This is pretty interesting. People like Peterson get massive amounts of money through their Patreon. I would find it very hard to give that up. On the other hand, it seems necessary to do so to stay consistent with his values.
Why exactly won't the outcome of this be that their alternate platform is dominated by characters that ruin the brand and drive away normal customers? Thats's what happens every time this is tried elsewhere.
for a normal social media site that's an issue, for something like this where you only join the site to mainly support people you already know about it doesn't really matter.
Although I'd rather see some sort of open source project or crypto based platform instead of another centralized service that can be taken down by their payment processor. Brave browser and BAT could be the answer
>normal customers
also like the add that "normal" can change pretty quickly, ask women in post-revolution Iran. Within living memory alt-right would be considered normal by a large chunk of the population and people would be chasing people of color and LGBT off these platforms. The tools used to censor opponents today could be used against you tomorrow
No, it's not that simple. The platform will start out hosting I.D.W. celebrities. But if it's an open platform and it aims to avoid "censorship", then the system converges on something like Gab, a place where those I.D.W. celebrities will not long feel comfortable calling home.
I don't know what you're trying to say here. I think Twitter should probably ban Farrakhan. Lots of people have in fact left Twitter because they believe it's too lax about toxic users. But nobody really believes Twitter is an anti-censorship platform; the whole premise of anti-censorship platforms is that Twitter does censor people.
But it's obvious to any user what the difference is between Twitter and a site like Gab. You have to dig to find white supremacists and holocaust denial on Twitter, through a mountain of celebrity gossip and banal conversations. Meanwhile, that stuff is showcased --- is the dominant conversation! --- on the alternative site.
And it's obvious why that's bound to happen: the users that get the most value from supposed non-censoring platforms are exactly the ones that want to broadcast hateful and alienating messages.
Unless you're comfortable talking about recipes or your new book or an upcoming lecture sandwiched between lectures about Jews controlling the media and sending all the black people back to Africa, you're not going to stick around on that platform. Peterson won't be able to do it; it'll destroy his brand.
So again my question is: how is this supposed to work? Maybe it's not really a Patreon competitor but something more like the old Deck blog advertising network, where you'll have to be yea cool to join.
Why do you keep drawing comparisons to social media platforms? Someone that acts as a patron to a specific content creator on Patreon doesn't have to know anything about any other creators using the platform to generate income. As the great grandparent stated it doesn't really matter. Crowdfunding and social media platforms serve different purposes and are compelled by different forces. In fact, I can't see any reason why this theoretical crowdfunding platform should ever need to disclose a full list of creators to any of its users.
>> the whole premise of anti-censorship platforms is that Twitter does censor people.
Yes, Twitter does censor people but in an extremely selective and politically motivated way.
I guess my general point was that just because someone publishes on Platform X, that doesn't mean they necessarily hold the same views as the majority of users on that platform.
I take your point about regular content being swamped by the crazies though. Maybe it's a problem of scale? Attract enough regular people to drown out the extremists.
Attracting enough regular people is exactly the thing that never happens with these platforms, and you can see why mathematically: the people who most want the service are precisely the least regular. The platform doesn't get an even share of users; its user acquisition is sharply biased towards the very worst (and worse still, the loudest worst). The user experience of the platform is quickly dominated by them, and the platform actively repels regular users.
If you join a platform that is obviously dominated by people talking about how Jews are lizard people, others will draw conclusions about you whether you approve of them or not. Which, of course, makes it even harder to attract the regular users that you weren't going to attract anyways because nobody wants to talk about their life next to someone yelling about "the Jews."
That's exactly what will happen. These people don't seem to realize that it's not some institutional conspiracy that keeps their ideas on the fringe: It's the fact that most people find them and their ideas toxic, dumb, boring, and/or repellent.
Carl Benjamin didn't break their rules and their "proof" stripped vital context to make it appear that he was saying the exact opposite of what he was saying. I have to assume this was on purpose because they went out of their way to make a transcript and could not have missed that; so people are fully justified in believing Patreon had it out for him.
We have limited time on this earth. Sometimes we just have to say "I'm done arguing this over and over" and just move on. (Especially when the person on the other side is arguing in bad faith.)
No one has been shut down from continuing the "conversation" on their own platforms. You're not allowed to wander into Wal-Mart and sell whatever you want. You're also not allowed to wander onto Patreon and sell whatever you want.
Actually, I think we should take into account who we're doing business with when we do business. Make the world a better place: Support good people doing good things.
That is a fatuous argument. You could make precisely the same argument about people who shun child molesters. People who shun white supremacists are not the same as white supremacists.
It's a different argument, because child molestation is a heinous crime, but white supremacy is in itself, not a criminal offence. Certain behaviours which may manifest as a result of white supremacy may be criminal.
We have legal systems which can deal with accusation of crimes. If you suspect somebody to be a child molester, you can report them. The legal system makes the judgement. It also prevents you from falsely accusing somebody of molestation if you do so without evidence or reasonable motive.
The same legal system should apply to anyone being or claiming to be white supremacist. Their action is not a crime unless they are inciting crime (ie, calling for racial genocide). If the latter is the case, then they should be prosecuted following the due process. Witch hunting is not due process.
I also think the same legal process should be applied to the far-left, who are frequently falsely accusing people of something they are not. Unfortunately, most people do not have the resources to fight anonymous twitter trolls for libel.
This case with Sargon can be seen as a pretty good example of your argument falling apart. He is frequently labeled as some kind of alt-right white supremacist, when it is precisely this he denounces publicly. (Yes, his words were not the most appropriate, but words are meaningless without context. Patreon specifically ignored the context.)
What has become of the left, is not that they're shunning white supremacists, but they are shunning anybody that they perceive to be a white supremacist. A whole different story. If you have loose definitions like "hate speech", then it is justified to take down anyone you perceive to be your political opponent according to your standards.
Another example case was the witch hunt against Kavanaugh. It seems the left are determined to dismantle the idea of due process and putting people before judge and jury for the sake of virtue signalling and social "justice" (an oxymoron).
