curate users #118
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You can not enable an economy of gratitude, generosity, and love with force. It requires more than just banning people to sustain. |
👍 This is a hard problem to address: How do we deal with users of our service who abide by the rules and terms we've set forth to protect our other users and ourselves, but do things we personally don't like outside of our service? Right now, as written, our Terms and Conditions point #5, "Guidelines for User Generated Content", the result of #1425, seems to govern a user's behavior, but only within Gratipay.com, and specifically any communication facilities that Gratipay.com provides. Right now, that's limited only to usernames, "I"m making the world better by", and any other unvalidated, user-editable field. A series of questions, expanding as I think of implications:
There are a lot of (bad|good) actors in the world. Sometimes, they get a loud enough voice and enough attention that they can do and say (bad|good) stuff, then ask for money so they can afford to continue to act or speak. I think Gratipay, specifically the Gratipay team and its community of users, is well within its right to ask bad actors to cease using the service. However, it should not ban them unless they are violating the law or effectively posting on Gratipay's properties content that violates its Guidelines for User Generated Content. Banning bad actors without a legal order may expose Gratipay to legal risk in addition to the social risk it faces by terminating a bad actor's permission to use its service. I don't think Gratipay should be in the business of deciding what is (bad|good). That's for the legal system and users themselves to decide. This stance could cost Gratipay users, but neutrality is the preference of business when acting any other way could harm the innocent bystander customers of the business, let alone be even more detrimental to the business itself. |
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A slightly related situation that CloudFlare found themselves in where a client wasn't violating their terms of service, but they didn't particularly like the nature of their client: http://blog.cloudflare.com/58611873/ Snippets of relatable bits from paragraph 4 in the article:
So yeah, pretty much just going with what @colindean already stated. Unless there's a violation of the terms, or some other legal reason to remove someone (like Gratipay being put at risk by allowing these transactions to process), I don't think Gratipay can make that decision. |
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Copying over from https://gratipay.freshdesk.com/helpdesk/tickets/1518:
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We are not the government. It's impossible for us to censor them by banning them. They can go elsewhere. We shouldn't accept them after they've been forced off of Patreon simply because we're too unorganized to create and enforce the necessary policy (yes I am volunteering :-). @colindean could you elaborate on the possibilities for legal risk? Copying from the TOS:
That should be updated to say that we will contact them before / upon termination, but it seems pretty clear that we reserve the right to boot people off. Let's take a look at the Patreon community guidelines. This section clearly explains that you're liable to be banned if you do harmful things to people anywhere else outside of Patreon:
This is a good policy, and we should adopt something similar. My only contention with their rules as a whole is on porn, which I think we should allow as long as the individuals aren't violating our other policies. We can get away with this where Patreon can't because there isn't strictly speaking an exchange of goods with Gratipay, whereas Patreon has a Kickstarter-style incentive system to provide donors with actual content. |
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An unexpected twist: in researching 8chan, I discovered /christian/, and I am smitten. |
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@whit537 8chan is just the reddit of chans. You'll probably find the best this world has to offer and the worst, it's up to the user. |
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I changed the bullets to numbering in my above post for easier reference to its contents. @seanlinsley, you're right on with the Patreon policy citation. I think that adopting a policy like Patreon's would take Gratipay down the path of Also, I, too, believe that the termination clause (TOS #13) would cover us, but by clearly stating intentions and exclusions upfront, we certainly mitigate the risk of enraging infringing users and reduce the possibility that such a user might come after Gratipay regardless of the termination clause should they feel they Gratipay has terminated their account wrongfully. What would really strengthen this policy is citation of statutory and case law for each exclusionary reason, but I'm not sure that's an effective use of time. Also, we non-lawyers are neither qualified or do we have the resources to find specific examples. I'd take it as a challenge myself if I didn't believe it to be incredibly laborious. |
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Personally, some of the above exclusions are too vague for my tastes.
100% OK with this, because they are all clearly defined in legal terms. Fraud can be little more unclear, and I think that's one we'd have to act only on conviction. Maybe Gratipay needs a part of its terms that more clearly indemnifies Gratipay in the event of fraud and protects Gratipay against chargebacks resulting from a user's feeling defrauded.
