"This month, the site’s moderators received a complaint about Mr. Benjamin, who had risen to fame railing against diversity and feminism during the GamerGate movement in 2014. Mr. Benjamin used the N-word and anti-gay language during an interview posted to YouTube on Feb. 7, Patreon found."
If you read the transcript you can see why some may view what he said as offensive. Personally I think it was a poor choice of words and a rather unwieldy attempt at a satirical jab.
From what I've gathered, though, the uproar isn't to the fact that Mr Benjamin was kicked off but more around the ambiguity of the 'trust and safety" guidelines. Patreon claim he was kicked off for using 'hate speech', they don't say it was because of using the N-word because the N-word is littered across their site for about 50 pages of search results (https://www.patreon.com/search?q=nigger&p=50). If hate speech is the issue the definition of what that is, is apparently missing.
The uproar I believe is related to the fact that content creators can not self-police and that patreon can arbitrarily define the boundaries of acceptable speech (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window). This boundary is extended to policing on 'other' platforms like Youtube or Twitter which I believe is a little ludicrous.
The finger pointing at Patreon at the moment rails the accusation that
this has nothing to do with morals and hate speech but everything to do with political bias due to its lack of specificity. I think this conflation is clear, the NYT article is peppered with the mention of political affiliations and repeatedly casts the detractors by associating them with hate movements or the political right.
Hate speech does exist, but this here seems to me to be a polarised conversation about left and right politics in America than anything else and the platforms being the next phase of this debate. Rowan Atkinson gave a talk a few years ago on hate speech in England, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3UeUnRxE0E . Notice it is a levelled critique of hateful speech and says nothing about left or right, conservative or democratic. I wish the NYT had taken a more measured and thoughtful approach in teasing this story apart and doing what good journalists do: separate the signal from the noise and tell the truth intelligently in the language of the everyday man and woman and not adding to the confusion.
For a bit of context, I'm British and black and we have our own share of problems trying to deal fairly with 'hate speech'.
It's difficult, but let's not pretend for a second that Patreon dealt with this fairly and transparently. Let's not pretend either that they are deserving of our custom because of their moral virtue.
If you read the transcript you can see why some may view what he said as offensive. Personally I think it was a poor choice of words and a rather unwieldy attempt at a satirical jab.
From what I've gathered, though, the uproar isn't to the fact that Mr Benjamin was kicked off but more around the ambiguity of the 'trust and safety" guidelines. Patreon claim he was kicked off for using 'hate speech', they don't say it was because of using the N-word because the N-word is littered across their site for about 50 pages of search results (https://www.patreon.com/search?q=nigger&p=50). If hate speech is the issue the definition of what that is, is apparently missing.
The uproar I believe is related to the fact that content creators can not self-police and that patreon can arbitrarily define the boundaries of acceptable speech (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window). This boundary is extended to policing on 'other' platforms like Youtube or Twitter which I believe is a little ludicrous.
The finger pointing at Patreon at the moment rails the accusation that this has nothing to do with morals and hate speech but everything to do with political bias due to its lack of specificity. I think this conflation is clear, the NYT article is peppered with the mention of political affiliations and repeatedly casts the detractors by associating them with hate movements or the political right.
Hate speech does exist, but this here seems to me to be a polarised conversation about left and right politics in America than anything else and the platforms being the next phase of this debate. Rowan Atkinson gave a talk a few years ago on hate speech in England, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3UeUnRxE0E . Notice it is a levelled critique of hateful speech and says nothing about left or right, conservative or democratic. I wish the NYT had taken a more measured and thoughtful approach in teasing this story apart and doing what good journalists do: separate the signal from the noise and tell the truth intelligently in the language of the everyday man and woman and not adding to the confusion.
For a bit of context, I'm British and black and we have our own share of problems trying to deal fairly with 'hate speech'.
- "Man guilty of hate crime for filming pug's 'Nazi salutes'" - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-43478925
- "Teenager faces prosecution for calling Scientology 'cult'" - https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/may/20/1
- "Gay horse jibe" - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/4196447/Arrest-for-g...
It's difficult, but let's not pretend for a second that Patreon dealt with this fairly and transparently. Let's not pretend either that they are deserving of our custom because of their moral virtue.