I could not be less interested in any debate on an HN thread than I am in the one about whether injustices were done to "Sargon of Akkad" and Justice Kavanaugh.
People who shun white supremacists are not morally equivalent to white supremacists.
> People who shun white supremacists are not morally equivalent to white supremacists.
I'm not suggesting anything of the like. In fact, I will join you in shunning white supremacists, as I would shun supremacists of any race.
When "shunning" becomes more than denunciation, but taking action to unperson people and have them fired, cut off their finance, and make false accusations about their peers, I draw the line.
If you want to keep believing in the moral superiority of that kind of social justice, be my guest.
Brett Kavanaugh is so oppressed they only gave him a lifetime seat at the top of one of the three branches of our government, ensuring him several decades of making decisions which will impact all Americans. A great injustice.
Making judgements about people with whom you're doing business with based on their values and actions is perfectly fine. What isn't fine is making those judgements based on identity or on a general swath of people.
Check out Brandolini's Law for a slightly less short examination of this idea, but the tl;dr argument against this is that any effective refutation of a "bad idea" is necessarily more costly to produce and less likely to be remembered than the bad idea is. So unless we want to have some paid antishills to astroturf our platforms with the not-bad ideas, we need to come up with a better way.
The only reason I've heard of Peterson is because of his criticism of using preferred pronouns. Here is an overview of some of the pronouns: https://lgbtqia.ucdavis.edu/educated/pronouns
To be specific, he wasn't criticising the use of preferred pronouns, he was criticising the Canadian government for forcing people to use these pronouns under penalty of law.
His protest was against government compelled speech.
" In other words, pronoun misuse may become actionable, though the Human Rights Tribunals and courts. And the remedies? Monetary damages, non-financial remedies (for example, ceasing the discriminatory practice or reinstatement to job) and public interest remedies (for example, changing hiring practices or developing non-discriminatory policies and procedures). Jail time is not one of them."
Conveniently leaving out what happens if you don't pay a fine: you can end up in jail.
Another thing is they state things need to become really bad before you get prosecuted so it won't happen. Well that all depends on the political climate. Plenty examples in the world for that.
Lastly they mention other places in the law where speech is limited. But they point at places where certain speech is forbidden, not where it is compelled.
No, he didn’t. He’s one of the few that looked into what it actually said and how it was to be interpreted. Everyone else misunderstood it, and that’s the problem. University lawyers agreed with him.
There have been various "alt-right" versions of companies, like twitter, and they don't seem to take off. Patreon took a long time to grow before enough people heard of it, and understood what it was. Alt-right versions don't have the reach, since by definition, they're niche-focused.
They usually also run into problems with payment processors.
I think it would be healthy for these companies to be more like CloudFlare and get out of the business of determining how "good" a customer is when deciding to provide services. Aside from credit score and legitimacy of proceeds banks can't deny services based on how "good" a company or person is in real life. Once you begin qualifying your users based on their social score, I think we're going down a perilous road when it comes to basic services like these.
To add to this, I think YouTube is okay with having a ToS and denying service to people who violate their ToS (now uniformity of application of the ToS is a different subject). Using the service is not a platform and can't in and of itself create harm. Cash is not harmful. Using cash to buy a gun and using the gun in violence is harmful. Just because cash is a transaction enabler does not mean we deny access to cash to criminals.
Sure, we can go down that path. And Amazon could deny its marketplace to felons, but it's not the right thing to do as it's not their place to make that judgement.
There is a reason why I included the monopoly part. Amazon pretty much has the monopoly on next-day deliveries on goods in the US.
People also dont usually buy goods off of felons because they are felond. They pay for it because they want the good. These creators got paid for their opinions and views.
Amazon is also well in their right to deny goods they deem harmful from beeing sold on their website
Implicit in your answer is that Amazon would be wrong to deny its services to known felons. I agree with that. It's also not a monopoly nor "pretty much a monopoly". There is WalMart/Jet, Target, and many other outfits out there, online as well as physical alternatives. Yet, I think it would be wrong to deny their services to people based on how "good" they thought they were.
would you agree that amazon is in their rights to deny sale of goods they deem harmfull?
I argue that amazon banning firearms is fine. They dont want to support something they deem harmfull. Now if patreon deems these ideologies harmfull, why should they be required to support them?
The difference is that the felon example judges the people selling/buying, whereas patreon judges the goods.
I think Amazon shod follow the law and only sell things which are legal. There are grey areas like "supplements". I imagine they would make a decision based on risk factors.
That said, I think Amazon can decide whether or not to carry a whole category. Sears Catalogs used to sell guns. Congress passed laws and now sales would have to pass muster. But that's altogether different from selling or not selling a service to someone because you think they are "good" or "bad" or you agree or disagree with their point of view.
To me, Patreon is providing financial services, so I think this judgement is not in their purview in the same way Amazon should not judge who is buying or selling on their platform/services. It's none of their business. Is their business legitimate. That's about it.
The term "alt-right" is used so frequently by the left that it has lost any meaning. But if it is meant to refer to far-right extremist movements, I don't think that should apply to either Peterson, Harris or Rubin.
I think the broader point is that the 'free speech' sites that these guys make end up being overrun by the alt-right and the out-and-out fash.
But, on the question of Peterson being alt-right, his arguments for a willful re-adoption of mythical 'archetypes' as a basis for modern society is... well, excatly what happens with all far right ideologies, where a conception of social order is influenced by lobsters. (Cherry-picking bits of animal behaviour to explain human society is a mug's game, but if we were going to go down this route, why not create some vision of frozen gay ice cream orgies and child rearing, based on penguins?)
But the real smelly herring in Peterson's schtick is his conflation of Marxism, post-moderism, and general identity politics. It's an invented bogeyman, detached from any real analysis of the cornerstones of modern poltiics. Again, it's absolutely a key strain of any rightish movement.
A lot of this could be explained as him being more of a grifter than anything, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Not that I agree with him, but in Peterson's defense he talks about lobsters just to show how fundamental the mechanisms related to hierarchies are in animals (point being they have existed for hundreds of millions of years, so they must be really important). You can't say the same about the behavior of penguins.
