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Dec. 28, 2018 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
30:39
Patreon's Ministry of Trust and Safety (#PatreonPurge 7)
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Hello everyone, so sorry it took so long for me to get around to doing this, but it's been busy over the holiday season.
But I wanted to get around to actually talking about the content of Jacqueline Hart and Matt Christensen's conversation, because I find it very interesting and very revealing of Patreon's position in the world and how they view they themselves as a link in the chain between you the viewers who want to be patrons of creators and their impact on the creators themselves.
So there are two points that Jacqueline says something quite revealing.
At one point she says, I just wanted to make sure I want to recognize that it's a huge loss and I understand that we are a source of revenue for you.
And then later on she says that at the end of the day it's about us paying creators.
That's our mission is what I'm trying to say.
I think this is a good place to start because I think that this is indicative of Patreon not understanding their place in the food chain here.
Patreon is a middleman.
Patreon is not paying creators.
The patrons are paying creators.
Patreon has no money of its own without the patrons going through Patreon to give those creators money.
And it seems that Jacqueline doesn't view it this way.
It seems very much to me that Jacqueline views Patreon as the payer of these creators and not the patrons themselves.
Taking that 5% cut that we will talk about later.
As I said, Patreon is just a platform for processing.
And I suppose this brings us on to the next point that I wanted to address, which is Jacqueline repeatedly refers to things that happen, quote, on Patreon.
Because this really makes Patreon the gatekeeper of what you can and cannot say.
Jacqueline says, so if your entire basis as a creator, if you're funding that through Patreon, but just have to be a little more specific, we're talking about, you know, you, and the case you, if you have any questions about something you might be saying, is that you can always contact us.
This is one of the things that we do with creators is that if they say, hey, I'm about to go and do this thing, we say, don't link that to Patreon, or don't say this or this.
And Matt interrupts by saying, okay, so I have to consult you for communication advice.
Jacqueline replies with, what I'm talking about is that we've had people that have had photos that are quite controversial and they've contacted us before and said, is there going to be a problem if I post this on my Patreon?
Now, I think this comes back to the main core of what my objection to Patreon's behavior in this regard is.
This was not posted to my Patreon account.
And Jacqueline knows this.
Jack Conte knows this.
In fact, they had to be alerted of this by a group of, I guess we would call them alt-rights trolls.
So if it's not posted on my Patreon account, why are they treating it as if it has been?
Because as Jacqueline says, this is something that they look at on Patreon.
Later on in the conversation, Jacqueline says, it depends on the situation because we do have situations where it's some small thing.
Or like you said, you posted something to your Patreon page, and that's not suitable for all ages.
We reach out to you and say, take it down or make it patron only.
We have situations where that happens.
Well, again, I have to ask Jacqueline, why are you acting on something that did not happen on Patreon that was not a form of manifest observable behavior, if that is even a standard you still hold.
And again, Jacqueline says, this is a much different situation to you having a small thing on your Patreon page.
Well, Patreon is full of the N-word, as we discovered, so that's not such a big deal for Patreon, is it?
Even if it was on my Patreon page.
But the main point, and it still stands because Patreon seemed to refuse to address this, is is the standard on their platform or not?
Because Jack Conte and Jacqueline Hart both refer to things being on their platform, whereas the information and emails that I got from the Trust and Safety team, and that has been said elsewhere, this dramatic inconsistency, is that, oh no, we look at your brand.
This is holistic, as Jacqueline Hart described it.
So which one is it, Jacqueline?
It can't be both.
And since Jack Conte has tucked his balls between his legs and scuttled off into the corner and is making everyone deal with you, then I suppose we should ask you directly.
Please come and tell us.
Make it clear for the creators who use your site.
Don't you think they are owed that after watching your belligerent actions in regards to me?
And speaking of belligerent actions in regards to me, let's talk about your warning system, shall we?
You can see in the previous video that I did about Patreon that I'll link in the description below, that when I was quote-unquote warned back in 2017, I did nothing wrong.