Gratipay is not equipped to define these, so we'd have to decide on someone else's list. US State Dept List of Foreign Terrorist Organizations would suffice internationally, and we're technically required by law not to do anything with them. Hate groups defined by the SPLC is a good list for that one. Would we permit a user who claims to associate with Anonymous? What about other domestic organizations that are considered by some to be terrorists, such as eco-terrorists?
100% agreement with excluding those convicted of fraud or money laundering. I hate child sex abuse just as much as any rational person, but when state courts are convicting without the presence of or under antiquated Romeo and Juliet laws, I rollback that agreement to a case-by-case basis, defaulting to excluded. Determining with whom one can do business is hard, especially when one wants to be upfront about it. |
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@colindean Thanks for the thorough taxonomy in #118 (comment). |
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a little attention from twitter: https://twitter.com/feedmeyourtears/status/548890123249909760 |
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Also in Freshdesk (login required): |
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FD1533 is a +1 for removing 8chan. FD1543 is the follow-up from #118 (comment) re: RHExcelion. |
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I've asked for permission to copy comments from both FD1533 and FD1534 over here. |
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As a basis for comparison, I started looking into what PayPal does. Here's their Acceptable Use Policy, and here's the eBay/PayPal Law Enforcement Center. They use a third party called LeadsOnline. |
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Three examples from eBay of ways they've worked with law enforcement: |
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eBay in legal wrangling over who is responsible for fencing: |
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2011 fact sheet about PROACT (PDF): http://nasp.creativeimagewebsites.com/pdf/2011%20Proact%201%20Page%20Handout%20Gov%20Relations.pdf |
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From FD1533:
Then:
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From FD1534:
Then:
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I wonder if there can be some process here kinda like DMCA Safe Harbor, where if we receive an accusation/evidence of badness, we can suspend the account and pass that to the accused, who can counter-notice or roll over. If they counter-notice, we’re absolved of any wrongdoing and let the court decide. If they roll over, well, that’s the end of it. The missing piece here is that copyright is a civil matter, and the submitter is supposed to be the owner of the copyright, who can then sue if they receive counter-notice. The RHExcelion one leans toward civil behavior that is addressable by vigilance on the part of the copyright holder. I feel like the copyright holder would be within their rights to enjoin Gratipay from facilitating gifts to the user in question as a part of legal action against them. The 8chan one, however, leans toward criminal behavior. I think that’s something that we might have a something (obligation? duty? preponderance of financial evidence?) to provide law enforcement with what it needs to investigate. I’m not sure of the action here. I think we should continue to research other money transmitters’ policies, and seek the counsel of both Balanced, since they’re our real transmitter, and some lawyers of our own. |
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What goes on outside of Gratipay is not our problem. What people do with the money received through Gratipay is not our problem. What people post on 8chan is not our problem. Copyright infringement is not our problem unless it happens on Gratipay itself. Etc. I am against curating users. It would consume time and create conflicts within the team (there will inevitably be disagreements on whether a particular user should be banned or not). |
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I'm with @Changaco on this. (As long as it makes legal sense of course) |
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If you guys want to be known as the premiere money laundering service, I guess that's your call. I imagine it'd be profitable. Just seems to me that if certain people are too toxic for even one of ThePirateBay co-founder's side projects (flattr), there's probably a good reason for that. |
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This discussion is not about money laundering, we already try to prevent that by blacklisting suspicious accounts, and payment processors also have their own algorithms that try to detect frauds. |
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@Changaco I was about to make a similar reply, but then started down this rabbit hole on Wikipedia:
Gratipay isn't useful for money laundering in the narrow sense, because we only offer soft anonymity, not strong anonymity. If law enforcement comes to us with an investigation, we do have useful information we could provide.
What are our obligations regarding detecting other sorts of financial crime besides money laundering in the narrow sense? |
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"International Standards on Combating Money Laundering and the Financing of Terrorism & Proliferation" |
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I think our obligations are the same as Paypal, we offer a similar service, financially speaking. Maybe Balanced would be able to tell us if there's something we're not doing that we're supposed to do. In any case this should be discussed in another issue. |
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Agreed, AML/CFT is a separate issue. There are two lines: legal and (I suppose) moral. This ticket is about the moral line.