> if it is meant to refer to far-right extremist movements
No, "alt-right" is people who haven't gone "far-right" (yet) or who are hiding their "far-right"ness for an easier life / speaking gigs / patreon money / etc.
> Peterson
He certainly pals around with a lot of alt-right figures (Tucker Carlson, notably) and seems to have no problem appearing at Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit which has quite the strongly conservative/alt-right/far-right[1] list of speakers.
I don't know. If I take the wikipedia definition [1]
> The alt-right, or alternative right, is a loosely connected and somewhat ill-defined grouping of American white supremacists/white nationalists, white separatists, anti-Semites, neo-Nazis, neo-fascists, neo-Confederates, Holocaust deniers, conspiracy theorists and other far-right fringe hate groups.
I don't see how Peterson fits in that category. In a way the fact that the term is abused by the left to refer to all sort of non extremist people seems to have given a new meaning that you are refering to. Kind of like far-left movements refering to "facists" anyone to their right in the 80s.
Peterson is a vocal proponent of race "science" and regressive anti-feminist social structures. He's as right as they come, and he's "alt-right" because he's devoted his career to re-framing these ideals in ways that shake off the stigma they now carry.
Where is he a proponent of "race science"? Citation needed.
And being an opponent of some of the more ludicrous off-shoots of modern feminism is not "alt-right", it's just common sense (and mainstream: for example only 9% of women in the UK consider themselves feminist[1]). And science, etc. Now I don't necessarily agree with his stances, but they are nothing if not well-reasoned and supported by data.
Yes, to me it is very clear from his words as well.
Anyway, since you are making the claim, it would be up to you to explain what in his words is "promoting" (what a proponent does) so-called "race-science".
First, you'd probably have to define what you mean with "race science".
It hasn't lost meaning with me, when I read "alt-right" I read "racist trolls".
If you're saying it doesn't apply here, that's possibly fair, but one incorrect application doesn't wipe out the term.
And to echo the point in my sibling comment, these new sites that emphasize free speech (definitely a good cause) tend to immediately face the question of, "how free is speech, really?"
I honestly don't know if Reddit or Twitter, if started today, would have survived the onslaught. I don't know if anyone's figured out what to do that feels both "adhering to free speech concepts" as well as not becoming the next alt-right forum.
Your delusion is that you associate everyone on these platforms with the alt-right because some of them are alt-right. The reason alt-right flock to those platforms is because they are de-platformed elsewhere. This does not make the non alt-right people on those platforms suddenly become alt-right.
And the reason "alt-right" and "racist troll" mean nothing is because they are used so liberally where they do not apply, and a few minutes of investigation would conclude that they do not apply. Consistent incorrect usage of language applied to something that it is not makes them lose their meaning.
A solution to the "adhering to free speech" would be to allow free speech on platforms, and make it clear what is or isn't allowed on the platform, instead of using vague terms like "hate speech", which could be literally anything that some person finds undesirable.
It's not a delusion, it's the association that kills new startups.
You can rail against suppression of speech all you want, a company whose loudest and most active users are white supremacists either has to lean-in to that culture, remove it from the site entirely, or hide it. The first option is moral bankruptcy, the second option is an uncomfortable practicality on the limits of free speech, and the third option makes your new site look dead from the outside.
You act like this is a simple problem to solve, but it's far from simple, and getting it even slightly wrong means startup death, period.
What kills startups is a cartel of payment processors colluding to limit competition. A free market would allow users to make their own decisions about what platforms they wish to use. The entrenched players simply do not want to allow competition, and moreso, they want to involve regulators so that they become in effect "utility providers," which will cement their market positions, otherwise under threat due to their failure to continue innovating.
In a free market, the majority of people would not entertain far-right or far-left forums and would congregate on the services which are providing engaging and meaningful content.
This is the case for say, Youtube right now, but if they have an asymmetric approach to censorship (failing to ban far left ideologues), then they'll end up a far-left cesspit that people will leave in droves.
I guess my point in all this is that it's hard to mesh practicality (not having your startup fail) with ideology (not suppressing people's human right to free speech).
I'm with you on free speech, but I also don't know what I'd do if I were in Twitter/Reddit's shoes, because I don't think "do nothing and let the hatred continue" is viable (both from a business and kindness perspective), but I also don't think suppressing it is morally justified.
Most of the hate is coming from the left, but this is "acceptable hate" if is directed at white/straight/christian/men, or other bogeyman they can come up with to justify their eternal victimhood.
The divisions are only getting wider, and it is helpful to neither side. When people say racism is on the rise, they couldn't be more correct. White-racism is on the rise, and tolerated. The increase in white supremacists I see as largely a reaction to this. I'm not a selective racist and I despise racism in all of its forms.
Sexism too. Sexism against men is also very real, especially in tech. A diversity quota is a sexism quota. A person's gender should not factor into a hiring decision at all.
I think you're stark raving mad if you believe the left is responsible for the hatred going on in the world right now, but it's honestly not important where it's coming from so much as the fact that it's very hard to start a new social media website right now, because you're immediately hit with questions about where you stand on free speech, in a way that Reddit and Twitter (and others) never had to deal with.
Every new social media company is basically planting their flag very far in one direction or another (either blocking hate speech or leaning in entirely).
The left are creating divisions that don't exist anymore. That were solved decades ago. It has gone from "equality for all" to "more equality to those who didn't have the same equality in the past." It is complete lunacy.
The best thing for people to do is reject both this idiocy, and the idiocy of the far-right which wants to revert things back to the old way. This is what the people in the IDW are aiming to achieve - to bring people back to having discourse rather than bickering and widening the polarisation.
We have racists and sexists on both the left and right. We need to denounce racism and sexism in all of their forms, else the problem is only going to increase
What kills startups is a flock of alt-right users who scare away people not like them (the xenophobia is definitional to "alt-right"), so if you let them stay and don't hide them, you immediately cap your growth substantially. If you let them stay and do somehow hide them, you're hiding your growth which also kills you.
A free market would (and does) kill a startup that allows such toxic members of any affiliation, regardless of what payment processors decide to do.
