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Actually, it's completely different than that. How in the world did you draw that comparison?

 

Unless I'm completely misreading this, it seems Patreon removed someone from their platform for using the n-word, regardless of the intent. It now seems that the person who said that word is now dealing with the consequence of saying the word. If someone says or does something that others find distasteful, the perpetrator has to understand that their actions have consequences, do they not? This doesn't seem like a ridiculous leap to me.

There seems to be a disconnect between folks thinking that censorship and good business practice are the same thing. They aren't. Distasteful ideas can't be suppressed by the state. It can be by private enterprise.

Woulda, coulda, shoulda. In my opinion, the market spoke when it decided to ban Milo from participating. One of the things about capitalism is that it has a propensity to protect itself from outside disruption. If capitalists believe something will prevent money from being made, they'll do what they can to smash that something.

Edit: The radio station analogy would work if every radio station was owned by the state. In America anyway, this isn't the case, so it doesn't apply. Remember when Clear Channel didn't play a bunch of songs after 9/11? Clear Channel only cared about people's feelings inasmuch that it would cause damage to the company if their radio stations played songs that contained the line "my self-righteous suicide" after a bunch of fanatical Muslims slammed planes into the WTC. That is the market protecting itself from harm. Not censorship.

 

The Walmart example is, hilariously enough, collusion. And yes, this is illegal. Generally, you see things like this when, for example, price fixing is done by pharma companies to keep the prices of drugs high. If you're making the argument that tech companies do this out of some kind of concerted effort to stifle conservative speech, I sincerely doubt it. As Beefy Phil pointed out (wb back dude!):

 

There seems to be an assumption here is that there's some kind of meeting where all the tech company CEO's collectively agree to do something that negatively affects a stakeholder, namely customers or competition. That would make it collusion, which is illegal.

What I'm arguing is that there isn't any such meeting and that companies are doing this out of self-interest, not for any moral or ethical reasons. As someone who worked for EA, I'm sure you know better than most how self-serving large corporations are.

 

I'm not certain on the legal requirement for consistent service either, but I tend to fall on the side of "bad service, bad company". Unless the company is big enough to write legislation and get it passed so they can perpetuate their shitty behavior, bad service tends to close down bad companies. If a company's terms of service aren't being applied uniformly, that's really up to a judge or arbitrator to ultimately decide.

I think the thing that irritates me the most is that there is a belief that tech companies are conspiring to suppress conservative views. First of all, I'm not conservative, but if I were, I'd be doing everything I could to prevent people from equating conservatism with xenophobic, racist and sexist views. Views that seemingly weren't okay for people to publicly associate themselves with until recently. Secondly, I think I've made it pretty clear that corporations will generally act in their own self-interest above any moral or ethical reason.

This seems like a talk radio conspiracy theory drummed up by people that want to get people out to vote.

 

What throws me for a loop is I see this and what you posted earlier as very different things. If someone says they are offended by a word, regardless of intent, I find that to be a very silly worldview, but at least it's tangible and coherent, regardless of whether or not I personally agree with it. However, to say that no matter how someone does something, or in what context, that's it's like shouting racial slurs at someone and professing to hate an ethnic group of people is where it gets nutty to me.

I've seen that sort of reaction in a lot of places in regards to this incident. Most of the people that are in favor of him getting banned don't seem to be comfortable (or willing, or whatever their reasons) to simply say that they think banning someone is appropriate over saying a certain word. Instead, the reaction is "Well, he's alt right. He's super racist." That's fucking nonsense, and it's a sort of nonsense that has become increasingly common. You even see people saying things like "It's this kind of speech that gets minorities killed." What in the blue fuck are people even drawing these conclusions from? In case you don't know, he was insulting the alt right, so he called them niggers in a way to say that they act exactly how they pretend the black people they hate act. This was a group of racist trolls that has been harassing him at every opportunity for a couple years or so.