The text reads "Everyone," "Unsavory," and "Criminal," and "Not to scale!" :-) We have to deal with the moral line in a way that PayPal doesn't for two reasons:
Notice that both lines are fuzzy. |
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So, Gratipay is where the blackboards are picking up their new inventory. This discussion is morbidly hilarious, in a very disturbing way, considering the context of the situation, and your mission statement. What was it.. 'love gratitud' and something else? Oh man. You think you arent big enough to moderate your own tiny userbase morally? You dont stand a chance at protecting them from 8chan, once you let them in, hell, it doesnt even matter anymore. I know of at least one woman already ratted and up for sale. Authorities have been notified, but they rarely succeed. And Im not talking about the gamergate trolls that you may have noticed are flooding this subject now, having posted an 'operation' to dogpile this conversation with what they call an 'operation', that hate campaign, vile and disgusting as it is, is nothing but a joke to the ret of 8 chan. No, im talking about the truly depraved things from the black boards. Your members are nothing but inventory, and none of it beyond the scouting, which you have exposed your members too, will be done on the site. Which will appear to be little more than oh so polite chatting for info. Hell, only the discussion and barter is mentioned on 8 chan. Once contact is made its off site from even there. Your members will be ratted. Their private lives in the form of all the files on their computer will be ransacked. Web cams will be activated without knowledge or consent, nude pictures of them from the web camera, sexual acts they have on the computer, pictures of their children (where do you THINK 8chan gets these images) will be bartered traded and sold, along with your users themselves, in the form of selling access to the rat. This is what now awaits your users, mind you, this is from the group that has been feircly defended on here as well moderated and legal, technically, this is skirting the line of barely legal, and impossible to enforce You could just take my word for it and not click the link, but some may need to see if its true, or just cant believe it. You have been warned, this is a thread about ratting, and they are planning to pull pictures of a victim: https://8chan.co/i/res/1318.html 8chan will likely swarm now with disingenious efforts to shoot and incrminiate the messenger. But i didnt create this account for github, this will be the only post. This was simply to give your users, hopefully, enough time to decide if this is something they want to risk, to either leave before this happens to them, or take preventative measures like unplugging/taping over webcams and taking all sensitive materials off of devices with open communications (connected to any form of internet). Somehow I suspect they wont want to deal with the murders not murdering here while laughing like hyenas at the open grave with bloody footprints leading to gratipay to find the next batch. Good luck. |
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@ToooLate Did you seriously just make the hackers on steroids argument. |
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One last thing. Rats are not done by hackers, much less 'hackers on steroids', they are dreadfully easy tools for any script kid to find, and require no advanced knowledge to use. Again, ratters are not hackers, they hav no actual skills in this area, nor do they need them. They just ask for the tool that does it for them. https://8chan.co/hack/res/471.html Good luck Gratipay. |
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So short of someone here being stupid enough to click links sent to them by randoms in emails/DMs you've got nothing and are just fearmongering? |
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Firstly, @ToooLate (now ‘ghost’, the poster two posts above this one) is a troll, for anybody that didn't catch it. He's here solely to stir up trouble and by the looks of it, he has already deleted his account. 8chan is a website that seeks only to provide its users with the freedom to speak. It has gained popularity due to several other social mediums demonstrating censorship of their users in unsettlingly high magnitude and close succession. I take issue with allegations that 8chan is the home of ‘harassment campaigns’ and ‘doxxing’. I assume these allegations are made in reference to the GamerGate board(s). These boards have rules against both harassment and doxxing and the administration of these boards removes content that violates these rules as quickly as possible. 8chan is not a CP hub. I have unfortunately seen CP posted a couple times, but I and several others always report it and it gets removed. You may disagree with some of the users of 8chan. You bear the freedom to do so and we welcome you to enjoy your freedom, but do not try to infringe on ours. |
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I will say one thing about this. 8chan came to you believing you would be a fair and honorable site to do business with. After the Paetron fiasco involving a bunch of people fearmongering and shouting baseless slander Paetron decided to take the dive and kick off 8chan from the site. The entire point of that site is for Freedom of Speech on the Internet and without any oppression from any overzealous mods. The ability to say or do whatever you want within the confines of the law should be upheld everywhere. But look around the internet. Every forum has mods that have very strict guidelines that regulate their boars to the point of facism. Political boards will ban you for the unpopular opinions you might have instead of letting you have your say and then debating you on it to try to prove that you are wrong for thinking it. They would rather censor you. Video game Journalism has gotten to the point where its either the select few who are all in bed together who have zero journalism degrees or integrity, or no main stage at all. The majority of video gamers are sadly so impressionable that they are led to believe whatever is given the highest rating so they will go out and buy it, leading to a massive corruption of the entire industry. Lets not forget how its becoming more Cultural Marxist and saying anything against what these people say will have you labeled as a hate monger among other things. 