There is a difference between a platform that can be easily replaced choosing not to serve certain content, and infrastructure providers choosing to deny service.
I'm all for Twitter choosing what they will allow - if anything the more aggressive they are, the more space it creates for competition.
I'm on the other hand not for payment providers even being allowed to choose, because their position then makes them effective arbiter of what kinds of businesses are allowed to exist without democratic oversight.
For all the power the social networks have, it's nothing like that.
Maybe crypto will change that, but today threatening to withdraw payment processing is an existential threat for a lot of online businesses which gives payment networks undue power.
> the more aggressive they are, the more space it creates for competition
The competition is not apples to apples. Instead, you have ideological bubbles like Gab, and you have the incumbent network (Twitter) which "normies" use by default.
The problem with the default network applying ideological censorship is that it limits the average person's exposure to the marketplace of ideas. In the context of a controversial topic, this benefits the default narrative tremendously.
If we want to reduce ideological conflict, it's imperative to respect alternative viewpoints and engage them as equals. Otherwise, we risk alienating people into becoming extremists, or worse, we allow the authorities (who work closely with censors and fact checkers) to control the Overton window and propagandize us away from the truth.
Competition is not apples to apples, but it is possible. You have no realistic options to take payments from a mass audience if payment networks cuts you off - that is a huge difference.
What a nonsensical argument. There's no replacement for Youtube or Twitter in the same exact sense that there's no replacement for when a banking/CC industry bans you.
Yeah, there are vastly inferior alternatives which almost nobody uses (Bitchute, Minds, cryptocurrencies), but that cuts you off from the vast audience that they've monopolized. An audience that want to read you and wants to pay you, evident by the vast number of subscribers and payments.
What cuts you off from the vast audience is that most of them will never see your content. The network effect can make a difference, but it's exaggerated in the sense that the vast majority of people will never get much exposure.
Twitter stats are a good example of this. Look at the stats for your individual tweets. I have an account with 45k. I can beat the organic exposure for a tweet with 1-2 USD of ads.
That's not to say the big networks have no value, and you could end up one of the lucky ones with huge exposure.
But they remain giants because people keep thinking they're much more important than they are.
They are important if you get big on them. The vast majority will never get big or even mid sized on them.
In this case, OnlyFans made the choice (and reversed it), not the payment provider. Granted, they did it because of the payment provider, but Twitter etc don't make their decisions in a vacuum either, they react to different kinds of pressure.
That said, the same people made the same arguments ("private businesses, no rules should apply") with payment providers boycotting Gab, but turn around now. Will they learn that political pressure via businesses is a bad idea because it might affect them next? Doubtful, they haven't learned it the first few times.
Onlyfans made the "choice" the way someone with a gun to their head makes a "choice".
It's meaningless to suggest they had one.
And I'm a concrete example of someone who considers Gab a haven of extremism, but who still believes payment processors should not be allowed to boycott legal businesses.
Sure, just as Twitter, Facebook and the cloud providers make a "choice" when they ban someone who has become a persona non grata in the establishment media. Nobody does anything out of ideology at that level, it's all damage control.
The WSJ imagines pewdiepie to be Hitler incarnate? Advertisers pull their ads and Disney has to cut ties. Not because they think pewdiepie is a Nazi, but because there's only one "choice".
This is nothing new, it's been done before, but it hurts a different group this time, so the people who celebrated these same actions are now angry that this kind of thing is allowed to happen.
I'm all for Twitter choosing what they will allow - if anything the more aggressive they are, the more space it creates for competition.
I'm on the other hand not for payment providers even being allowed to choose, because their position then makes them effective arbiter of what kinds of businesses are allowed to exist without democratic oversight.
For all the power the social networks have, it's nothing like that.
Maybe crypto will change that, but today threatening to withdraw payment processing is an existential threat for a lot of online businesses which gives payment networks undue power.