curate users

[chadwhitacre]

8chan has joined Gratipay. See FD1518 (copied below) and also https://github.com/gratipay/gratipay.com/issues/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.

[clone1018]

@whit537 Of course I had permission: https://twitter.com/SecretGamerGrrl/status/549805555733508096

[chadwhitacre]

This tweet thread. Of course I had permission:

Thanks. Seeing it in IRC, too, now.

For the record:

Wow, someone missed the part of this metaphor where no credit card companies, paypal, etc. absolutely will go near CP.

https://twitter.com/SecretGamerGrrl/status/549825094806016000

[chadwhitacre]

Assuming your mind hasn't changed since @benhc123 's comment, that is.

It hasn't, because I didn't find any new argument in @benhc123's comment as to why enabling 8chan actively interferes with Gratipay's ability to also enable an economy of gratitude, generosity, and love for others.

You didn't exactly answer my question in comment #68331266 about /pol/ and /younglove/ though.

Okay, sorry ...

As long as all sexism, racism, and pedophilia is occurring off-site, and no communities are being created around it on Gratipay, wouldn't enabling said behavior be part of how you interpret your mission statement?

So you're postulating an individual gratipay.com/pol account (as opposed to a gratipay.com/for/pol community) that represents /pol/ in some way? And by allowing this account we're enabling /pol/? And that's part of how we're interpreting our mission? Yes, as part of how we interpret our mission, /pol/ gets to participate in Gratipay. Here's what that means:

• They can have an account on our platform (maybe they use Gratipay to give to the Red Cross or whatever, who knows?).
• They can state who they are, and even link to /pol/, but their avatar and bio have to be civil, according to our case-by-case application of section 5 of our terms.
• They can receive money through Gratipay. All money going through Gratipay is explicitly framed as a no-strings-attached gift, so it would go against the grain for Gratipay to police how people spend the money they receive here. We'll only do that when the law compels us (cf. #122).
• They can't form a /pol/ community on Gratipay, again, according to our case-by-case application of §5.
• If/when we add more user-generated content features, they can't use those features in violation of §5.

From /pol/'s point of view, they might experience themselves as being a second-class citizen on Gratipay.

From Gratipay's point of view, we're happy to have them on the site as long as they behave well according to our definition.

[chadwhitacre]

And with that, I'm going to go ahead and close this out. Thank you to everyone for participating in this important conversation. I feel like we reached a deeper understanding of Gratipay's mission together.

Here's to a grateful, generous, and loving 2015! :dancer:

!m *

[Daiz]

So the bottom line is that Gratipay doesn't care about off-site behavior as long as on-site behavior is fine? Sounds like a good common sense decision to me!

[seanlinsley]

I am strongly opposed to this decision. Just because I can't keep up with the pace of everyone's replies doesn't mean that my, and other people's concerns are invalid.

[chadwhitacre]

Reopened, @seanlinsley.

[paintedsky]

Thank you for the reasoned discussion. As an outsider, all I can really contribute is that I strongly disagree with any reputable company doing business with the cesspool that is 8chan. It is your decision, of course, but continuing to allow 8chan to use Gratipay means I will never use your service, nor will I ever recommend it to another.

[mimiheart]

I am at least one of the original people who wrote to support about 8chan. It seemed to me then, as now, that a site that is based on gratitude and love wouldn't want to help facilitate the harassment of people that 8chan seems to approve of, along with the exploitation of minors.

Whether or not they're doing anything illegal seems to not be the issue. There are proper authorities to handle that. It's whether or not Gratipay, in setting up a community based on gratitude, generosity, and love, is helping to enable a community based on hatred, harassment, and exploitation.

I'm not the right person to decide this, I just felt it should be brought to the attention of Gratipay.

[blrhc]

Agreed, @mimiheart I think it's morality not just law we should be concerned about.

[galuszkak]

I didn't have time to go through all discussion but I agree with @mimiheart and @seanlinsley .

[Daiz]

Since this was reopened I guess I should write some more words on the matter.

As I see it, the big question here is: Does Gratipay want to act as a moral police for the off-site behavior of its users?

In my opinion, the only answer to this that makes sense is a big and resounding no, because the alternative opens a massive can of worms, except all the worms are fractals.

Why? For starters, policing users on your own site is already hard enough, especially the more community features you add. Widening this kind of policing to the behavior of your users on the entire internet is a task that is simply impossible to do in any kind of comprehensive manner.

As such, this kind of policing would pretty much only be done based on user reports. Which in turn means that anyone who doesn't happen to particularly like someone else could start digging up dirt, taking things out of context, possibly from private sites where they can't be verified, then come knocking on Gratipay's door asking for "justice to be done" because of whatever "immoral" behavior they claim the target in question is doing. What would Gratipay do then? Just blindly ban people based on accusations? See if the mob decides that the person is evil enough to be banned? I don't know about you, but witch hunts and mob justice are the last thing I'd like to see rule my website. (EDIT: This whole thing actually reminds me of laws regarding obscenity in the US and how terribly vague they are.)

I can come up with specific examples of all kinds of awkward and morally challenging scenarios that having a global moral policing policy would lead to. Ultimately though, the big problem with something like this is that it will very easily turn into something that feels like arbitrary banhammer swinging, which will ensure that no-one who is doing something that could be perceived as even remotely controversial by some will be interested in using the site. That content could be porn, it could be violent video games, it could be a reddit-like website where users can create topical boards for anonymous (shit)posting. (All of which are legal under the letter of the law.)

As such, I come back to saying that the simple answer would be to put a stop to this kind of nonsense from the get-go, and simply say "whatever users do off-site is not our concern as long as it doesn't affect us legally". When it comes to matters like this, you're never going to satisfy everyone anyway, so you might as well go for the option that's actually clear (in contrast to having to constantly draw lines in the sand) and requires the least amount of continuous effort.

