HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

Not yet. They're all for payment discrimination though[1], which IMHO is as extreme as things can get anyway.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FETt5JzufY4

⬐ PavlovsCat

Shouldn't payment processors, and sites like patreon that hang off them, which ONLY bow to the law, and nothing but the law, be a huge, un(der)served niche right now, steadily becoming bigger?

It'll be $next_year soon, there needs to be better than e.g. this, which was in the suggested videos sidebar:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv7hvZee-PQ&t=8m07s

⬐ dragonwriter

> Shouldn't payment processors, and sites like patreon that hang off them, which ONLY bow to the law, and nothing but the law, be a huge, un(der)served niche right now, steadily becoming bigger?

No, it's not a niche at all. Payment processor and patronage sites are markets, and to the extent incumbents in those markets exclude certain distinct submarkets, there is a niche serving the unserved submarkets. But serving all submarkets allowed by law isn't a niche, and overlaps significantly with what th incumbents serve.

⬐ PavlovsCat

Then replace niche with untapped potential, something that's needed, dozens of other ways to say the same thing? For example, we could use "niche":

> A situation or activity specially suited to a person's interests, abilities, or nature

but I just realized that wouldn't fit at all. But you get the idea of what I meant when I said niche, right? I see people wanting to throw money at other people, and they will find a way, either way. Not providing them a way before they make their own is "leaving money on the table", if you will.

⬐ dragonwriter

I'm not taking issue with the word niche, I'm saying it's not a market, niche, whatever that there is a economic incentive to fill. The gap is serving those unserved by the incumbents.

⬐ PavlovsCat

So there is a gap, there are unserved people (with unspent money), but there is no niche, no market and no economic incentive.

⬐ dragonwriter

No, again, I'm saying the gap/niche/market/whatever is the specific unserved groups, not unconditional service. Which is why even when people try to exploit a perceived gap by pitching unconditional service, all it does is become a service for the specific groups excluded by the current incumbents.

Let's say the incumbents cut out virulent racists, for example: then their is a open niche for service to virulent racists. There's not for unconditional service, because, but for (in this hypothetical) except for virulent racists, there's no one left unserved by the existing, albeit potentially conditional, service.

⬐ PavlovsCat

A catchall email in practice receives mails for the specific usernames that are in the specific mails it gets, but saying "it serves * minus the accounts that exist" is much simpler. After it was already made that simple, why make it complicated again?

> Let's say the incumbents cut out virulent racists

So what are you driving at? Just some racists, now and from here on out, so no loss? And what's a "virulent racist", a racist that makes other people racist by mere contact? If that word means nothing, why was it added? Why was that example chosen over Naomi Wu, for example?

By definition, services that play these games cut out anyone who does not want to empower such arbitrarily acting and unaccountable gatekeepers. That's what the law is for, for actual society.

Silicon Valley is clearly not up to the task, these virtual kingdoms are demented, that stuff should be for video games and private forums, not platforms that speak of community or society. They want to receive from society, but not fulfill their duties to society. Free speech is not an optional luxury, and mobs out to destroy livelihoods and doing their virtual lynch justice stuff are not benign. People who on average can't deal with people that well, even on a small scale and face to face, cannot be in charge of large systems that affect the social lives and livelihoods of massive amounts of people. It's not just a trainwreck, it was kinda predictable.

⬐ dragonwriter

> So what are you driving at?

There's no hidden message, the thesis is explicitly stated: “the gap/niche/market/whatever is the specific unserved groups, not unconditional service.”

> Just some racists, now and from here on out, so no loss?

No, there was no hidden value judgement in the hypothetical. It would be the same, mutatis mutandis, if the excluded group were, say, African-Americans rather than virulent racists; there is demand for services for the specific unserved groups but—and experience, not just theory, shows this is the case—there isn't a “niche” for “serves everybody within the law” caused by the kind of incumbent companies at issue excluding some particular groups. The niche that is opened is serving specifically the excluded groups.

This was a factual response about market realities to the upthread claim about what niche was opened, not some kind of covert value judgement about who deserves service.

> Silicon Valley is clearly not up to the task, these virtual kingdoms are demented, that stuff should be for video games and private forums, not platforms that speak of community or society. They want to receive from society, but not fulfill their duties to society.

