Business itself is inherently amoral (not evil, just lacking any sense of morality one way or another). Businesses don't refuse particular customers out of a sense of social justice - they do it because continuing to service their customers harms their reputation, and thus their business. I know I don't want to do business with businesses that tell me fascism is just "speech", and I'll go to their competitors instead.
And I'll free admit, just so the purists can get it out of the way, that I think there are types of speech that should not be socially tolerated. Hate speech shouldn't get public protection. Shun me for it if you like.
From these two things, I find that businesses refusing to do business with the likes of Stormfront, or this "radical anti-feminist", or whatever, is a very good proxy for social standards. Why? Because like I said, business is amoral. It doesn't care about hate speech. But when that speech is so repulsive that businesses worry about the general public, their other customers, punishing them for supporting it, then that's a good point to say "No, this is not acceptable".
And to be clear, I'm drawing a line about the freedom to not do business with someone - not a law to punish speech. I'm not saying throw them in jail for speaking in hate. I'm saying that it's not good to require business to provide a platform for their hate.
Why are some businesses supposedly exposed to reputational risk of this sort but not others? Is Bank of America damaging their reputation by allowing famous but unpleasant people to use their service?
> Businesses don't refuse particular customers out of a sense of social justice - they do it because continuing to service their customers harms their reputation, and thus their business
And yet this case shows the exact opposite, and they are hemorrhaging users and money for it.
> I'm saying that it's not good to require business to provide a platform for their hate.
The Overton window really has shifted too far if you consider the things Sargon of Akkad says as hate speech.
Someone like Jordan Paterson is absolutely not like Stormfront. Refusing to support a best selling author and professor because some vocal activists have launched a smear campaign against him is not some sort of proxy for morality.
Businesses are doing things because their owners want to punish certain opinions, regardless of how popular they are. Visa and Mastercard are using their monopoly power as payment processors to interfere in elections and punish people who say certain things. And people on Hacker News are fine with this, because muh you should just make your own banking infrastructure! Free Market.
You’re assuming GP read a fake news article saying Peterson was banned. Much more charitable, and a safer assumption, is that this was a misunderstanding by the OP.
Jordan Peterson was the one who, by boycotting Patreon in response to their behavior, created the association which led to this misunderstanding. He tied his leaving to this event directly.
I seems to me that Peterson no longer felt safe putting his revenue stream in the hands of Patreon, because of what he saw as unfair and improper political bias which could one day disrupt his own finances.
That to me is a lot more worrisome than someone being wrong on the Internet.
And I'll free admit, just so the purists can get it out of the way, that I think there are types of speech that should not be socially tolerated. Hate speech shouldn't get public protection. Shun me for it if you like.
From these two things, I find that businesses refusing to do business with the likes of Stormfront, or this "radical anti-feminist", or whatever, is a very good proxy for social standards. Why? Because like I said, business is amoral. It doesn't care about hate speech. But when that speech is so repulsive that businesses worry about the general public, their other customers, punishing them for supporting it, then that's a good point to say "No, this is not acceptable".
And to be clear, I'm drawing a line about the freedom to not do business with someone - not a law to punish speech. I'm not saying throw them in jail for speaking in hate. I'm saying that it's not good to require business to provide a platform for their hate.