8chan is gaining popularity because the owner of 4chan decided to not have the interests of the users in mind but his own social tight knit group, that is some what apart of that gaming journalism fiasco, where he censored the video game boards. Later he abused the political board to the point where any discussion pertaining to the board was almost impossible. So instead of having to deal with a website who's admin clearly does not care about its users everyone went to 8chan, where you can say what you want with an admin who isnt power hungry or afraid to speak his mind about any issues. His mission statement was that all boards should not be censored by him and that they are user made. Meaning if a board's owners for some reason or another do not have their users interests at heart, another user can make a board with the identical topic and re-establish. That way we are not forced to stay on boards who we know have corrupt moderation teams that would rather market to you and censor you than develop. This isnt about which petty board some people dont like, or which board might have questionable content like a pornography board of a politics board that might talk about topics that are sensitive to most in nature or a site that people like to be mean on. This is about the ability to post on a board without fear of corrupt or biased moderation. The reason im posting this is because 8chan needs support and we would gladly give it to him. The problem is that every time we find something, the group that hates chans and chan culture swoops in like a hate group and does nothing but attack and make smear campains without any evidence to back up any claims on why a site should be devoid of funding. So I ask you gritipay, to allow 8chan to be apart of this site and to support free speech. Sure you may not like what some people say on that site, but we will support your right to say it on that site to those posters face. That is the kind of users we are. We value freedom above all else and wouldnt want anyone to feel that they cant post on the site. If people disagree with said posts, they will let it known, but that leads to a type of site where at the end of a thread you will have much more valuable input than any focus group ever could have. This would be a good business move to allow 8chan to be apart of your site. I will be honest, I have never heard of Gritpay before 8chan said that they where moving there but if you support us, we will support you all the way because you will be known as a site that would take us when another wouldnt for no reason at all. |
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There are too many in this discussion who state their beliefs about the nature of 8chan and claim them to be proofs about the site. You tell us that a man has published an article where he claims to prove that content harmful to minors is allowed to remain on the site yet you provide no proof, only your beliefs that his claim is correct. You go further and state that it is child pornography that is allowed on the site, yet it is only your fervent your belief you give us. We get the claim, repeatedly, but nothing to back it up. I can tell you what I believe about the issue, for what it's worth. I believe that very few sites or services on the internet are capable of preventing the introduction of photographs or videos they do not wish to host. I don't see how there can be many places at all on the internet that have never had such material introduced to them. Therefore, I believe that it falls upon these sites and the members thereof to ensure that such material do not remain on the sites. There are of course some of you who do not wish to to take my word that 8chan follows their obscenity guidelines over the word of those who they believe when they tell them it doesn't, but here is an area in which you can find some proofs. I don't know much about the structure of an anonymous image board, but i'll not be surprised if reports and bans and deletion of files and closures of boards are logged. While I cannot speak for those with access to those logs, I think it likely that they will be willing to provide these logs so that you can see the actions taken when child pornography is reported, so that you can see the removal of the material and know the work they do keep this stuff off of the site. Whether you feel US laws is good enough to determine what you should be willing to accept from a member of your community or a customer of your company, however you view yourselves, is up to you. If you determine it doesn't go far enough and wish to set guidelines based on the presence of drawn art, then choose for what you feel is right there. What I am here to ask you to do is to not rush to decide that 8chan be excluded it based on how you've heard the site handles it child pornography. Ask for proof from board owners in the form of logs. Get specifics from those claiming the site doesn't follow its obscenity policy, without giving anyone the hint of an idea they should go looking for this shit. Do not deny 8chan because of hearsay. Deny 8chan if you have credible accounts they don't do their duty as far as US law goes for illegal material. Deny 8chan because some material they do not consider too obscene is beyond where you see the line. When you consult other sites as you indicated you'd do, Ask them on what basis they made there decision. Ask them if they decided based on US law or a guideline they'd made, and whey they