They're trying to stay on the nice side of credit card and other financial companies so porn, speech that takes on controversial/flame/political/religious topics, being a dick or unsavory person, doing illegal things in $COUNTRY will get you banned from the platform. It's understandable from a staying in business point of view but it can feel hypocritical, heavy handed and disingenuous when you hear the CEO speaking about it and explaining the company's actions to users. He won't own up to what they're doing, which would allow people at least be able to empathize with him.
I don't use the platform and I don't support anyone on Patreon. Unless I've made a mistake explaining the situation I'd prefer not to expand this thread. It's serious flamebait.
Interesting. That's not directly relevant to me but I was considering Patreon for a project, so this is at least good to know. Thanks for the explanation.
It is because there might be a pretty big overlap of patrons between you and someone who will get banned which like now would result in people stopping donating through Patreon because a creator they donated to was deplatofrmed which affects multiple channels.
It is a big problem with Patreon as it is with almost all major tech platforms - especially those who have dominant positions without any current viable competition. I can understand shutting down accounts involved in criminal activity but blocking transactions because you disagree with their political views or speech is ridiculous.
The hubris of the tech leaders are a cause for concern. Who voted for them to be our puritanical leaders and tyrants? Do we really want Tim Cook, Zuckerburg, Page/Brin, Conte, etc to be our moral censors? Do we really want them to be the American Politburo to rule over us? I certainly don't. What's even more incredible is that the co-founder of Patreon is a musician by trade. You would think he, of all people, would be against censorship.
A musician, of all people, against censorship? I don't follow. Leaving aside the false-dichotomy implication about all-or-nothing / black-or-white / for-censorship-or-against-it, there's nothing about being a musician that would particularly predict someone's political views.
Other than the fact that musicians and music have been victims of censorship? Other than the fact that musicians had to overcome attempts to censor music? Whether it is ragtime or rock 'n roll or gangsta rap or even classical like mahler. You would think a profession that depends on free speech protection would be more sympathetic to free speech.
Also, in many instances, you can predict someone's political views with some accuracy just by their profession.
Other then the fact that musicians have been bullied and harassed for almost every facet of their identity in some form by right-wing movements for most of the 20th century?
Literally everything you're saying should make them sympathetic to free speech was perpetrated, in the west, by the right-wing.
Just the "right wing" movements? The "left wing" movements have censored plenty in the 20th century. Go ask anyone who lived in communist china or the soviet union.
It's not a matter of liking "right-wing" or "left-wing". Both are capable of oppression and horrific behavior. That's why I believe in principles like free speech. So that horrible people from both the left and the right can't silence people.
I can't understand people like you. The right wing are terrible because they censored people. So lets be like the right wing and censor?
Apparently yes. Visa/MasterCard pressure Patreon to drop users with views they don’t approve of. Most recently alt-right users. I think it’s important to protect free speech, especially the kind I don’t agree with.
I don’t care that much about Patreon censoring the right, because there are many alternatives to take payments online. There are none however to visa/mastercard. It’s a cartel, where the choice is not even made by a customer (it is made by your bank who won’t even ask you), and there is no real alternative. I am pro-free markets but when that happens, I am actually in favor of regulations hitting these two hard, rather than going after google.
> I don’t care that much about Patreon censoring the right, because there are many alternatives to take payments online. There are none however to visa/mastercard.
This is where you're wrong. If a payment processor doesn't like someone, they'll just threaten a platform after platform wherever you pop up. Block whoever we don't like or you won't be able to process payments.
Case in point: Sargon of Akkad. I'm not going to take any stand in this controversy because I don't know the backstory, however as soon as he switched from Patreon to SubscribeStar, PayPal went after SubscribeStar. I'm assuming they've said no when asked to block Sargon, because you can no longer cash out via PayPal. It wasn't Patreon that was after him, it was PayPal.
Baloney. He's claims to not be alt right despite having identical views on most topics. It's about as convincing as when the KKK says they aren't racist, they just love white people.
> He's claims to not be alt right despite having identical views on most topics
He does cite specific differences from the Alt-Right, e.g., he views as excessively collectivist; he hates most of the things they hate, which makes the difference largely academic to a lot of people outside of the broader far right.
He was fighting against alt righters that had targeted him for months in the clip he got banned for where he called them out on their bigoted opinions and poor behavior, and is a known target of theirs. To say he is alt right is unreasonable and incorrect, although for some he is certainly divisive.
One of the odd things about the clip he got banned for, was that the most likely way it could have come to the attention of Patreon, was for the Alt-Right to have submitted it. Basically, it looks like Patreon was doing the bidding of the Alt-Right by doing what's politically convenient for the far left.
To say he is alt right is unreasonable and incorrect, although for some he is certainly divisive.
That's basically the same kind of tactics religious fundamentalists tried to pull in shaming homosexuals way back when. That sort of social manipulation through dishonest labeling, that spirit of squashing dissent -- it's the same kind of tribalist petty evil practiced by bigots back in the day. People who know better need to stand up and call it out.
You seem correct in the observations that the far right and left believe in the same worldview with opposite arrows, seeking to oppress any dissent to this worldview through fake outrage. Both share the worldview that the superior whites need to either help or rule, depending on which fringe we are talking with. Both unfounded beliefs as there are bigger variance within than between identity politics groups.
This is Horseshoe Theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory). Commentators from both sides will vehemently defend their position and claim it to be nothing like the other side. From the reasonable person's perspective (more towards centre), both extremes are authoritarian, and their similarities are more striking than their differences.
It is not a horseshoe, as it is not a continuum. Far-right is pre-modern and far-left is post-modern, and both have a distinctly different view in opposition to the modern enlightenment project. However, the current dominant ideologies on the fringes seem to share some important core tenets and a tendency towards tyranny.
