I don't think anyone is saying that there should be a law that forces Patreon to allow everyone on their platform. More a lamenting that the consequences of large platforms acting like this might be bigger than people think.
Reminds me a little of the whole Parental Advisory thing with rock music or Spotify's decisions around violent artists. How outraged should we be that artists that say very questionable things are on Spotify and Youtube? Should songs about murder, rape or glorifying breaking the law be allowed on those platforms? Or where should the companies draw the line?
For decades Walmart, the largest retailer in the world, exclusively sold censored music albums, yet nobody rioted over that, we all just knew not to buy our CDs there. I don't understand why people all the sudden believe they have a God given right to spew their garbage all over every platform in existence.... that's something very new.
>MUSIC: Wal-Mart does not carry music that has the “parental advisory” label which warns parents about explicit lyrics. We carry some "edited" versions of music that have been provided by the artist or the music label. Wal-Mart does not edit music. Our role is simply to provide music selections that we believe our customers want to buy.
I have an issue with Patreon not following their stated policy, rather than with them not allowing everything.
Patreon, Youtube and Facebook all purport to be free and open platforms except for very well-defined exceptions like speech that endangers others.
People can and should hold them accountable to their own policies. If they want to become moderated sites that allow only a subset of content/ideas then by all means, they should be allowed to do so, but they should no longer be considered open platforms and their policies should outline what content they allow.
Walmart's policy was very clear and they actually followed it.
>For decades Walmart, the largest retailer in the world, exclusively sold censored music albums, yet nobody rioted over that, we all just knew not to buy our CDs there.
Maybe you didn't riot over it. I thought it was blatantly censorious.
To reinforce the grand-parent point: the services are free to put the line wherever they please. It's literally their private business.
If you want a service with more inclusive tolerance levels, sign up for such a service (and not Youtube), or found such a service (and try to make it viable).
The problem is, of course, centralization. Network effects make a few successful services kings of a market, so "everybody" wants to be represented there. This puts such a service in a position of significant power. People actually vote them into that position of power by their continued patronage; this is their free choice, even if not always well thought-out choice.
So, if you want less powerful centralized players, use decentralized services where you can, help fund, build, and spread them. Think Facebook vs Mastodon. (Unfortunately, in music space, there's no decentralized analog to Spotify or Bandcamp.) Internet itself is such a decentralized platform, just not on the application / business level. Good thing we still have it, at least.
>I don't think anyone is saying that there should be a law that forces Patreon to allow everyone on their platform.
I am saying essentially that; there should be a law that forces Patreon and other companies (those oligarchic payment processors, Google, Facebook, twitter, etc) which basically qualify as utility companies to allow people on their platform, unless those people abuse(d) those platforms for severe unlawful activities (crimes). Or they should lose their service provider status and all those "safe harbor" exceptions that come with it, e.g. DMCA safe harbor.
Same as the your local electricity provider (probably a monopoly in your area; tho you can always run a generator aka your "soapbox" pendant all those comments in here are talking about :p) should not be allowed to stop serving you because you wrote a blog ranting about their bad customer service.
I am also saying: Companies are not people, and (their) money is not speech, and I'm all for limiting companies' "free speech" in that their "free speech" cannot discriminate other people. Companies are already limited that way anyway to a degree, be it anti-discrimination legislation when it comes to the work place or the current state of "protected classes" on which they may not base a refusal of service.
You pay for utilities, you don't pay for YouTube or Twitter. Forcing them to carry content is in effect forcing them to either take a loss on that content, or force advertisers to advertise alongside content that they probably don't want associated with their brand.
The customer doesn't set the price. if YouTube and Twitter set their price too low, that's their own fault. They have to figure that out, just like a utility company which provides water or electricity: arrive at a sustainable price that isn't punitive, grossly abusive of the customers and discriminatory.
It's going to take constitutional amendment to put those views into law. I'm guessing that we will have already solved this problem one way or another before you could possibly get that ratified.
Reminds me a little of the whole Parental Advisory thing with rock music or Spotify's decisions around violent artists. How outraged should we be that artists that say very questionable things are on Spotify and Youtube? Should songs about murder, rape or glorifying breaking the law be allowed on those platforms? Or where should the companies draw the line?