chose that guideline if it was the latter. If it was a question of whether 8chan complied with the law, find out what evidence they had that it didn't, what proof it requested that they did. Just don't do it because someone is truly convinced they are a haven for this crap because of an article they read or what a friend swore to be true and they've passed along here. Don't let yourself be another battleground for some mudslinging on the internet. If you do that you will lessen yourselves. You'll be denying a whole group of people whom you don't even know the ability to provide support for a man you don't even know and nobody is going to win anything. Nobody can stop anyone from sending Hotwheels money in Paypal or a check in the mail. Don't let this be about a two groups of people who've been flinging shit at each other for the last five months, let it be about what you are willing to accept as a community or company from those who wish to use your service and how far you are willing to go to ensure that accusations of impropriety have merit. |
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I am in support of 8chan's continuation to use Gratipay in order to continue to provide a website where communities of all shapes and sizes may form and grow. To push them aside on the account of a few user's actions to post illegal content, is pushing away any website that can have people maliciously post illegal content (practically anywhere). 8chan takes the proper precautions by making rules against illegal content and actively enforcing it with the help from board admins, board volunteers and it's users. Just like any site with moderation would do. To discount a website because of it's "harassing" speech that's based on nothing more than differing opinions goes beyond immoral on the stance of Gratipay, as anyone can claim harassment when someone disagrees with another. And would the same discussion need to happen to try and stop funds from going to those websites as well? Which I can say, seeing that your top receiver of funds for the LGBTQQIAAP community, Ms. Lynnmagic, when her statement reads: I and many others can see this as a way to harass anyone who she finds to be any of those things. I would also like to mention that there has been no Doxxing (releasing of personal information to harass physically) on 8chan and if their had been it would have been met with a post deletion and a ban. If you were to compare this to tumblr users who actively and openly gathered information of one of it's users, CommunismKills, using an extension, statcounter, in order to gain her IP address. An extension that tumblr allows despite the fact that it gives users access to other users IP addresses and their subsequent locations. And with that, they used that resource to find, harass, and make threats against her and her family. Now if tumblr were to use this service. Would you disallow them from using it because a few users harassed and threatened? Despite their rich culture of artists, writers, and other like-minded people who can express their ideals with one another? The same goes for sites like reddit, livejournal, and anything else that fits. This is a community, and in this community are users who hold the keys to the town, Fredrick Brennan (Hot Wheels/Founder of 8chan) is only the overseer of all, while the rest of us double checks what Hot Wheels misses. We have a diverse group of communities within this big community ranging from video games, anime, politics (of both sides of the political spectrum), equalism, Christianity, LGBT and pedophilia support, just being whacky, and the list is literally endless. You think of it, and it can become it's own community despite a person's lack of web development or lack of funds to maintain. I see no malice or intent to harm others here. I do not see a sign that welcomes the posting/linking of illegal content. I see a place anywhere can go and post without being bogged down by registration, where people are not criticized by a name or past posts, but the post that is at hand. Why destroy such a beautiful thing? tl;dr I support 8chan, won't you allow me and others to continue to support it using this service? |
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I have serious reservations on this issue. It is clearly a non-trivial issue for Gratipay which is sure to cause complaint regardless of the outcome. There are a number of persons who believe that moral judgement should guide Gratipay in providing a platform for project funding. I can sympathize with this viewpoint to a degree. However, I think that Gratipay should very carefully and clearly define what it does and does not consider moral outside of the laws that a website must operate under. I will state my biases up-front: I believe strongly in free-speech; I agree with Steven Pinker in that I think places which allow free speech are critical to the progress of our species. I am an egalitarian having previously considered myself what would be described as a 3rd wave feminist. I am a scientist and advocate evidence-based decision making. I sometimes visit and post on message-boards. As such, I find some of the content on reddit/4chan/8chan entirely contrary to my worldview. I've found boards obsessed with ridiculous, trivially debunked conspiracy theories, discussion of how rubbish [insert country] is and political opinions that I simply cannot agree with. Whilst I have difficulty understanding the rationale behind posting this kind of content I cannot accept that it should not exist as long as it abides by local laws. Currently social justice as a concept is taking a beating due to some of the people who claim to be advocates. You will find persons who claim tolerance whilst being intolerant of those who do not completely agree with the very specific group mindset that has been formed by excluding alternative viewpoints. You will routinely encounter the highly divisive "you're either with us or against