Patreon said that I did nothing wrong.
Patreon said that nothing I'd done violates any of their terms of services and I wasn't being disciplined or anything of the sort in any way, shape or form.
So why exactly would I treat that as a warning?
Jacqueline said, it's also a case that we were public about in 2017, so that to us counts as basically he understood where the line was, and we, Matt interrupts, she says she doesn't have a strike policy, but the fact that in 2017 we talked about his case publicly, that to me indicated that yes, this creator has been given a warning.
That seems like the most ridiculous reinterpretation of what happened that I can possibly imagine, actually.
In my opinion, it is utterly unreasonable to suggest that when I was abused from a stage by a particular person, and that particular person dog whistled to Patreon to investigate me, and Patreon found that I'd done nothing wrong, that that could be interpreted as a warning.
In what way would that be a warning not to say the N-word on a stream somewhere else that wasn't even on my platform, let alone on my Patreon?
If it's not on my YouTube channel, it's not on Patreon itself, how on earth am I supposed to take your terms of service that Jack Conte said are badly written and do not say what you are now saying, how on earth am I meant to know that previously being cleared as having done nothing wrong is somehow a warning?
Why on earth would you think anyone would think that?
This seems to have been something you have pulled out of your rear end, Jacqueline.
The fact that Jacqueline came to Patreon in October 2018 maybe explains that she doesn't understand what happened in July 2017.
But the information's all public.
It's all out there and she can read it for herself.
So perhaps she is just being lazy and irresponsible.
There is no interpretation of what happened there that looks like a warning.
Which is why so many people are saying, how could that be a warning?
How could you say that Sargon did nothing wrong, but this is a warning?
What would you be warning me about if you found I did nothing wrong?
What is the warning?
Don't do something that it's acceptable for you to do according to our terms and service?
How can you think of that as a warning?
That is absurd.
Jacqueline, that is manifest observable bullshit, and you know it.
And you just hope that'll just be swept under the rug and no one will think about it.
Because that'd be a lot easier for you, wouldn't it?
Be very convenient.
But I'm sorry, I can't let that go.
That's unbelievable that you would suggest that that was a warning.
That's absolutely not a warning.
And also, it's not a warning about saying the N-word on a platform that is not Patreon or my own public presence.
There is no way you can take that interpretation and say, this makes sense.
So, at another point in the conversation, Jacqueline says, so the thing about Sargon and the thing about your case that you're giving me is that we do an entire review where we look at your body of work and determine that is this what you, and have you done this multiple times?
We have to look at this as your body of work and as you as a creator.
Okay well, why don't you do that then?
Why don't you look at my body of work, find the parts where i'm arguing against the alt-right, the racists, as in the people that I was insulting at the time, and make your decision accordingly, based on that context?
If you claim that's what you do, if you are actually reviewing my body of work, then how is it that you have missed that I am an anti-racist, activist and that my objection to the far left as well as the far right is based on what I perceive to be racism from both sides?
How is it that you're willing to ignore this if you are taking into account my entire body of work, as you claim?
But again, i'm not even sure that's true, because you go on to contradict yourself.
Later in the conversation, matt asks you about the statute of limitations on any of these apparent misdemeanours, and Jacqueline ends up replying with, well, we don't sort through your entire history and try to look for something that you've ever said.
Well, my entire body of work is me saying things.
So how do I know which one of these is true?
Either you're examining my body of work, going back through my history and finding what it is I stand for and what it is I do, or you're not.
You tell me which one of these contradictions is correct, Jacqueline.
Another distinct contradiction in Jacqueline's conversation with Matt was when Matt asked them how you even receive these user reports as in.
Are they automatically generated by a bot that, as Jacqueline says, trolls the site, or are they sent in?
Jacqueline said that they were sent in.
So Matt said, oh, so you're empowering a mob to be able to mass flag things and get things done that way?