> It hasn't lost meaning with me, when I read "alt-right" I read "racist trolls"
It's stronger than simply "trolls". "Alt-right" is just the latest PR rebranding used by neo-nazis/white-supremacists. Obviously, generalizations about any group of people is problematic; trolls and other not-explicitly-neo-nazi people use the label "alt-right".. Those people might want to consider that if you hang out with neo-nazis and repeat their memes/trolls, people might start to assume you are a neo-nazi. If someone likes to spend time in hang out with ${sport} fans, uses slang associated with ${sport_team}, most people are going to assume they are fan of that sport even if they claim* otherwise.
I suspect a lot of people might think I'm misinformed because someone in the "alt-right" said they were not nazis, and would never support racial violence. Remember that neo-nazis lie. Is your opinion abased on their public PR-focused interviews? If you have any doubt whatsoever that these are neo-nazis dreaming of bringing back the holocaust, I suggest watching this[1] video at 41:12, which is footage from a popular "alt-right" discord stream inside the Charllottesville rally. In their own words:
Speaker: Did Hitler do anything wrong?
Audience: [loud "no"]
Speaker: One more, I want everybody to repeat after me..,
,,,this is the first precept of the true alt-right:
Gas the [slur]s, race war now!
Audience: [even louder cheering]
I think you misunderstand the problem. It's not that there are actual Nazis in the alt-right or how horrible they are. It's that people like Peterson, (gasp) Harris and Weinstein get labeled with that term.
This is not that. The Intellectual Dark Web is starkly opposed to the alt-right (and any that consider group identity as paramount). The defining feature of the IDW is about open, honest discussion and debate of ideas. That is incompatible with identity politics.
Although whatever they do is often miscast as alt-right in part because the IDW defends free speech even when they don't agree with the content. Indeed Sam Harris deleted his Patreon account to protest the censoring of those he does not agree with. It's a principled stance and an important one.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
We seem to have incompatible definitions of those terms. But I guess that's why this is a good thing. People bring different lived experiences and perspectives to their creative work. Some of those differences are too far to bridge while trying to make a living.
They should be able to go off and build their own home that suits their needs when others won't change their home to serve one specific community's conflicting preferences.
If you look at the intellectualdark.website, GP description was pretty much on the spot IMHO.
The people there, like Jordan Peterson, Sarah Vaughan, Sam Harris, Dave Rubin, Lindsay Shepherd and Claire Lehmann are definitely not alt-right, not only by their own accord, but also by my personal reading and viewing of their work. Have been following that site, and so far spotted no white supremacists, racists, bigots etc.
My disagreement is not out of ignorance of who these people are and what they think. I promise we're not going to agree here. Nothing can come of pursuing a subthread trying to agree on definitions for political alignments.
Which brings another questions: are payment processors responsible for their inability to take off (maybe because of bias?), or is it the actual market that sees no interest in them?
To the extent that "alt-right" has any meaning at all, it seems quite wrong and perhaps disingenuous to suggest that a crowdfunding site focusing on the "Intellectual Dark Web" (IDW) would be "alt-right" in any sense.
Edit: Of course when I say something might "seem" disingenuous, I'm not blaming parent in any way for it! But this is a sort of claim that is sometimes made in an arguably insincere manner, as part of some partisan controversy or another, and it's important to be able to point this out.
From the headline I was expecting a porn thing rather than a right wing thing. But both groups have similar problems with reach and payment processing.
Ignoring whatever views you may have about him and those he associates with, at the end of one of Carl Benjamin/Sargon of Akkad's recent videos on his Patreon removal [0] he starts talking about 'alt-tech' (Gab, Voat, whatever this alt-Patreon ends up being) and tells his viewers to join with him 'to essentially build a new Internet that _they_ can't attack'.
This has me wondering about the long-feared Balkanisation of the Internet. It's always been assumed that nation state conflicts would bring this about [1,2], but this incident has me wondering if we might not see it come about based on ideology instead.
With all the fuss made about how people on social platforms live in filter bubbles, at least those bubbles coexisted on the same platforms and there might be at least some chance of piercing them. What's going to happen if we create two (or more) entirely separate service ecosystems for people to sort themselves into on political bases?
On the flipside, maybe this is a _feature_ of the market rather than a bug and everything'll work out fine [3]? It might even lead to a drive to develop resilient, distributed services that don't run the risk of a single provider being strongarmed or being able to revoke service on ideological grounds that everyone can benefit from.
Humans interpreted censorship as damage and routed around it long before they encoded that into the internet. Dissent seems like an inherent, impossible to isolate part of the human condition. They can create bubbles all they like, but some people will break out and keep the ladder down.
> ... "to essentially build a new Internet that _they_ can't attack".
This refutes any dialogue and is used mainly by people profiting off ideology (on all sides of arguments, not just right wing). Make sure 'you' belong to a special group and point to everyone which is not part of that group as bad and make sure the active followers feel the same way by making any claims needed (lies included).
I'm wondering when he starts selling vitamin supplements on the "new" internet. Just to give an example.
BitTorrent couldn't be shut down, and that certainly didn't fail. Various torrent websites have been shut down and the protocol sill runs as good as ever.
What is needed isn't just a company delivering a patreon alternative, but people to build a protocol for crowdfunding, much like Bittorrent. This can be done now thanks to Bitcoin. If exchanges and webhosters get shut down, it will cause a slight disturbance in the protocol, but it won't bring the protocol down.
These protocols can offer better privacy than their centralized counterparts, and censorship becomes a non-issue. Given the clear advantages, I suspect that it is the centralized, politically charged providers who are doomed to fail, eventually.
Who cares about the protocol?
BitTorrent most certainly has taken a huge hit just by being associated with piracy, but regardless that's not very interesting. There are tons of ISPs etc. that filter BitTorrent, but that's mostly because it puts a strain on the network. Aside from that few has been attacking the protocol itself.
If emailing was considered illegal and google, microsoft et al would shut down their servers, you would still be able to email people.
Though far from anyone, and you might need to remember that odd IP because the DNS queries for popular people might be blocked depending on where you live.
If that was the case, would email be dead? Yes.
