This seems to be inherent to what Patreon is. Patreon is a thin layer to take money for subscriptions, generally in exchange for off-site content. Although people do make blog posts on Patreon to announce content, the general gist of the platform is that the person's content is elsewhere online. I would personally characterize Patreon as something closer to Venmo (or Paypal or VISA or...) than to a traditional social media platform.
So it would stand to reason that any kind of code of conduct rules are enforced based strictly based on off-platform content. Like, you don't need to agree with the rule or the enforcement, I'm not trying to sidestep the debate about when and why a platform might ban people for what they say, I just mean the "off-platform" element highlighted in the title isn't really all that relevant here. If they only banned for on-platform and not off-platform then you'd just see users who fall afoul of rules stop using the blog post function on Patreon and just keep doing their content elsewhere.
I think the choice to not name the social made platform, the user, what they said, or provide any context in the title is likely disingenuous and not in keeping with the best title practices for HN posts.
It's a bummer because I think the actual policy debates around off-site conduct are kind of an interesting grey area, just not one that applies here.
> The design alone of that website looks like a fake news or "alternative" news website.
So this must mean that this story is untrue right?
> And in general ALL social media platforms are private companies they can ban whoever they want for what ever reason.
> Social Media companies are not your friend. They don't fight for your freedom. They don't have a soul or anything in that direction.
Correct. Private platforms can do private platform things like bots banning people instead of humans, removing apps off of platforms for any reason or none or de-platforming anyone they don't like even if the content is not on their platform. They can all do that and keep all your money. They are not your friends and they will never change.
However, is there strong evidence that this particular story is untrue, misinformation or simply outright 'fake news' only because of the strangeness source itself? Unless cross-referencing the sources from Twitter, Patreon and the screenshots are somehow also faked?
This is a pretty toxic way to handle news and I would say abuse on the discourse.
As you can see in the article they reference a primary source directly, ie. her Twitter.
So even if you don't like who comes bearing with the news, if you comment on the reliability of the bearer you should have a valid criticism against the source that everyone can validate.
So the story and the tweets referenced in there are faked or misinformation because of what you think about the organization? [0][1]
I don't know what your point is here other than using an ad hominen to discredit this story without any counter evidence as to why this story is untrue.
I'm just asking a very basic question. Whether if the sources (tweets) in this particular story is misinformation or faked regardless of what you think about the organization reporting it.
> It's good practice to wait until something has appeared in several news sources especially if a brief bit of research casts doubt on this one.
It is indeed. But what if these 'several news sources' you speak of don't ever report it at all?
If this article had no sources, screenshots, etc and just a block of 'text', then I would have agreed with you. But the tweets in the author's Twitter account as sourced in this article and cross-referenced with their Patreon account (which last time I checked it is still disabled) [0] makes it difficult to dismiss this as false. That's my brief bit of research.
You are welcome to discredit and disprove the contents of the article as well as its sources and tweets.
> It's quite revealing that you immediately leapt to a much more exaggerated interpretation of my short statement.
Revealing that I actually read the contents of the article and its sources and do my own basic research to determine if a particular article is misinformation, faked or not. Rather than wait for others to do it and they end up never covering it.
This protected page includes biased and false information and should be revised to be neutral and factual. Examples are the following: use of "right-wing" as a political label use of "alleged and unapproved treatments for COVID-19" is false (treatments that have been unfairly discredited are medically useful treatments) reference to Dr. Gold's participation in the "storming of the U.S. Capitol" is inapproriate and the word "storming" is also not factual.
This is the most slanded page on here.
The whole write up is opinionated and has little validity
Etcetera. In other words, this is just another example of Wikipedia having been taken over [1] by activists who use it for agitprop.
[1] taken over as "ideologically motivated editors use the platform and collude to spread their ideology to as many articles as possible"
This seems like a non-story. Patreon isn’t a “social media platform”, it’s a fundraising tool for creators who generally post their content on other platforms. Given that, it makes sense that users could be banned based upon their actions outside of Patreon. They should give back the money though.
Sortakinda. I've been BBSing since I was 11 and I'm still ok with time-shifting message systems but the twatters and faceblokes made it gross. The non-advertising social networks seem to be more my speed.
This doesn’t seem all that different from any of the other sanctions and embargoes that we call for (and applaud) as a society.
“Patreon supports the KKK, Nazi Party, or Putin himself by taking payments, even though they never said it did anything bad specifically on Patreon.”
I think a majority of people would be agree that Patreon should have the right to dissociate with those groups. (Many would argue they have an
obligation to.)
If they can decide that, why not you, I, or this person I’d never heard of? (All of which I’m arguing is fine.)
This is more like Square not processing payments for you if your business is any of a host of things they don't like, even though several of those things are legal.
It's not great. It's basically discrimination. But it's legit.
Patreon: “When reviewing, we take into consideration the content shared on Patreon as well as any activity taking place outside our platform.”
Oh dear. So you can get your account banned without even using it directly and saying anything outside of it and they will hold your money hostage as well.
No different to YouTube then. A precedent has now been set by Patreon.
I think he's referring to 'Sargon of Akkad' (Carl Benjamin) being banned [1] for what essentially came down to insulting some trolls during an interview for another Youtube channel.
Oh boy. We need an open protocol for social media already. It’s obvious the current platforms are too subjective and these idiots have become like mainstream news networks where they remove content based on how advertisers feel about their ads being displayed on those programs. That’s not what the internet is supposed to be. Need to end this soon honestly because Patreon ain’t my mother or Putin.
> We need an open protocol for social media already.
We have one and you are using it already: http. Just make your own blog. Add comments if you want. You can say or host whatever you want.
> It’s obvious the current platforms are too subjective
People chose platforms (HN, FB; Google, DDG; etc etc) because they make choices for the user. I can’t read every post my friends make on FB so I rely on FB to surface some that I will find interesting and provide as few uninteresting ones as possible. I use a search engine and ask it to choose for me which pages are likely the best to answer my question. The whole point of such tools is to be subjective.
None have a monopoly so you are free to choose the one that makes the decisions that are as close to your desires as possible.
So it would stand to reason that any kind of code of conduct rules are enforced based strictly based on off-platform content. Like, you don't need to agree with the rule or the enforcement, I'm not trying to sidestep the debate about when and why a platform might ban people for what they say, I just mean the "off-platform" element highlighted in the title isn't really all that relevant here. If they only banned for on-platform and not off-platform then you'd just see users who fall afoul of rules stop using the blog post function on Patreon and just keep doing their content elsewhere.
I think the choice to not name the social made platform, the user, what they said, or provide any context in the title is likely disingenuous and not in keeping with the best title practices for HN posts.
It's a bummer because I think the actual policy debates around off-site conduct are kind of an interesting grey area, just not one that applies here.