Still, I guess this does provide a good use case for cryptocurrencies and what not.
Part of freedom is the responsibility to accept consequences of your actions. If you choose to say such vile things that people quit doing business with you, that's just people exercising their freedom. If you think it's unfair, you are valuing your freedom higher than everyone else's.
When you complain about "deplatforming" you aren't asking for more freedom. You're asking for the freedom of others to be removed.
The part where activist mobs can force you not to do business with people targeted by the mobs.
> Part of freedom is the responsibility to accept consequences of your actions.
That's a meaningless platitude - being personally destroyed or run out of business merely because somebody set a hate mob on you is not "consequences of your actions". This is creating climate of hate and intolerance, and that's in substantial the climate we're living in now. Some time ago, it was "if you don't like it - don't read it". Now it's "if you don't like it - destroy his life, his business, and anybody he is associated and does business with". Describing it as "accept consequences" is either extremely naive or disingenuous. I certainly do not want and will not accept such climate of permanent war as something proper.
> You're asking for the freedom of others to be removed.
No I did not. My comments are just above that, and anybody reading them can clearly see I have not asked for any freedoms to be removed. If you're going to distort my opinions, it's probably not smart to do it right next to it - too obvious.
Nobody stole your freedom. People just don't want to interact with you. That is okay though, it is their right to elect to avoid interaction.
Why not just mail out a DVD of all these wacko videos to subscribers instead?
Back when 9/11 conspiracies were still quasi-mainstream, somebody in our neighborhood went door to door and gave every house a copy of Loose Change.
Because he wants to talk on the internet? Is that not allowed anymore because you don't like it?
So your counter-argument to my argument that Internet freedoms are being destroyed is "well, you can still mail out DVDs"? Are you sure it's the strongest counter-argument you could master? In fact, how long did you work on it before considering it's a counter-argument at all? Because for me it certainly looks like confirming my point.
> Back when 9/11 conspiracies were still quasi-mainstream
You mean, never.
> somebody in our neighborhood went door to door and gave every house a copy of Loose Change.
And this connects to my argument... how exactly? I was talking about specifically the Internet.
> Because this one is fresh out of freedom.
Let's not be so pessimistic, but instead marvel at the how cool it is that the internet was built from the get-go to be decentralized
Except in this case it isn't censorship. Nobody can be forced to do business with BitChute if they don't want to. That is just as much of a right as anything else.
BitChute is still more than able to host all the trash it wants. They will just have to find another payment provider. And they do exist. I mean, porn sites manage to figure out how to collect payment. It's expensive as hell because people constantly chargeback porn and virtually every porn hoster is sketchy as fuck too.
Even then they could just get a PO box and have people mail in checks or hell, even cash. It might be old school, but that is how it was done back when all the wackos and conspiracy newsletters were actual things you got in the mail.
Patreon, and other payment processors (like Stripe.com) are having their arms twisted from the highest levels by Visa and Mastercard.
Think for a moment if it would be ok with you if Visa and Mastercard were doing this because they wanted to silence people who advocated for women's rights. Would you still be so libertarian about it?
I think there's also a fundamental difference between an organization that bans people who increase the rights of marginalized groups and one that bans people that are looking to further marginalize people, so your analogy doesn't do anything for me.
It's not just Patreon. If anyone sets up a similar service, and does business with someone that Visa does not want, they will use their monopolistic power to shut you down.
Imagine if they were doing this about a cause you disagreed with. Imagine if our financial industry was run by Trump supporters, and they were slowly squeezing their critics out financially. This is bad.
The only question is what is the precise coefficient of friction on that slippery slope.
You can argue that wedding cakes should be baked for gay couples but that websites should not be hosted for nazis for reasons A, B, and C. But claiming that businesses have some sort of broad right to free association is not merely specious, but completely and obviously wrong.
Businesses do have a very broad right of freedom to serve who they please. The one exception is when historically many businesses have used that power to participate in oppression against specific downtrodden groups. So a business can happily decline to serve US congressmen, freemasons, and people who have thrown up on their floor previously. But they can't decline to serve black people as a group.
The specific groups who have been legally recognized for this are called protected classes, and it's pretty settled law in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group
Unless we live in a 100% free market, then what you are saying is totally invalid. We actually ARE forced to use the established banks and payment processors, we have no choice. The government provides all sorts of privileges and protections to them that make it impossible to just build your own.
When the government strips payment processors of all of their privileges, and when the Communications Decency Act no longer protects media companies masquerading as communications platforms (eg Twitter, YouTube and Facebook), then and only then will your assertions begin to make any sense.
Unless you are trying to send money to ISIS, then payment processors should be obligated to support you.
And indeed, payment processors and banks are far more worried about you donating money to people who's politics they disagree with than actual violent terrorists or child pornographers.
Yes, all payment processors have special privileges, but so to would the one you start tomorrow. But instead you want to force another to serve you. Why?
But in addition to that, the barriers to entry are extreme, to the point where they are essentially monopolies. And they are using their disproportionate powers to play politics.
Would it be okay for the US postal service to deplatform them as well?
I’m always curious about this argument that “just mail it” because the freedom to send anything though the postal service has not always been some sacrosanct right (e.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comstock_laws ). And in other countries that don’t have such a permissive First Amendment I imagine it may still be okay for the post office to censor mail.
to bake the cake or not to bake it? that is the question
edit: Looks like they're more than just a "website", but both this site and the platform site really don't do a good job of explaining that.
It's more like "don't depends on Silicon valley's ecosystem" these days. Because all these tech corporations went crazy since Trump got elected and clearly decided they'll use their audience and market shares for political goals... which they have all the rights to do by the way, and it's actually a good thing, if leads to a more diverse landscape of tech services. There are opportunities for competition but still a lack of VC that can fund that competition...
EDIT: I obviously do not support violent or "racist" views. But since now even radical feminists get booted out of social media and what not because they don't subscribe to a specific ideology, it proves that at the end of the day it has nothing to do with "fighting Nazis".
And if you aren't terrified of that you damn well should be.
Ironically I think that Trump would LOVE to deploy this against his enemies. Perhaps he will at some point.
That's why we need to strengthen political and financial "common carriage".