Would email as a protocol be dead? No. But it would be dead in the eyes of the public.
And that kind of defeats the "censorship becomes a non issue". By that logic censorship in china is also a non-issue. Because you can circumvent the great firewall with VPNs. Never mind that you have to be tech savvy and take personal risks, but despite that it isn't a non-issue to the public. And that's enough.
DNS is a problem for censorship resistance. The solution is not to identify people by their IP address, but to identify them by a unique token which cannot be forged by anyone else (a public key).
In place of DNS, you have distributed gossip protocols which map public keys to IP addresses, and where the messages in that protocol are digitally signed using the private keys for that public key, such that you couldn't have the equivalent of "DNS spoofing".
You can also use the same public keys to perform an authenticated DH key exchange and then have all of your communications encrypted and MITM resistant.
A public key would be like a phone number. You give it out to the people you want to have it directly.
We're effectively in an arms race right now where one side is determined to tightly control internet traffic like the Chinese firewalls, and the other side is developing distributed protocols which resist these censorship efforts. The latter has had a significant boost with the invention of Bitcoin, which can now be used without an internet connection, over SMS, satellite, radio and whatever else. This isn't going to be a trivial thing to shut down.
Gossip is P2P. The protocols can be hidden as if they were SSL or some other widely used protocols, but without the PKI and the centralization problems that has. Evading the censors will probably be a continuous effort. The great firewall has not succeeded in preventing the use of proxying services and VPNs, despite the efforts.
If internet censorship becomes too widespread, people will use other communication mechanism to conduct trade. As I mentioned, Bitcoin is broadcast over satellite and radio in some locations. You can send a transaction as an SMS message. A bitcoin transaction is ~250 bytes and can be encoded as a sequence of 16 emojis. I can print a bitcoin transaction on paper and the recipient can scan it.
Sure, but "evading the censors will probably be a continuous effort" and "censorship becomes a non-issue" are not compatible in the real world.
Even despite that the great firewall has not succeeded in preventing the use of proxying services it still is a massive success. And despite all the ways you can circumvent it censorship very much continues to be an issue, I'd argue more so for every day.
The instant such SMS message transactions become popular a quick filter will kill that if the need for it arises. And SMS is hardly the technique for privacy minded communication (neither is bitcoin).
What remains is perhaps ham radio. Still easy to triangulate, jam and is not accessible to anyone but the most extreme. Making triangulation even more desirable and paints an even greater target on your back.
Printed copies are hardly something to look forward too, it also excludes pretty much everyone. Cash would be quite superior unless you are transferring huge amounts (which most won't).
Right. So the next step is covert channels. And given how much high-definition video is bouncing around, there's lots of potential covert bandwidth. Even at the ~0.1% level.
No, not likely Netflix. But there's lots of small-scale YouTube stuff. And video messaging.
Edit: So let's say that you enjoy porn. But all the ISPs are blocking it. And let's say that there was a system where you could get what you wanted, in exchange for routing other stuff. Like some mix of Tor, I2P and Freenet, except as covert content in innocuous HD video.
Peterson and Rubin are starting this because Patreon banned Yiannopoulos and Benjamin. Benjamin got banned for saying, among other things, “Maybe you're just acting like a n....r, mate? Have you considered that? Do you think white people act like this? White people are meant to be polite and respectful to one another, and you guys can't even act like white people, it's really amazing to me." Portraying Patreon’s action as being anti-conservative is pretty disingenuous unless “conservative” was suddenly redefined to mean “racist.”
What stops Patreon et al from becoming extremist? (On the left)
IMO, it has already happened. The far-left have already crossed lines that are tremendously damaging for society, while at the same time they point the finger at countries like China for engaging in the same kinds of actions they themselves are engaged in.
Free-speech is not just some alt-right or far-right conspiracy to oppress people. It's a fundamental value that our societies are built on. The idea of free-speech means that some people will say some extreme things, and free-speech is what enables you to point out their extremism so that people can be better informed.
Big tech has become extremist in its calculated attempts to deplatform (unperson) people. The people calling out this extremism sometimes have the undesirable effect that they catch the association of reactionaries on the opposite side (the far right). The people on the IDW have consistently made cases against extremism on the right, and in many ways, they are the limiting the extent of a potential radical right backlash that would otherwise come as a result of crackdowns on liberties from the left.
> What stops Patreon et al from becoming extremist? (On the left)
Enough people leaving if they do not agree with Patreons views
> IMO, it has already happened. The far-left have already crossed lines that are tremendously damaging for society, while at the same time they point the finger at countries like China for engaging in the same kinds of actions they themselves are engaged in.
Right. We also need to look at ourselves in terms of surveilance and social score systems, which no doubt also exist in some form in european countries and the US.
> Free-speech is not just some alt-right or far-right conspiracy to oppress people. It's a fundamental value that our societies are built on. The idea of free-speech means that some people will say some extreme things, and free-speech is what enables you to point out their extremism so that people can be better informed.
Agreed. Free speech is important. Everybody should be able to say what they want, or stay quiet if they choose. However, this does not mean that I have to let my racist neighbour hold a talk in my living room.
> However, this does not mean that I have to let my racist neighbour hold a talk in my living room.
The actions of the left are more akin to investigating which bank your neighbour uses, then going to that bank and asking them to close his account down or you will cause a scene.
The article makes it seem like patreon became aware of their ideologies _somehow_ and decided they are not a match for their site. How they became aware does not matter. I couldnt find a source for there beeing a scene/public outcry to ban these patreons.
If a bank gets made aware that they accidentially support a cause they despise morally, why shouldnt they cancel their account?
> Because a person's political views have nothing to do with banking.
Exactly.
But what if it is the "Lets kill all the purple people" fund, in a country where purple people have zero rights. Now its not anymore about the persons political views, but where the money gets used.
I dont support patreon banning people with different personal views, but I do support them in their right to not support unwelcome content.
In societies with a rule of law, that would easily fall under incitement to crime, which is a crime. We have legal systems which can and do deal with this so that a bank does not need to take upon itself to make politically charged decisions.
