| To understand what is going on, a summary of the legal repartee going on is as follows, written by Vox Day, who formulated the legal strategy and to my understanding, basically wrote all the legal briefs. The crazy thing is that neither the lawyers nor the Trust & Safety people even read the Terms and Community Guidelines. I mean, one can excuse the gammas and the armchair lawyers for not knowing what the relevant rules and laws are, they're mostly reacting to what they've seen floating around the Internet. But it's downright bizarre to me how the freaking lawyers don't even know what they're talking about. They'll write dozens of filings all based on the same false premise. WE KICKED OWEN OFF BECAUSE HE POSTED HATE SPEECH ON OUR PLATFORM! No, he didn't. OKAY, WE KICKED HIM OFF BECAUSE HE POSTED HATE SPEECH ON INSTAGRAM AND WE POLICE OFF-PLATFORM SPEECH TOO! Instagram is free. WHAT? SO WHAT? So Owen's Patreon account didn't fund his Instagram posts. Instagram is free. WELL, UM, WE DID IT BECAUSE HE POSTED SOMETHING ON FACEBOOK! Facebook is free too. TWITTER? That's free too. WELL, HE MADE VIDEOS! ON YOUTUBE. HE FUNDED THOSE ON PATREON! No, he didn't. He was monetized directly on YouTube and he never created a Patreon video project. WE CAN KICK OFF ANYONE WE WANT FOR NO REASON AT ALL! Allow me to introduce you to the Unruh Civil Rights Act of 1959.... |
* Can Patreon kick someone off who did not violate their terms of service?
* Does kicking someone off in this manner constitute tortious interference?
It's actually somewhat unfortunate that this is going through arbitration, if only because we likely won't ever get the full details of the judgement.
However, it is clear that, in addition to the central issue under arbitration, there are a number of errors that Patreon has made that are not working in their favor.