Exercising judgement in what ideas one relays is a duty to society, and enabling that is the core point of freedom of speech.

> Free speech is not an optional luxury

Indeed it is not, so why would you deny it to the firms you are pointing to?

> and mobs out to destroy livelihoods and doing their virtual lynch justice stuff are not benign.

Comparing deplatforming to lynching is ludicrous and disgusting.

⬐ PavlovsCat

> This was a factual response about market realities

You simply read "niche" as something like "A focused, targetable part of a market for certain products or services that has unmet demand". As I said, replace it with untapped potential and your "thesis" doesn't apply, while my point remains unchanged.

> Exercising judgement in what ideas one relays is a duty to society, and enabling that is the core point of freedom of speech.

Yes, and that's fine for private forums and video games, and birthday parties and all that.

> Indeed it is not, so why would you deny it to the firms you are pointing to?

Why are you trying to hard to not get my point which is in plain English, and then expect me to answer that first?

Because they're not persons, and they're offering themselves as middlemen, as services with which we communicate and even engage in politics with.

Is the fact that the mailman can't rewrite my letters or decide on a "case by case basis" whether to deliver them infringing on their free speech? No.

> Comparing deplatforming to lynching is ludicrous and disgusting.

I called it virtual lynching. Where the motive is to completely remove a person, out of sight out of mind, if they starve, who cares, that applies. The way the people go about it, that's just mob hatred. If you find calling that out disgusting, it says something about you, it doesn't change what it is. If you're going to talk about what is disgusting, try this totally irrelevant tangent about the word "niche", without having a point, in a topic you are not interested in, where a person pretty much asked for help.

⬐ imtringued

It appears to me that someone at Patreon has an axe to grind. Otherwise they would start enforcing their TOS against racial slurs or discrimination on their own platform first rather than using the TOS as an excuse to ban specific individuals for "breaking" their TOS on a separate platform like Youtube. This type of selective enforcement wouldn't have turned out to be such a big issue if they had notified the affected accounts and gave them a grace period or a chance to change their behavior. If this really was about the TOS then Pateron wouldn't try to enforce it on their competitor's platform which by definition doesn't have to obey it.

People are increasingly withdrawing from Patreon. Earlier Sexy Cyborg was forced off by Vice [1] (they're now trying to push her off SubscribeStar[2]), but very recently people like Jordan Peterson, Quillette, and others are moving away and setting up their own crowdfunding platform [3].

And I fully agree that a crowdfunding platform should not be involved with 'de-platforming'.

[1] https://www.patreon.com/posts/vice-vs-sexy-how-18216256

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FETt5JzufY4&t=0s&list=LLcD8F...

[3] https://www.businessinsider.com.au/jordan-peterson-says-hell...

Is this Chinese Chick conservative? https://youtu.be/FETt5JzufY4

Or collateral damage in the glorious Social Justice War?

⬐ sparkie

She has been deliberately and systematically targeted by SJWs and NYT racist "journalists," who don't like the way she dresses.

⬐ zarkov99

How does this stuff make any business sense to Patreon? Who are they beholden to?

⬐ notatcomputer68

They are pressured by their payment providers. As for why they care I don't know.

⬐ zarkov99

What do you mean by payment provider?

⬐ detaro

Probably the companies they use to actually collect money from members.

⬐ None

None

⬐ sparkie

It clearly doesn't, because it is biting them in the ass now.

I suspect that the social justice enforcement officers at Patreon are calling the shots, and the people making decisions about the business are powerless to oppose because their jobs are on the line.

It's all about virtue signalling. They're signalling the wrong virtues though. If they don't fix their internal culture they'll run themselves into the ground soon enough.

⬐ zarkov99

Jeez, just asking about this leads to down votes. What insanity is possessing people.

⬐ onlydeadheroes

The censors control a surprisingly large amount of downvotes here on HN.

edit: also note top comment in this thread is flagged, whatever that means in these days.

⬐ zarkov99

What the hell. How can the tech community have become hostage to these nut jobs?

⬐ onlydeadheroes

I mean, just behold the degree of gas-lighting in the other response you got!

⬐ 18pfsmt

We aren't but you all acting like snowflakes over DVs is absurd, and you're replying to a 25-day old account. I don't give a shit at all about this drama; my preference is that you contain your meltdowns to reddit.