In societies without rule of law, then I think it's fair that a bank could cut off access for another, but we also have a legal framework for dealing with this, the UDHR and the ICJ.
We built these legal frameworks specifically for the purpose of ending the witch-hunting mentality of our medieval ancestors. It's a shame that so many people want to undo centuries of developing frameworks that protect them for their quick virtue signalling.
The real question the far-left needs to ask themselves is, if we throw away legal processes in favor of witch hunts, then who is going to protect them when the tide changes?
> I guess I still dont understand. Why should a private company be required to support a cause they dissagree with?
By that argument, you could conclude that anyone has the right to refuse services to any race, gender, sexuality. We have deliberately made laws to prevent this kind of exclusion. Now you suddenly want to bring it back?
Of course, the difference is that if you are white, male and straight, you're not part of the "protected" persons, and you can be denied service by anyone.
And people wonder why there might be an increase in white people shifting further to the right?
This is a phenomenal question. My gut tells me it has something to do with sequestered/topic-specific forums or boards. That linked with a karma system and ideologies have an environment that is almost cancerous.
High-karma posts and topics help to deter or teach new comers. They also serve to create a narrative and local extrema that begins to differ from more broadly held views.
Next, consider that a sequestered board also limits (even eliminates) any empathy a user may have had. No one thinks differently from them, no one has a differing opinion.
HN is in stark contrast to these other systems. The entire site may be self-contained, but there is no place for users to hide (in PMs, in sub-boards, etc.). If we want to be here (which I think we do) we have to deal with each other, listen to differing opinions, have real conversations. There is a karma system, and I'm not quite sure how it fits in...
I'm a latecomer to HN and I remember wondering at first how such a 'basic' site could possibly be so popular. After a while, it was clear that something was really very right about the design of the thing, but I hadn't ever bothered to put into words just what that was. Now I don't have to.
Who says this site intends to NOT get extremist? Providing a platform for freedom of speech as an ultimate goal will end up with extremism, which chases the less extremist people away - which is why e.g. Reddit started to crack down on the fringes a while ago, to increase their mass appeal and not piss off potential advertisers.
If you run a platform where your members pay you a percentage though, you're not beholden to advertisers. You'd be beholden to law enforcement though.
Well, they will likely run into problems with payment processors. My guess is that the only way they can achieve this is by still filtering for unwanted content (porn, extremists) but trying to not do what Patreon did, which is to call extremist people who really aren't just because they don't share their political opinion.
I agree on the intention but I don't think it is meant to be a platform just for themselves. Where will they draw the line for free speech is not an easy question. If you are absolute about free speech, you end up concentrating all the rejects from the other platforms and this may very well end up becoming an extremist hot bed.
They aren't absolute about free speech. These are not Gab/Voat people, these are Moderates. They still believe hate speech and inciting violence should not be tolerated, they just use the US Government's definition for the first amendment instead of Patreon's.
Hopefully you are also beholden to your own moral compass. There's a risk this new site turns into "Let's collect money to harass people we don't like."
Sure, maybe they intend that. But that puts them pretty much immediatly in the dark web. Tor server because no hoster wants a crowdfunding page for extremists. Bitcoin because no way credit card companies are gonna partner with you
Thats gonna cause a non-negligible drop of users and revenue
They are focusing on intellectual content here, and the obvious way is to do it by invitation - if you are an Intellectual Dark Web (IDW) personality, acknowledged as such by existing members you'll get to play, otherwise you won't. This is quite different from how Voat, 4chan etc. work. At the end of the day, all worthwhile Internet spaces rely on moderation of some sort, and even HN is no exception.
So, I've have listened to quite a few of Jordan Peterson's talks to understand what was going on last time there was a controversy around him. I'm part of one of the demographics that was really angered about some of his conversations. After actually watching the content, I have seen nothing to worry or get mad about.
How could anyone think that "intellectual dark web" is any accurate to describe him?
There's nothing secret about what he does. He has podcasts, public talks and university classes that he uploads to his youtube channel.
It seems that the only way to create controversy around him is to clickbait stories and not actually listen to or describe his actual content.
Other than a profile / link aggregator called "intellectualdark.website" that hosts his profile, I don't see any relation at all.
Am I missing some details? Anyone has the full explanation?
---
Edit:
This is about the article's full title: “Top Patreon creators, of the 'Intellectual Dark Web,' say they're launching an alternate crowdfunding platform not 'susceptible to arbitrary censorship'”.
The "intellectual dark web" is a term that I believe Eric Weinstein coined to refer to themselves, so it is not meant to be critical or to refer to secrecy. Rather I understand it as a reference to a relatively diverse circle of intellectuals (Harris and Peterson for instance are on the opposite side of the political spectrum on many topics), that have a large direct audience (through youtube, conferences and podcasts), but that are persona non grata on mainstream medias (other than the occasional hit piece).
You seem to know a bit about the subject, I'll take the opportunity to ask a few questions if you don't mind (well, anyone else can answer too).
I am scouring the internet in the search of any snippets of information that actually links those youtubers / podcasters together.
Other than being at the center of controversies and having a lot of public notoriety, I'm not seeing anything. Even their ideologies and philosophies are not the same.
From my point of view, it almost seems like a huge misunderstanding... or perhaps a smearing campaign but I'm not one to cry wolf.
The situation is somewhat similar to that time mainstream media was implying relationship between youtubers based on 3rd degrees connections that occurred after collaborations. "X worked with Y. Y also worked with Z who is evil. X must be evil".
> Other than being at the center of controversies and having a lot of public notoriety, I'm not seeing anything. Even their ideologies and philosophies are not the same.
The intellectual dark web isn't about having the same ideas. It's about being willing to talk about and debate those ideas in a civil, calm way. They invite each other onto their Youtube channels/shows/podcasts, and are invited together into more formal events to do the same.
This is grasping at straws. I am no alt-right apologist and consider myself quite the democratic socialist. Even from my point of view, it seems like this is nothing more than a vilification of the social discourse.
Would Sir Roger Scruton, The Cambridge Centre for the Study of Platonism and the Ralston College be considered part of the "Intellectual Dark Web" for hosting Jordan Peterson? (I'm not well versed in Peterson's career, this is the latest video on his youtube channel).