And Jacqueline replies, with no people can actually just send them in via a report form.
Well, how is that a distinction?
That's exactly what he's saying.
Jacqueline, why are you saying that that's not the way that it's done and then go on to explain that that's the way that it's done?
You seem to be dancing around and being afraid to commit to anything, anything at all, as if Patreon has no firm policy positions and none of the users who use Patreon can be confident that they are not doing something that 10 months down the line are going to find them with their Patreon account removed without warning, as I was.
Then we get into the fear of talking about specific cases, which is corporate speak.
We don't want to have to go down that road because it contradicts something else that we've said.
For example, where Jacqueline said, praising Milo is not equal to hate speech of something of that nature.
And Matt replies with, well, what did he do that's equal to hate speech of something of that nature?
And Jacqueline says, I don't want to get into specific cases.
Are you serious?
Matt naturally points out that you were calling him in reference to a specific case that wasn't to do with him.
So you obviously do.
Why do you keep saying this?
It makes you look like liars.
It makes you look inconsistent.
It makes you look like you have something to hide.
And then I have to question just the way Jacqueline views the entire universe, I suppose.
Jacqueline says that the thing about Sargon and your cases you're giving me is we do an entire review.
So Matt says, so it's individual treatment.
And she says, yes.
Matt replies with, how is that possibly a viable standard?
Shouldn't it be uniform treatment for everyone?
And I think what he means by this is a uniform set of rules that all content creators can look at and say, right, I can be sure that my behavior either falls within or without these rules.
And I can be sure of this in advance.
So I'm not going to find my Patreon account arbitrarily removed at some point when I wouldn't expect it.
Jacqueline replies to this saying, that's a really great question.
And yes, we would love it to be a uniform standard for everyone, but as you might imagine, it's quite difficult to make something so granular.
That doesn't make sense.
Being arbitrary in your treatment of each individual creator, as Jacqueline said that she was going to do, is the way to make it granular.
That is what being granular is, down to each individual, regardless of what the rules say, apparently, because they're definitely not following the rules as written on Patreon's terms of services at the moment, as Jack Conte admitted.
So you are operating in this particularly granular and arbitrary way.
So you say we would love for it to be a uniform standard.
Well, that's what your terms of service is.
That's the easy way to do it.
To have clear-cut rules that everyone can follow.
And if someone is outside of these rules, then you don't have to worry about it.
But if someone has done something within the rules, then you do have to worry about it.
How is this difficult to understand?
How is it that you can get that such a simple concept, so completely backwards, and misunderstand what my and I'm sure many other creators have concerns with here?
I have done nothing wrong twice according to Patreon's own rules, openly admitted once by Patreon.
But now the rules don't matter, and now Patreon has taken issue with something for reasons that nobody can really understand and that Jacqueline Hart can't consistently articulate.
So what on earth standard do you expect that creators are supposed to hold to?
I don't know what you think people are supposed to think when you say that you don't have a uniform standard for all of the creators on your site.
Like, do you understand?
That sounds like the sort of thing a despot would say.
Like, if people can see and understand the rules as written, then they can use those rules to benefit them when they need them to.
Otherwise, they are only for the benefit of the people who are operating the platform itself.
I mean, how is this hard to understand?
If the rules aren't clear, then this is capricious and down to the whims of the trust and safety team.
And isn't that a particularly terrifying situation for a creator to find themselves in?
I'm glad that I know this now, so I can go to a platform in future and say, listen, are the rules going to be applied as reasonably and literally interpreted as written on your site?
Because that's the only way that I as a creator can know that I'm within the rules.
And if your rules say that the offence has to take place on Patreon or be some kind of manifest observable behaviour, then I would expect the offence to have taken place on Patreon or to be some observable behaviour that I have manifested out in the world.
Not just me saying words on a stream that you didn't like.
And then we come to the remarkable requirement of me having to apologize for something after having done nothing wrong.
