, unless the government flexed its muscles and ignored constitutional protections. This is the point, Patreon is just another outlet, and as long as the government isn’t using its extraordinary powers to arrest, supppress, and kill there are always other outlets. We have no guarantee of an easy time, and certainly no guarantee of imposing upon a private company. We have a right to speak, and I think that implies a right to be heard, but not a right to any particular audience just because it’s the one we want.

Last, remember that one of the most potent things to come out of attempts to silence Dr. King was his Letters From Birmingham Jail. On the other side of the same coin, Hitler wrote Mein Kampf in jail. Sargon lost a platform to make money, and wants to act like he’s been crippled in the marketplace of ideas.

Bull. Shit. Free Speech doesn’t mean that you get to dictate how another nominally free entity behaves. The people who’ve invested time and money into Patreon get to choose who they do business with, they don’t have a legal or moral obligation to act as middleman fundraiser for anyone they see as threatening their business.

But the but-for world here -- analogous to Twitter, Patreon, etc censoring stuff -- is that national mass media would not have covered that stuff.

And how does what you say about Patreon not apply to traditional media that's privately owned?

Also, I'm not necessarily arguing that Patreon etc should be prevented from censoring. Mainly I'm pointing to consequences of traditional media being rep0laced by social media, Patreon, etc.

Some decades ago, there were similar concerns about public streets and squares being replaced by shopping malls. And this is a far more extreme version.

Like just recently, the whole point was that the White House had to ask the national media to give the President airtime - they are, in fact, completely able to refuse to.

If you hide people and prevent the people you disagree with from talking - they will just go underground and grow there. The public will just see that you have no real arguments against them (because you would have presented them) - and instead are trying to silence them.

If you want real change, you need to argue with your opponenets, not try to push them into underground.

Social repercussion, up to casting people out of communities, can actually be a highly valuable since very effective tool in such situations. Humans are social beings, after all. But you are right, it must be used sparingly, otherwise those outcast will form communities of their own and reinforce each other.

To what extent is this historically true? In fact, the big instances (like the actual Nazis) were very much silenced by force; the Nazi State was not defeated through the Jews debating them. From Sartre,

> “Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”

Maybe J.S. Mill's ideal would be better of revised rather than assumed.

Beyond that the reason you can’t be extradited to Saudi Arabia is that few countries have such treaties with them. It’s true that the US uses it’s military and monetary power to shove unfavorable conditions where possible, but that’s a universal feature of powerful nations, see China for clarification. Such treaty obligations can lead to problems like the persecution of Kim Dotcom, but it also leads to confrontations over human rights and fairness of laws.

Treaty obligations within Europe prevent them from extraditing someone for a capital crime in a other country. Being outside of binding web of treaties offers freedom, but it often offers the most freedom to dictators. So yes, US copyright law is a mess, and that mess spreads through treaties. That’s a problem with US law, not the concept of treaties.

Most of all, such treaties offer avenues other than violence for countries to settle disputes, and that value can not be overstated.