Perhaps Channel 4 News is also part of the conspiracy for hosting him on TV. Channel 4 is operated by Channel Four Television Corporation which is a public corporation of UK's Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. Does that means that the UK is at the head of the "dark intellectual web"?
...
I'm obliviously kidding, but there's no limit on how far you can spin this situation.
Thanks for answering. I'm leaving it at that, now I know more but this is not a rabbit hole I want to dive in any further.
It’s very much a smear campaign. This is a common tactic that their detractors use to great effect. It was also used to get Damore fired from Google. A lot of outrage and false headlines, not many people actually reading the document that he wrote. They tried to get everyone to make up their mind that he was an evil to be destroyed before even listening to or engaging his ideas.
Well they occasionally debate with each others but aren't supporting the same ideas. They do have in common that they disagree with identity politics, and as you can tell from the name calling on this HN page, this is a topic on which for many there is zero tolerance for any disagreement.
Peterson mostly discusses religion (from a philosophical point of view), self-improvement, identity politics. He tends to be more on the conservative side but outside of identity politics doesn't discuss politics that much. His videos are all on his youtube channel [1]. A good way to make your own opinion is to watch the channel 4 interview, which I think is the way many people discovered him [2]
Harris is a Democrat, furiously anti-religious and anti-Trump, talks about quite a variety of topics. You can browse through his podcasts [3]. He also doesn't like identity politics and islamist extremism. To get a good idea of his position on a touchy topic, you can try his interview of Charles Murray [4], which is very interesting and I think is a good example of how a relatively balanced point of view can get unfairly attacked.
I am less familiar with Rubin [5]. My understanding is that he is more of a libertarian.
Also less familiar with Eric Weinstein (and his brother Bret Weinstein). But you can listen to his discussion on the Intellectual Dark Web with Sam Harris [6]. Harris also has some interesting discussions with Bret Weinstein.
The name is just part of the conspiracy-laced aesthetic of the alt-right in the spirit of QAnon and InfoWars.
As for where Peterson fits: he's the father figure of the alt-right. His rhetoric is slightly more palatable to the main stream, so he can be the face of alt-right media while also providing shelter to his rowdier alt-right children (in this case, Milo Y). This arrangement provides the necessary veneer of legitimacy to the platform while ensuring the protection of hate speech.
Peterson is definitely a gateway drug. There's a gradual progression from "conservative left-wing" (e.g. Carl Benjamin, who for a long time self-identified as "left-wing"), "anti-SJW"/antifeminists and centrists to the alt-right and actual nazis.
I'm sure Peterson sees himself as a conservative and a moderate, just as I'm certain Carl Benjamin used to think of himself as "actually a leftist". But the "moderates" and "centrists" obsession with "SJWs" has shifted the Overton window and some former alt-right creators have recognised this and since reoriented themselves.
Peterson and Harris are useful figureheads because they register as moderates or centrists if not liberals in most people's minds, but they're extremely close to conspiracy nuts like Paul Joseph Watson, race realists like Stefan Molyneux, or people like Ben Shapiro.
I used to watch a lot of YouTube "skeptics" (mostly former YouTube atheists who left that movement over the "Atheism+" debate) and I experienced the progression first-hand, with anti-SJW panic, Buzzfeed obsession and other nonsense resulting in self-described centrists aligning themselves with the right by seeking out the more presentable right-wing extremists (and maybe a few center-left moderates "for balance"). Quickly there were videos about race realism, white genocide, and even "the Jewish question".
Luckily I managed to jump off that train but it wouldn't have take much to nudge me over that "centrist" stop gap (especially with Peterson and Damore normalising the rational disconnect I experienced).
Also it's worth mentioning that even at my most "centrist" I never got as much hate online from "SJWs" for incredibly dumb statements as I got from "liberals" as I shifted back to the left. Leftists just blocked me. "Liberals" trolled me, downvoted me and drowned me out with vapid memes (all in the name of "free speech").
EDIT: Case in point, here's YouTube atheist CultOfDusty who joined the alt-right until he realised that put him in the company of people supporting Mike Pence, who stood against everything he believed in. Note that he's still "anti-SJW" but other YT atheists don't make that distinction and have since tried to slander him by taking him out of context or putting words in his mouth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thliETccJss
Oh my god. As of right now, I was blissfully unaware that this group of towering idiots actually called themselves the 'Intellectual Dark Web'. I thought it was an ironic editorial twist.
As far as I can gather, it's a media coined theme.
Similar to the "alternative influencer network" that they coined for YouTubers.
The whole thing is grasping at straws really. The medias seems to think that everyone who is in the edgy/troll/internet/meme culture are working together for some nefarious purpose.
Their latest smearing campaign is against free thinkers, podcasters and debaters... or using their words, the "Intellectual Dark Web".
The only relation those people (both thinkers and influencers) have is that they use the Internet to 𝐚) spread their content and 𝐛) reference each other and sometimes collaborate together. Both of those actions are done by every content creators online no matter their intentions. Collaborations and networking is the basis of the internet.
That's a stiff statement that could use support beyond a passing comment on Hacker News. Let's take a few members of the "Intellectual Dark Web"[0] like Bret Weinstein, Sam Harris, and Michael Shermer; I'm truly curious how you classify them as "towering idiots".
> Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.
Please don't create throwaways to start flamewars. Users that do this repeatedly get their main account banned.
These are great examples if you have no understanding of power structures.
Individual humans are problematic by their nature. They're sexist, racist, and all other kinds of "ists", and black nationalism is just as dumb as white nationalism.
Racist tweets aren't genocide, and I would go as far to say that racially motivated murder by individuals isn't genocide.
Genocide is systematic. There's a difference between an individual racist (or even group of racists) committing a murder, and the systematic erasure of a group.
You have no clue what is happening in SA right now, and how it will end up if the far-left keep providing a platform for this kind of racist vitriol against whites.
