[sschueller]

Are you at all worried that stripe might pressure you to remove certain users from your site like patreon is currently doing? Do you have any future plans to use alternative non-US payment providers?

For example Subscribestar can no longer accept paypal payments. [1]

[1] https://www.subscribestar.com/subscribestar

[mikker]

Not really. I have the same policy of not allowing hate speech and the like. I don't see myself as a "Patreon competitor" in that sense. Without getting myself into a debate I've only read a little about, I think good on them for controlling who gets to use their platform. I don't think of that as censorship, really.

I have no plans to add anything but Stripe, no. I realize how vulnerable that makes me and my relationship with them but you have to trust someone. I have used Paypal before and I didn't like it at all.

[raarts]

> I have the same policy of not allowing hate speech and the like

For whoever is interested: this is the (Google translated) text in the Terms of 10er:

"The service must not be used for any illegal activity. Nor should the service be used in connection with violent, hateful, racist or similar activities. Brainbow defines in its own right what can be classified as being in one of these categories."

You are indeed not a competitor for Patreon. The biggest problem people seem to have with Patreon is exactly this: every company creating its own definition of hate speech, which could result in their customers (creators) being cut off their income for things they say, even on other platforms. Which effectively creates censorship, and a growing administrative cost for all companies.

[sschueller]

I don't understand this.

Why not base it on what is legal by law in your country? Require a court order to have things removed.

Take Paypal and who ever to court in your country if they deny you service because of this and threaten to have their permits to do business in your country removed.

[pjc50]

Quite a lot of people don't want to facilitate this kind of thing, and certainly don't want to have their name associated with it.

[sschueller]

There is the underlying issue. If you don't fight for those people who you don't agree with or despise although legal you will eventually loose your freedoms too.

If you want free speech you need to protect all of it.

[pjc50]

On the other hand, if I facilitate people arguing for fascism I will also eventually lose freedoms if they win. And in the meantime make a number of other people just that little bit more miserable.

[mikker]

Exactly. I fully support anyone’s right to say what they want. But I’m a business and if your business is racist bullshit (for example) I don’t want to do business with you.

I’m not censoring nor silencing nor putting anyone in prison. But I’m politely refusing to receive your money and work with you.

Money isn’t everything.

[raarts]

That's all fine and dandy, but the problem is that in this case there is no alternative, and if they are created, they are shut down, because payment processors like Paypal and Stripe refuse to do business with them.

Payment processors currently have too much power. They should be legally refrained from choosing their customers, just like telecom companies for example. In most free countries telecom companies are not allowed to refuse/block customers based on people's political views. And rightly so.