It kind of goes back to the whole alt right thing. What does that term even mean at this point? In 2010 Richard Spencer launched a website, alternativeright.com, but it never had much of a following, and most people hadn't even heard of the term until the 2016 election, and people have been incessantly using the term ever since. The way I actually see alt right used most often is from people who want to label someone "alt right". It just seems to loosely mean "bad people!" rather than any sort of actual group or political ideology, because there is no consistency whatsoever in the ideology who is called "alt right". One day it'll be a classical liberal like Sargon who is alt right, then the next it's a conservative like Jordan Petersen, then it's a group of video gamers, then it's the daily stormer(actual neo nazis), then it's Pewdewpie, and so on. There's no actual common thread or belief system tying these people together. The term before it was well known seems to have been an identity for neo nazis, but now? It's like it's just used so people can say more and more bullshit, and see hate groups everywhere, no matter how ridiculous that assertion is. It's incredible to me how much this has blown up in the last 3-5 years.

Are they? I think my view is more or less the same as yours. Generally speaking, whether or not a company decides to associate with, or platform someone is totally up to them. A few years ago I probably would have completely agreed that companies are just doing things for self interest and monetary reasons, but I'm not so sure anymore. Take the Sargon incident again. How are they acting in their self interest, in the sense that what they did/continue to do is a good business decision? They would have to be the most confused, deluded businessmen ever to reach a conclusion like that. Do you really think they're sticking with the ban solely based on what is best for their profit model? Do you really think that's why he was banned in the first place? It's worth noting that Sargon has said things in the past that offended way, way more people than the incident in question, which was relatively under the radar. He's hated by a lot of activist groups he criticizes.

At this point, it looks to me like a lot of the tech companies (and other companies)are guided in their decision making at least in part by their politics. I agree with you that there isn't overt collusion or anything like that, but it's pretty clear that the line is being drawn in radically different places for different types of people, and it doesn't seem to simply be about how many people are offended.

I don't care if a company wants to take action that I personally feel is unfair or misguided. It's their company, not mine. However, with the media increasingly becoming an echo chamber, and responses to anything some people don't like becoming a crazed babble of isms, misogyny, and conspiracy theory accusations it starts to irk me. It's a very dysfunctional, unhealthy way to have a public discourse. I don't see this issue as an inherently right wing thing at all. There is a very large and significant number of left wingers who are equally frustrated by this bullshit. There's also a side of the right wing that has a very spotty history in regards in censorship and free speech. I trust the free market to come up with alternatives for people that are banned for bad reasons. It's becoming increasingly hard to trust the market of free speech to ensure that truth prevails and important ideas are freely considered when people are so set on spinning people and their ideas into something they're clearly not. Maybe people will eventually exhaust themselves by preaching what they probably already do know is bullshit, but until that happens the partisanship will be increasingly toxic, and the way policies/ideas are discussed will be less and less effectual.

 

It couldn't be that one platform had had enough dealing with the backlash of dealing with Alex Jones' looney tunes bullshit and banned him, and when the other platforms weighed the perception of still hosting that nutbag against the platform that didn't and saw it as a net positive, they banned him too. Couldn't be that, right?

Anyway, Patreon doesn't look great for banning someone based on what they said on a completely different platform. If Patreon thinks this guy could get enough attention to damage Patreon's reputation, then Patreon owes it to the people that work for them and to the investors in the company to protect itself. If banning someone that uses racial epithets from your platform, regardless of context, is what Patreon feels it needs to do, then they should do it.

In this day and age, most people aren't all that interested in going beyond a tweet or Reddit title. Nuance and context is lost. I'm sure Patreon understands this. Otherwise, why even be in that gray area of, "Well, we know this person said this slur, but how they used it matters." That's not the real world. Patreon would instantly become known as the brand that allows white people to say the n-word and get paid for doing it.

There are no words in the English language with the same power to harm white people like there are for people of color or LGTBQ folks. I say this out of personal experience. Being called white trash by a bunch of Asians hurt infinitely less than being called a gook by a white guy. It's not even close. You will never convince me otherwise and it is a foolish endeavor to try.

It sounds to me that you're upset that people are making value judgements on a person's character based on the opinions they have. If someone cries about white genocide, I feel pretty safe categorizing that person as a white supremacist. If a person is anti-abortion, I feel pretty safe categorizing that person as anti-women's rights.

 

Stop calling what happened to Alex Jones censorship.

He is still free to stand on his soap box and shout to anyone who wants to listen.