Last I checked the murders of farmers in SA have little to do with skin color and even white victims have come out to clarify that. But of course focusing on the white victims is more interesting when your audience is mostly white, especially if you already promote the idea of there being an ongoing "white genocide" through interracial relationships (because racial purity somehow is still supposedly a thing in the age of Ancestry dot com).
If something were "extreme leftist" I would assume it to be worker owned and operated, not a VC funded capitalist corporation in the traditional sense.
It's essentially just extreme liberalism. Still capitalist in every way shape and form, but takes stances on social issues. Capitalism has found it can profit more from adopting, or making a show of adopting, the causes of traditionally marginalized groups while continuing the system of oppression it feeds off of.
> If something were "extreme leftist" I would assume it to be worker owned and operated, not a VC funded capitalist corporation in the traditional sense.
Interestingly, given how low-capital-intensity the whole software development "industry" is nowadays, I've often wondered why we don't see more worker-owned-and-operated, self-bootstrapping enterprises in this sector. Even aside from political alignment, it should kinda be a natural fit. What's it that makes folks want to take on debt and VC-funding? Maybe the high real estate costs are an issue, and such enterprises would be more successful outside CA?
I mean, Free Software is basically communism (think of software as "the means of production" and the ideological similarities become obvious).
But the reason most startups are not worker-owned is simple: most founders are capitalists and VCs prefer investing in profit-driven or growth-driven companies, not socialist cooperatives.
EDIT: In other words, companies compete in the arena of the "free" market and "success" is defined by size, growth and profit, neither of which cooperatives have any reason to focus on. Cooperatives are generally interested in reliably providing an income to their employees and solving a community need. Two things that become more difficult at scale and two things that present an economical disadvantage compared to a VC-funded startup looking to be acquired that's fine with laying off every single employee at a whim.
Also of course techies have it relatively easy: it's easy to find a well-paid job so there's no need for collectivist thinking.
Peterson is something, but "neo-Nazi" isn't one of them. It's a category error to ascribe to Peterson the attributes of his fan base, as Peterson himself discovered when amidst the angry howls of his followers when he openly criticized anti-Semitism a month or two ago.
I don't have to like or respect Peterson to object to him being called a Nazi.
> I will never use words I hate, like the trendy and artificially constructed words "zhe" and "zher." These words are at the vanguard of a post-modern, radical leftist ideology that I detest
> Peterson has criticized the use of the term "white privilege", stating that "being called out on their white privilege, identified with a particular racial group and then made to suffer the consequences of the existence of that racial group and its hypothetical crimes, and that sort of thing has to come to a stop
Emphasis mine, both. What do you call someone who is very strongly against the left while protecting white privilege? We have a non whitewashing word for that.
You fail to recognize that Peterson emphasizes that people should be treated as individuals, and not be ascribed guilt (or privilege) based on being born into any group. He also lives that. That thoroughly invalidates any "nazi" accusation.
Perhaps you need to realize that there are more political viewpoints than "left" and "nazi".
I am very strongly against the left (as well as right) but that might be due to the fact that I’m from a post communist country. Fun fact, Czechs are the only ethnicity that was mentioned explicitly by both Marx and Hitler as enemies of their respective ideologies. I dislike both. What does that make me?
What the hell is with the editorializing in this submission headline? The original is "Top Patreon creators, of the 'Intellectual Dark Web,[...]'. The headline here creates the impression that Jordan Peterson et al are the most popular people on the platform. They're not[1].
> Now, here’s the issue. We know that things can go too far on the right, and we know that things can go too far on the left. But we don’t know what the markers are for going too far on the left. I would say that it’s ethically incumbent on those who are liberal or left-leaning to identity the markers of pathological extremism on the left and to distinguish themselves from the people who hold those pathological viewpoints — and I don’t see that that’s being done.
I think when sites like Patreon, Twitter, etc. start banning other view points in the name of "social justice" or "political correctness"... all the while being complete hypocrites to their own values... is when the left goes too far.
I wouldn't call that the left, but just that capitalist have found that they can profit more by sharing the values most people in their market share. Most Americans, for instance, are much more progressive on social issues.
It's just faux-activism, which doesn't address the actual system of oppression marginalized groups face.
Extreme leftism is when workers control the means of production and run companies democratically.
really? extreme leftism is pretty clear, it's communism. Saying that communism isn't recognized by most people on the left as "going too far" is pretty hard to believe.
The irony is that you see many people non-ironically touting a hammer and sickle on their profiles on these sites. To me that symbol is as dreadful as the swastika. Both communism and fascism are two sides to the same coin. Horseshoe theory is a real.
If the platforms were concerned about extremism, they would be clamping down on the communists too, who have a human rights record as bad, if not worse than the fascists.
It's extremely reductive to label the ideology of Marx and that of the Nazis as two sides of the same coin.
Yea, planned economies suck and systematic mismanagement can have devastating effects, but you think that is comparable to an ideology of racial cleansing?
You think that the idea of democratic workplaces is the same as the idea of creating a master race? Governments do a lot of awful things, but at their core can you really say the ideas and tenets of communism are the same as Nazism?
It's not ironic that the symbols of communism aren't abhorred the same way as those of fascism, it's just that there's a little more nuance than "anti-capitalism is evil".
To me it only seems that their is a lack of reflection among socialists to acknowledge the utter failures of communism everywhere and every time it has been preached. I believe most conservatives acknowledge the failures of facsism.
I'm not comparing the specific details which differentiate the two ideologies, I'm comparing the traits which make them strikingly similar - the authoritarianism. Whether a commie or a fascist, it is the support of the use of state force to compel others into ones ideology that is the awful trait shared between the two camps.
Yesterday there was some discussion about how Robinhood's SIPC fiasco could have been a marketing push because all publicity is good publicity. I disagreed because Robinhood is trying to be a "serious" business, and stunts like that would hurt their credibility.
This on the other hand is exactly the kind of situation where bad publicity helps the characters in question. This Patreon competitor is pure vaporware; Peterson has zero interest in business and tech, and doesn't even try to describe the feature set. He knows that as far as his audience is concerned, he only has to make it look like he's playing the big man and going to battle against the "oppressive censorship of the far left" for the money to keep coming in, either via book sales or speaking engagements.
