So it seems like Patreon has been deplatforming people like crazy. Particularly right wing people and it seems like some prominent figures are fed up.
Sam Harris who before today I'd heard of, but didn't really know anything about is leaving the platform in solidarity with the people who have had their accounts removed. He apparently has the 13th largest account on the platform.
From Business Insider
He was making 23-65k per podcast! I can only think what it would mean if he brought that following to Steem. Is Steem the answer to this issue? I feel like if the user experience wasn't so hard on Steem it would be a perfect solution. He just wants a place where he can talk about how scary Islam is in peace lol. I'm just kidding though, I listened to one 3 hour debate and while he didn't say anything TOO crazy for my political position, yea he seems a bit xenophobic towards Muslims.
The move that's recently sparked a bunch of news about this is this guy Sargon of Akkad getting deplatformed. I'm also not too familiar with his content, but the grounds that he got removed seem pretty fishy. On youtube he called a group of self proclaimed Nazi's the N word, saying they were acting like what they claim to hate. His defense was that he prescribed that word to behavior and not to race and was using it as an insult to them because they'd been harassing him. So however you feel about that, it is a bit crazy that people at Patreon dug up this conversation that happened on youtube something like 10 months ago, and it also wasn't even on his channel. They then used that as their ammo to remove him from the platform.
Now I don't need to dig too deep to know I probably am not on the same page as this guy ideologically, but I'm definitely not a fan of people saying some words, then having their livelihood destroyed because of it.
Anyway there are a few videos that recently came out that I think we can leave some comments on to let people know about Steem. I already left comments but I think the more of us that jump in there and recommend Steem the more of an impact it will have. Here are some of the videos.
@thejimmydoreshow actually already has a Steem account but I feel like he wasn't really doing it right. He didn't engage the community at all, just sort of hit and run, dropped his videos. I think it would be better if when prominent youtubers start posting on Steem they also power up a fair bit or buy a delegation or something and upvote people that comment on their videos. Anyway, go shill Steem on this video :D
Here's another one by Kyle Kulinski
And one more by some guy I don't know but I happened to come across
All these people have pretty large followings and I think we gotta be on top of opportunities like this to swoop in and capitalize on their frustrations from these centralized sites.
What do you all think? On the one hand, not sure what kind of pandora's box we might be opening if Steem became known as the haven for the alt-right or all the people that other platforms kicked off, buuuuuut if they power up a bunch of Steem and pump all our bags...hmm, quite the conundrum, but I do think that censoring the people you disagree with is not the answer so I lean towards everyone just coming here and having a place where you can say what you want, and only have to face mob justice for the most part, or whale justice in extreme cases, but as the plaform grows, that would be less and less feasible.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments, thanks for looking peeps!