Matt asks, okay, in offering Sargon appeal, you asked him to prove a negative.
You asked him to provide evidence that it's not hate speech.
What would that evidence possibly look like?
And how does one prove the negative?
Could you give me an example of evidence that Sargon could have provided that would have exonerated him?
And she says, you know, to be perfectly frank, if Sargon had come with a full-throated apology, and I'm not saying apology to the group that he was, you know, trying to offend, because I understand that's not a savory group, demonstrating that Jacqueline knows precisely the context and intent of my use of such language, making all of this just some kind of theatre production.
She knows what was happening.
She knows that there is now a formalized method of apology that I have to go through, despite the fact that she knows what my intentions were, she knows who I was insulting, and she knows that none of this happened on her platform.
None of this should be taking place, but for some reason it is.
I mean, she literally says, I understand who Sargon is, and you know what he was trying to say.
Then what's the problem?
If you know who I am, and what I was trying to say, and the nature of the group that I was saying it to, and the reason that I would use such inflammatory language to them, but not other groups who might genuinely be offended by such language, and in which case you could legitimately and objectively call it hate speech, why is any of this going on?
What is this theatre production of bullshit that you are manifesting here, Jacqueline?
What is this all about if you know that none of it actually is true?
If you know that it didn't take place on your platform, if I wasn't insulting a protected group, if I was fighting racists at the time, why are you doing any of this?
But she says, you know, if he'd said something like, hey guys, you know, things got away from me and that's not how I intended it, that's not how I normally speak, there are many, and Matt interrupts by saying, you know how that he intended it.
He has spoken about it at length.
She then says, if he came out and repudiated that and said, this is not what I'm about and it was a poor choice of words, you mean if I virtue signalled, you know that I don't consider black people to be the N-word.
You know that.
And I said as much in the video that I did afterwards.
I don't know what you mean by doubling down in the second video given how I expressly stress that I don't believe that's the case.
But it doesn't matter, really, does it?
Because what this is about is virtue signaling to progressive mores.
I have to say, oh no, no, please, you have to understand.
Or is it you say, I was tired, I was sick.
I'm usually very articulate.
A, I've pointed out that it was at a particular time of particular stress, but that doesn't matter, because I'm not apologizing for it.
And I never will apologize for it, because I did nothing wrong, as you have admitted, Jacqueline.
You know that I did nothing wrong.
I did nothing wrong in 2017.
I did nothing wrong now.
This is a total charade.
And you know it.
You say as much in this conversation.
Who do you think you're fooling, Jacqueline?
I suppose Matt Christiansen, because, you know, he didn't want this conversation recorded.
And I can see why now, and I'm sure everyone can see why.
This was disgraceful, absolutely disgraceful.
I am amazed that you expected me to come up with a bullshit excuse, even when you know what I did was not wrong, by your own terms of service.
You expected me to lie and say, I was tired, I was sick.
No, I wasn't tired and sick.
I was stressed out because my family and myself had been harassed for months by a squad of alt-right trolls and I want to hurt them by insulting them.
That's why.
I'm not going to lie about that, and I know that you know that that's the case, so why are you expecting a lie in return?
Why do you, Jacqueline Hart, want to turn me into a liar?
Why is it to retain my integrity, Patreon must punish me?
Why is that the case?
Why is it that I would have to debase myself in such a way for me to be able to use your service?
Are you going to expect other content creators to lie through their teeth?
Because, I don't know, someone at Patreon must be offended or something.
It's not really about Patreon, is it, Jacqueline?
And that's the most important part here.
The parts where Jacqueline was talking about MasterCard and Visa and other banks and processors were really the most illuminating parts in my opinion.
She says, the problem is that Patreon takes payments.
And while we are obviously supportive of the First Amendment, it's not necessarily obvious, there are other things that we have to consider.
Our mission is to fund the creative class.
I'm part of the creative class, Jacqueline.
I create things on a daily basis.
Quite successful, actually, in my own way.