us" rhetoric claiming that one cannot be neutral. Highly emotive language is employed to put "problematic" persons on the defensive in an attempt to make the complainant's demands appear morally justified. Generalization is routinely used to make those who are critical appear to be part of some amorphous "hate group". Any concession made is seen as an opportunity to drag the person(s) attempting to be reasonable into a never ending complaint list. Free speech in the public sphere is demanded by the complainant with a simultaneously inexplicable expectation of no criticism. I know that my points may seem rather detached from the discussion at hand but I thought it was important to point out that the aforementioned rhetoric is used widely to shame persons into adopting the beliefs of persons who excel at self-justifying their righteous anger. As such, all I can hope for is that Gratipay look at and base their final decision upon the available evidence. Best wishes. |
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I was brought into attention of this issue by a friend because he heard that GratiPay is one of my consideration for a future project, so this issue could affect me eventually. I'd like to remind GratiPay administration that they, as a US-based service provider, are protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (legally passed through a near-unanimous bipartisan vote) just as much as 8chan administration, or any other service provider administration for that matter. This law states the following:
This legislation is backed back the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I urge GratiPay administration to honor this right for other service providers without discrimination. There's no telling when will GratiPay's turn come where your own protection under §230 may come under risk. If GratiPay decides not to honor §230, I have no choice but to send the EFF a notice to alert them about this problematic decision, as your site no longer offer a safe space where service providers are assured their protection under §230 will be honored. |
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Dear Gratipay, Maybe if 8chan was allowed to continue using Gratipay, they could obtain enough funding from their supporters to acquire resources (more users, therefore more mods) to provide better moderator coverage and improve the speed and thoroughness of their CP take-down efforts. Blocking fundraising efforts mainly harms the site owner, a young programmer trying to make the world a better place for the people he serves, and the majority of the site's users who have nothing to do with any CP or illegal content on the site. There is no percentage of CP posting or speed of CP removal which is acceptable to knee-jerk moralizers who would define all of 8chan by such a small, unrepresentative portion of its users and user-posted content. These people know full well that every free, popular online community struggles to police CP posting, yet they are posturing as if 8chan has a unique CP problem. What is unique about 8chan is its acceptance of the burden of policing some of the most offensive user-posted content in existence because they believe free speech is worth the trouble. I can't even imagine the horrible things 8chan mods have to see/verify/remove on a regular basis to provide an invaluable, rare service that few of us are willing or able to provide. While everyone else sits comfortably behind their overly-broad TOS (most of which throw out all legal adult content along with the illegal stuff), 8chan is trying to do better. They are walking a razor's edge at the absolute extent of what is permissible, legal free speech in a day and age where even relatively free countries like the UK are imposing morality laws to filter adult content at the ISP, and the ability of individual adults to make media choices for themselves is under attack from busy-bodies who cannot tolerate even the idea that anyone be permitted to make different moral choices than they would. The value of the service 8chan is striving to provide is lost on many people, but that does not change the fact that they are making the world a better place for the group of people they serve in the chan subculture. Most sites take the easy way out and ban huge swaths of unpopular yet perfectly legal content because everyone else is doing it and organizations rightly hope to avoid the moral panic, threats and bullying. It's no coincidence that the people in this very thread most opposed to 8chan's participation on Gratipay are the same ones threatening to not only abandon Gratipay but speak ill of it, smearing the service to anyone who will listen. These are not the tactics of people who are willing to live and let live, to be truly inclusive and empathetic toward substantive differences in world view. These are the tactics of people who will not be satisfied simply expressing gratitude, generosity, and love to the people and projects they support; these are the bullying tactics of people who are most satisfied when they are depriving the people and projects they despise of gratitude, generosity, and love. These are people working to make the world a worse place for those who are truly "other" to them. I don't frequent chans much. I was on Patreon to support indie game devs and game writers, but also ended up supporting 8chan and a feminist video maker. I'm now going to support 8chan on Gratipay because they are so wonderfully idealistic about free speech that they are willing to manage the ugly, messy parts of a free-speech-friendly site, not just the cool, fun parts that people romanticize when they are donating to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. 8chan isn't halfassing their commitment to free speech, and I respect the hell out of that. So I ask Gratipay to please maintain your inclusiveness. We already have a Patreon. Differentiate Gratipay and stand up for the outsiders, the unpopular, the misunderstood and misrepresented, the truly marginalized people and projects who just want to make some small part of the world a better place for some group of people. 