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Comment by fargo | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if this has to do with the Kushners (Thrive Capital) leading their latest funding round

More likely this is what happens when you create a trust and safety department run by ideologues that censor according to some elusive concept of “hate speech”. Who defines hate? Ideologues should at least not

Maybe it just has to do with the fact that as a company heavily involved in payment processing they’d be crazy to not be exceedingly careful about who they work with?

Why would this have anything to do with ideology?

Joe Rohan covered this well [1]. What Sargon is supposedly being banned for according to patreon is using the n-word against Nazis that had been attacking him for a while. Patreon said context didn’t matter and that they didn’t like his “brand” whatever that means. He didn’t say this on patreon or even his own YouTube channel, and let’s remember again he used the language of literal Nazis against them.

Supposedly context doesn’t matter if you violate social justice beliefs, because somehow sharing the platform with someone that does wrongthink also taints you. It is a very dangerous way of thinking and we should not tolerate it from tech platforms.

[1] https://youtu.be/2wsQPFyZghc

Context doesnt matter if you risk bringing negative publicity to Patreon, which will directly affect their payment processing rates.

We are here talking about some hypothetical negative publicity. The outrage about what Sargon said is rather contrived and I suspect most of it is an act.

It just doesn't make sense for patreon to care about whether this outrage is contrived or not, any negative publicity over their customers could hurt their margins a lot.

Payment processing is hard. I'm not saying it should be so, but Patreon isn't to blame for that.

More than what the outrage over the censorship of other viewpoints are? To me what they are doing seems more like an act of faith in social justice that is most likely really bad for their business

I rather doubt that outrage over Patreon banning users to keep their payment processors happy would hurt their relationship with said payment processors.

In the call with Matt Christiansen they said this was entirely their decision.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U0mQjUA0T5INc_GDkwPJ2mfh...

To anybody doubting the absurdity we're talking about here: These people (https://twitter.com/RevLeftRadio) still have an active patreon.

Why is that so absurd? They have a strong left-wing viewpoint, heavy on solidarity and anti-capitalist/anti-fascist thought.

I see no racism not calling for enforced monogamy or the taking of rights away from trans people or minorities, or anything of the sort.

I see abundant racism and sexism on patreon of the kind popular of the American left.

Let me rephrase that: You see a lot of calling-out of reprehensible behavior perpetrated by white men.

That's a good thing, that kind of stuff should be called out.

There is no excuse for leftist racism, sexism and anti semitism.

Well aside from implying that they want people to become violent: https://twitter.com/RevLeftRadio/status/909456034527371264

They also openly call for violence, including executions, of people that they don't like (although those tweets seem to have been deleted now): https://www.redstate.com/brandon_morse/2018/12/13/patreon-al...

(Please excuse that source, like I said they have deleted the most offensive tweets recently. Originally this was part of a discussion surrounding Sam Harris leaving patreon, which is where I read about it.)

Why would the Kushners be stifling right-wing voices?

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