And you seem to be targeting me in an attempt to protect creators.
Weird, that, isn't it?
Weird that you have to attack and hurt a creator in order to protect creators.
In order to accomplish that mission, we have to build a community of creators that are comfortable sharing a platform.
I've been on Patreon for four years.
No one was complaining about that before.
As was said in 2017, we received very few complaints about this account.
Because I don't really do anything wrong.
But if we allow certain types of speech that some people call free speech, then the only creators that use Patreon that don't mind their brand associating with that kind of speech would be those that use Patreon and we fail our mission.
Have you even considered how unbelievably backwards that statement is?
There are 100,000, 130,000 something creators using Patreon, probably less now, and they all are apparently fine with that.
I mean, they don't consider their brand to be associated with my brand.
Again, worrying about brands wasn't in your terms of service, but now that we know that this is something you do, maybe you want to update that.
But those creators didn't seem to think of their brand as associated with me, and I certainly didn't think of my brand as associated with them just because we use Patreon.
I mean, is my brand associated with a bunch of the alt-right users who use YouTube or the social justice users who use YouTube?
Am I associated with them?
Am I associated with gun channels or kids' toy channels or any other YouTube channel just because I use YouTube?
Obviously not.
No one thinks of it that way.
These are public platforms that anyone can sign up to and apparently anyone can use until Patreon decides that actually there's a problem even though it didn't come out of our terms of service and we're going to take action without warning and shut you down.
No one thinks that you are failing at your mission by providing an ideologically neutral platform for all kinds of content creators.
This is just not true.
You are not failing at your mission.
At the moment, I would say that you are failing at your mission by actually targeting creators like me.
She says, but secondly, as a membership platform, payment processing is one of those core value propositions that we have.
That's not a value proposition, Jacqueline.
That's a mechanical necessity for the functioning of your platform.
It's not a value proposition.
You don't value that.
It's a necessity.
It's inevitable.
It's not a core value proposition that I eat dinner.
It's necessary that I eat dinner to be what I am.
Values are something that are chosen.
They are optional.
This is not a value for Patreon.
It's a necessity.
I don't know why you would even say that.
But even then, how am I threatening that by existing on Patreon and doing things off of Patreon that don't violate Patreon's terms of service?
That you wouldn't even have known about were I not the recipient of a year-long harassment campaign from a group of trolls.
How would you have even known?
But this is the important part.
Payment processing depends on our ability to use the global payment network.
And they have rules for what they will process.
But I don't violate those rules.
Which is why I'd been on Patreon successfully for four years previously.
Matt then asks, are you telling me that this was Patreon's decision then or someone pressured you into this?
Jacqueline then says, no, this was entirely Patreon's decision.
Okay, then why did you make that decision?
If it doesn't violate your rules, it doesn't violate your terms of service, there is no further pressure from the global payment network, why do this?
I mean, it's not like PayPal are complaining that Sargon of ACAD is using your platform.
I still have a PayPal account.
It's not like the banks are demanding that you shut down Sargon's Patreon account.
I still have a bank account.
But Jacqueline says, I'm not passing the buck off.
The thing is, we have guidelines.
I'm trying to explain that number one is our mission to fund the creative class.
And obviously, some people may not want to be associated.
Well, who?
Who?
When?
What have they said?
What are you talking about?
Who are these hypothetical people?
They don't seem to even exist.
But Matt replies with, well, if that's your mission, then payment processors are irrelevant.
It's your mission.
That's what you're pursuing.
And she says, we're not Visa and MasterCard ourselves.
We can't just make the rules.
That's what I'm saying.
There's an extra layer there.
And there we go.
Despite the fact that I have a Visa and MasterCard and that I'm on PayPal, for some reason, these companies would pressure Jacqueline to kick me off of this platform.
But even then, I don't think that's what these companies have done, at least in my case.
And at another point in the conversation, Matt asks, has there ever been a case where a payment processor has come to Patreon and said, you guys are enabling too much hate speech.