Btw, the article you link seem to argue that there is a historic parallel to this argument. However, post-modernist is a much newer concept and ideology than the historic events listed in it.
Sargon of Akkad is highly critical of the Alt-Right. He describes himself as a "classical British liberal." However, since he also criticizes the far left, the far left tars him as Alt-Right, which I find to be an authoritarian and highly dishonest tactic. Basically, it's a tactic to get everyone to shut-up and put-up through intimidation, brooking no dissent from their own side. That's not how liberals should be engaging and searching for the truth. That's basically how George W. Bush was acting when he was selling the WMD narrative.
> He describes himself as a "classical British liberal”
“Classical liberal”, with or without “British”, is a standard self-identification for modern conservatives, especially right-libertarians; a very wide portion of the political spectrum—reaching pretty far both left and right and everywhere in between—in the modern West, especially the Anglo-American subset, has or claims roots in 18th century British liberal thought.
> However, since he also criticizes the far left, the far left tars him as Alt-Right,
Lots of people criticize the far left without being labelled Alt-Right; OTOH, he does seem to be from a space slightly more libertarian though equally far right and equally, or nearly so, xenophobic on most social axes to the Alt-Right. So there is a real, if perhaps exquisitely fine, distinction there.
That's more of that dishonest narrative/tarring. The man's not even white, IIRC. He's part middle eastern in descent. "Xenophobic" is the label used by the far left to tar anyone who believes in stricter border policies. He's also highly critical of all groups he perceives as using Identity Politics, which in present day includes both the far left and far right of the political spectrum. Both the far left and the far right target him, the far left doing it by using the "Alt-Right" mislabeling, with the far right going along with it for trolling purposes.
So there is a real, if perhaps exquisitely fine, distinction there.
In 2018, this is called an "exquisitely fine, distinction" where in years past, he would just have been called center-left.
He seems to think he is, since part of his criticism of the Alt-Right was that they weren't sufficiently nice to him personally, violating the maxim that “White people are meant to be polite and respectful to one another” (he later claimed this was a criticism of them violating their own standards, but whoever the standard is attributed to his invocation of it only makes sense if he believes he is White.)
> "Xenophobic" is the label used by the far left to tar anyone who believes in stricter border policies.
That may be how some subset of the far left uses it, but it is nevertheless a word with actual meaning, that applies to Sargon, and I'm not a member of the far left.
> in years past, he would just have been called center-left.
Which years past? Maybe the 19th Century. Not anytime in living memory.
That's not how he identifies, though he doesn't think identity should be an issue and that people should be judged by the content of their character.
violating the maxim that “White people are meant to be polite and respectful to one another”
Again, trolling white supremacists by throwing their own broken beliefs (and inability to live up to even those broken ones) back in their face.
I'm not a member of the far left.
Really?
> in years past, he would just have been called center-left.
Which years past? Maybe the 19th Century. Not anytime in living memory.
In my living memory, certainly. Someone being against identity politics, for strict border controls, and being for "equality of opportunity" but opposing "equality of outcome" is a perfectly reasonable liberal position to me, and could have been claimed as such with no comment in the 80's, 90's, and 2000's. It's a dishonest far left narrative to try and label those as "conservative" or even "Alt Right."
Would you please stop it with the ideological comments on Hacker News? After a brief respite, you've reverted back to way overdoing it. That is why we rate limited your account in the first place.
Sargon long self-identified as a liberal. For a long time, he ended up right where the UK Green party was on the Political Compass test, and also matched me pretty spot on. (I'm a child of immigrants, non-white, and a lifelong liberal.) He's moved a bit to the right, but could be rightly called a "centrist."
There's a dishonest tactic of tarring at play here.
Is it really 'dishonest tarring' to point out how silly it is to point out how he criticizes the Alt-Right and White Nationalists, when the method he uses to criticize them is to tell them they act like n * * * ers?
IIRC, he used that word specifically because he knew they were racists, so he deliberatley used a slur he knew they'd hate. It'd be like him referring to communists as capitalist pigs. He may not have a problem with capitalism, but he's using an anti-capitalist insult to drive home the point that they are acting no better than the people they hate.
Is it really 'dishonest tarring' to point out how silly it is to point out how he criticizes the Alt-Right and White Nationalists, when the method he uses to criticize them is to tell them they act like n... ers?
No. What's dishonest is to call people like Sargon of Akkad, Tim Pool, Sam Harris, Dave Rubin, or Steven Pinker "Alt Right" in an attempt to silence them purely by association. All of those people oppose the alt right! Really, no one should be getting away with those cheesy 80's Moral Majority tactics. If just using the n-word makes one alt right, then my creole ex-girlfriend's transvestite creole musician brother is "Alt Right" -- NOT!
The more obviously objectionable thing with Sargon, from Patreon’s POV, is probably that he’s a Gamergater, if we’re talking about controversies of the past five years.
Alt right is neo nazis and white nationalists. Good to know this guy is alt right. Need to stay away from them! It’s so strange that banning of Neo nazis (as you describe him) is controversial!
The guy spends considerable time and effort criticizing and debating the Alt Right, neo nazis, and white nationalists.
It’s so strange that banning of Neo nazis (as you describe him) is controversial!
It's controversial, because many people are being labeled thusly as a dishonest authoritarian intimidation tactic. Tim Pool, who's non-white, a lifelong liberal, and left leaning, is another alternative journalist who is similarly -- and dishonestly, inaccurately -- tarred.
It's controversial, because there are those of us in the liberal camp seeing such dishonest and authoritarian tactics used to silence dissent from within the left. That's not how democratic institutions and organizations who supposedly care about truth are supposed to act.