8chan is definitely doing that for channers, and more broadly for anyone who NEEDS a place to have conversations that are difficult, if not impossible, for anyone else to host. Please allow people like me to express our gratitude, generosity, and love according to our own moral frameworks. Trust and cooperate with law enforcement to address any legal issues, leave the moralizing to your users, and stay in the business of doing what Gratipay does best: helping people to support the people and projects they care about. Some may take their money to other services, but at least you will know they were able to make that decision for themselves, rather than have you take away their choices by developer fiat. Thank you for your time and consideration, |
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As a donor to 8chan, I would like to start by qualifying my background. I'm a systems engineer working in a field which requires numerous security clearances. My very living depends upon freedom of speech and the neutrality of the internet, and also upon my associations being clean enough to pass smell tests for incredibly conservative organizations. I am required to submit to periodic audits and have absolutely zero concern regarding them noting my financial support to this organization. I'm also a Jew who, despite piled allegations of Nazism and White supremacy, feels welcome on 8chan, and does not appreciate people using my ethnicity as prop in attempts to shut down a forum for free speech. The very reason this is being discussed at all is because 8chan is serving its purpose of free speech by harboring political dissent against certain pressure groups who do not wish dissent to be allowed at all. These pressure groups over the past month have been engaged in an all out propaganda war in an attempt to bully this site off the internet, and I find their efforts so repulsive I have volunteered to fully fund this site's costs should all other efforts become closed to this site's proprietors. Regarding the serious allegations being repeatedly flung against 8chan, I would like to posit the following: The proprietor of 8chan resides in a nation in which distribution and possession of child pornography are illegal without exception, and which has extradition treaties with the United States. If 8chan truly were facilitating such horrendous behavior, the individuals could have the board administrator arrested, his equipment seized, and neither ever seen again with a few simple reports to the Federal Bureau of Investigation or his local authorities. The fact it has not happened given the repeated and intensive pressure put upon 8chan by these political groups is indicative of their innocence. The reality of the matter is 8chan's proprietor, while making every effort to avoid censorship of any material deemed legal, has a militant stance against child pornography. Action is taken swiftly against individual posts, not only to remove the material and ban the offender, but to report the IP address to federal authorities. Boards which are alleged to facilitate such abuse are also reviewed, and if found to be encouraging said behavior, are shut down and their names permanently blacklisted. I ask that Gratipay not become a tool for political repression. Do not simply take the politically expedient route of using the behavior of a few bad actors as an excuse to give what can only be termed as bullies what they want. Thank you. |
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I think we've heard enough of both sides, please refrain from posting additional comments unless you believe that what you want to say hasn't already been said and really needs to be said. |
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@Changaco good idea. This issue is really just supposed to be internal. |
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So 8chan has been talking about us: https://8chan.co/gamergate/res/157609.html#q158537
That's the sort of people we support by supporting 8chan. So, this ticket has overflowed with people coming from that thread to argue that 8chan doesn't allow child porn. But what about doxing? We already know that GamerGate is a group that will use threats of violence to silence those they disagreee with. They will send a SWAT team to your house. They can get you killed. Looking around the site, I found a couple things that would definitely be against our community guidelines, when we write them: There's /dox/ that provides instructions and websites to aid doxing. There's this thread on /gg/ endorsing doxing and posting multiple records of doxing. This might me a joke thread, but the fact that they can joke about something like this shows how little they care about the privacy and safety of others. There are undoubtedly more, but this is all I had the time to find. |
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@seanlinsley The board /gg/ fell. Hard. To cut a long story short, several people were trying to harm their cause, a 3rd party known as the GNAA. So, in 8chan style, people just made a new board and left the old one. As a partying gift, they ruined and defaced the board (hence, the [trigger warning] and removal of one of the first tenets and original laws of the board: NO DOXXING). The new board is https://8chan.co/gamergate/ btw. 8chan was always against doxxing. Some of the GNAA once tried shooting the board down by posting doxx, screencapping them and posting them on twitter. Anons found out based on details in the pictures posted. Since that one episode, posting Dox is met with a ban, post deletion and no warning at all. Noone dox's, and the few who did quickly learned to stop. Doxxing doesn't help their cause. Secondly, you claim 8chan SWATS people. And can get people killed. And exactly how can they kill people? That just sounds like you're wielding fear as weapon to scare Gratipay from supporting them. And please, please, next time you open one of their boards, lurk a bit more to understand the culture. |