We're going to cut you off.
Jacqueline replies in Patreon.
And she says, I'm not going to get into a discussion about our payment partners specifically.
Weird, since you brought it up.
But secondly, we absolutely know that there is.
Patreon have admitted to this publicly in the past.
The incident in question is with Jihadwatch's Robert Spencer, a man who, unfortunately for him, gets confused with Richard Spencer fairly often.
He said back on the 14th of August that he has been axed from Patreon without explanation, morning or notice, no doubt as part of the ongoing efforts of the left to deny all platforms to those who have rejected to gender.
To those who supported me there, thank you and I'm sorry we couldn't follow through on plans.
To which Patreon replied, Hi Robert, we emailed you earlier today which explained that unfortunately MasterCard required us to remove your account.
You replied to us, but if you have further questions, we're keep happy to keep emailing.
We know that they are putting a boot on your neck.
Now, I would be surprised if I was important enough to require removal.
I think this is a knee-jerk reaction by Jacqueline Hart, Patreon's new head of the Ministry of Trust and Safety, who now has found herself backed into a corner spewing lies and simply making things up that don't exist in the terms of service.
And it's no wonder at the end of her conversation with Matt Christensen that she sounded so rattled.
She knows her position is indefensible.
She knows that she is not going to be able to protect Visa and MasterCard from them putting pressure on Patreon.
We know that this is happening.
We know that a political agenda is being enacted.
And you can't simply hide this by saying, well, if Sagan had just begged enough, we would have lent back on.
None of this would have been a problem.
There is a major problem with this.
All of this.
And you know it.
You know that this is unjust.
You know that I wasn't warned.
You know that I didn't even do anything wrong by your own terms of service.
And you know that, really, you should probably just reopen my Patreon account.
And then we come to what was said in the New York Times article, which again I found very interesting.
Jacqueline Hart said his response to us when we told him about the reform process was to nitpick and say I was being anti-Nazi.
How is that a nitpick?
Isn't that entirely relevant to whether I was insulting a group of people or not?
And on what grounds and which groups one is allowed to insult?
If I'm insulting Nazis, why are you acting in defense of Nazis?
But again, Hart says, you cannot say those words on our platform.
It doesn't matter who you're directing them at.
That's not true.
Patreon is full of uses of the N-word, except for when I do it, because my use of the N-word was not on Patreon, and it wasn't directed at a protected group of people.
So why on earth is this happening, Jacqueline?
I found Jack Conte's statements in this one quite outrageous.
I think maybe it is best you continue being a eunuch Jack and let Jaclyn Hart deal with the mess you've created.
Those quitting Patreon in solidarity with Mr. Benjamin may have other motives behind their sudden outrage, Mr. Conte said.
Why would they need them, Jack?
Why are we getting the old noggins jogging here?
It seems quite obvious to why this has happened.
As the content creators using the site grow more famous and their income more significant, the 5% cut that Patreon takes of their donations may have begun to seem cumbersome, he said.
Jack, you know that's nonsense.
You know that's just a lie and you trying to throw people off the scent as to what's really happened.
5% is a very reasonable amount for Patreon to take.
I mean, YouTube takes apparently 30% of their join channel feature.
Twitch take 50% of money donated through their site.
Patreon taking 5% is incredibly good.
In fact, it might be a market leader in that regard.
Why you think that that would be a problem is beyond me, but these creators aren't shutting down in solidarity to go somewhere else.
They're doing it because they find your actions abhorrent.
Unbelievable that you would suggest this was about money for these people.
This is about standing on a point of principle, something you apparently don't understand because apparently you don't have principles.
Apparently you don't care of the fact that you're destroying people's livelihoods for reasons that don't make sense and don't add up and are not internally consistent with either what you guys already know about the situation or your own goddamn policies.
You know, the ones that you were touting on the Rubin Report show about how technically excellent these policies were.
Well maybe they are Jack.
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