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Also, before you think about cutting support to an online comunity of any sort: Instead of censoring/not censoring, talk with Frederic about improving his site and thus, improving the world, like your mission is. God knows, we could use a couple more moderators around. |
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@SeanLinsey I just had to comment because you don't understand the police side of SWATTING anymore. PD's rarely send actual seat teams out anymore let alone kick in your door. The reason? Cops like my stepfather back in Texas have been abused by people being swatted multiple times. As for the /gg/ thread. The gamergate community hangs out at /gamergate/ because /gg/ was trashed by the admin. People vacated the board because of that very thread. Please learn what you are talking about. I've been meaning to get on github since I've been programming again, but this thread made me do it. 8chan and previously 4chan is and always will be my home. It's a place where quite literally a family exists that I will defend. Like any family (holy this Christmas with mine was terrible), there can be the black sheeps, but they often get shunned by the good members. The Chan's have been a place where I'm free to ask a question, and expect a challenge without a strict moderation from the admins. ALL illegal content does get reported and removed ASAP. Please don't do this. |
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So Chris Kluwe's dox and call for swatting has been taken down? A few minutes on the site, nope, still there (right above someone else's dox, a woman who has committed the insufferable crime of being a feminist.) I don't know (or care) if it's gamergate or not. It IS currently on 8chan and has been for days. |
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Capitulating to outrage machines is almost never a positive-sum action. I'm reminded of the donglegate debacle where an outrage machine got two people fired, and then a second outrage machine got a third person fired - and none of the three seemed, to my mind, to have done anything sufficiently wrong to even come close to justifying it (note that the first two had apologised, and the third had accepted said apology, before either outrage machine got going). I'd rather avoid ideological curation on the basis that even the most important ideologies start out as a tiny voice crying in the wilderness; I once did a little research into e.g. the attacks made on feminism in its earliest days, and came away with an impression of "I dislike actions that might risk helping similar attacks on the next social movement that would cause so much good to succeed". |
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I can't believe anyone is actively trying to destroy an individual's ability to earn a living, especially an wheelchair-bound individual with brittle-bones disease. |
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Thanks to all for joining this conversation, and for by and large keeping it civil. We've decided (IRC) to go ahead and lock the thread for now, for the following reasons:
While locked, only repo collaborators will be able to post comments. Note that we're not closing this ticket right now. This is still an open issue and we'll be working on it over the weekend. Thank you. |
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Printed out 23 pages of comments between reopening and locking this ticket:
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I finished a first pass through the comments I printed out. I also skimmed "Safe Conferences are Deliberately Designed" (ref) and "Morality, Legality, and Enforcement" (ref; I slowed down and started reading at, "So now let’s get specific, OK?"). |
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I did finally put tape over my webcam at #118 (comment). :-) |
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As part of our agenda for the Gratipay company retreat this past weekend, nine of us met in person to discuss this issue, which is not directly about the fate of any given user, but is instead about the meta question of how and how much to curate Gratipay's userbase. Based on our in-person discussion, and the discussion on this ticket leading up to our in-person meeting, here is how we are going to proceed:
Thank you to everyone who weighed in on this issue. Speaking just for myself, I am quite proud that Gratipay's turf is a space where both sides of a highly contentious issue have been able to interact in a more or less civil fashion, however briefly. |
and others
8chan has joined Gratipay. See FD1518 (copied below) and also gratipay/gratipay.com#3032. This brings to a head the discussion we started over a year ago about what kind of userbase we want to cultivate.
My inclination is to start curating our userbase more closely. We want users who align with our mission, to enable an economy of gratitude, generosity, and love. However, I'm not going to take any action before we have a conversation on this ticket, and even if a day were enough time (it's not), today is Christmas Eve and I'm offline with my family. I expect tomorrow's payday to include 8chan.
Update: The conclusion of this particular ticket was that we would not start curating our user-base based on alignment with our mission. However, we reversed this decision four months later, removing two users (8chan and weev) through an unfortunately idiosyncratic and non-transparent process. Then, a month after that, we went out of business for unrelated reasons, and as part of bouncing back we implemented a proper team review process.
tl;dr We now carefully curate our user-base.
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