[seanlinsley]

@Daiz- I don't think your worries are founded in reality. We can have a policy of what we do and don't allow, and have a team of Gratipay members that reviews complaints and decides whether to ban them. Patreon does it. We can too.

If there isn't solid evidence in wrongdoing, we don't ban them. If there is, we do.

[Daiz]

If there isn't solid evidence in wrongdoing, we don't ban them. If there is, we do.

Sure, that might sound simple on paper, but even that can get complicated when you start thinking about what constitutes as "solid evidence". Consider if Gratipay started banning users for "off-site harassment", for example. What exactly will you consider to be harassment? The legal definition, or the (seemingly continually extending) internet definition? What will you consider to be solid evidence of harassment? Is saying "Some random guys who I just know where anonymous posters from 8chan totally harassed me" enough, as long as the person is "trusted"? How do you define "trusted" people? In this case, if the word isn't enough, then it's pretty much impossible to prove a connection between the two. Or even if it's a case with named users, there might not be a solid link between two people of the same name on different, thus they might actually be different users (and could deny being the same person). No doubt people would still demand "justice to be served". As I said, there's a huge can of worms here, and it is the very opposite of a simple matter.

[seanlinsley]

Again: Patreon does it. We can too. We can figure it out along the way.

[kyzh]

if you choose not to ban/remove the obvious accounts that are owned by people/community that do child porn, harassment and ruining people's life in general, you are not better than the people you are harboring. If Gratipay choose the basic, minimum set of rules that the law is, then gratipay is not worth it. Edit: typo

[lawduck]

@Daiz - if Gratipay's stance is "whatever users do off-site is not our concern as long as it doesn't affect us legally," then this is not the mission statement:

Gratipay's mission is to enable an economy of gratitude, generosity, and love.

It's actually that simple. One other thing (emphasis mine.) :

We can't actively create such an economy because success depends on a cultural change, and that's not under any company's control. The best we can do is create conditions for the possibility of an economy of love, and to individually practice gratitude, generosity, and love ourselves. That's what we're trying to do.

That's utter nonsense. You're enabling a community (you say so yourself in the next sentence) to create an "economy of love," and you're allegedly seeking to practice gratitude, generosity, and love. If those are the company values, then curating your clientele is an essential piece of both the company's mission and your individual efforts to live in some sort of state of grace. If, instead, these are pretty words that describe a "hey, tip people, because money is an expression of gratitude to those among you, because Ayn Rand" philosophy, then stick with your above-quoted intention to dodge the issue of what your service is enabling in the "real world" of profiteering around [insert unacceptable thing here].

But also, if that's your stance, then it would be good to publicly abandon the notion that you are seeking to create a better world. It's not bad to be a money transmitter business that doesn't want to dabble in morals. But saying that you are and behaving differently? That's a "go fuck yourselves" level offense for many.

PS - apologies if "you," @Daiz-, are not in fact associated with Gratipay in any formal sense. Assume that all references to "you" are addressed to core devs/founders/whatever they call themselves.

PPS - I am a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. ;)

[lawduck]

A conversation that is a close parallel to this one is unfurling on Medium right now, over the issue of conduct enforcement and codes of conduct at conferences:

https://medium.com/@jmspool/safe-conferences-are-deliberately-designed-2849b6cd3658

[Daiz]

I am in fact not associated with Gratipay in any formal sense. I just follow the happenings around it occasionally and stumbled upon this discussion and decided to weight in because I think trying to play global internet moral police is a terrible idea all around, because morals vary from person to person and "proving" "moral wrongdoings" on the internet can be a very nebulous affair that will quickly devolve into arbitrary punishing (or at the least the appearance of it) and mob justice, neither of which will make the platform very inviting to anything that could be conceived as even slightly controversial or "problematic".

This is why I suggest using the law as the yardstick on the matter when it comes to any off-site activities of users.

[jhersh]

All questions of defining harassment and on-site vs. off-site behavior are irrelevant. It doesn't even matter if you fancy yourselves morality police (or not).

If your service facilitates or enables hate groups like 8chan, then your (in)actions speak for themselves and you are effectively condoning their behavior. I will go out of my way to avoid your service and I will recommend others do the same.

[blrhc]

@jhersh, We're trying having a constructive discussion here. Threatening to tell others not to use our services without an argument of your own isn't particularly helpful, although I do totally support your view.

[ironfroggy]

@benhc123 there is no lack of argument: Gratipay condones and financially supports child porn and harassment. That sort of behavior doesn't require additional arguments to explain why its a bad idea, unless you are literally a monster.

[jhersh]

@benhc123 My apologies, I didn't mean to come across as unconstructive. Rephrasing my point: the only thing that matters is whether you allow hate groups to use the service.

[blrhc]

@jhersh, @ironfroggy. I completely agree. @Daiz-, morals may vary from person to person, but understanding child pornography is wrong is pretty simple.

[ironfroggy]

@Daiz- it isn't being "moral police" to have a moral position. We can't pretend that Gratipay is some neutral unfeeling machine: it is the product and a force of people, and those people cannot isolate themselves from its actions. We would demand better from a corporation, a non-profit, a government, or just a group of people walking down the street. The that people as groups somehow become inhuman is, well, dehumanizing.

[Daiz]

but understanding child pornography is wrong is pretty simple.

Well, @benhc123, I obviously agree that real life child pornography is wrong, because real children were hurt in the process of making it. Regardless of my personal moral stance, though, I will defend things like drawn child pornography (eg. content that can be found on /r/lolicons or various 8chan boards), as no-one is hurt in the creation of it, and if pedophiles use harmless material like that to get off instead of real child abuse, then all the better.

I would also like to invite you all to revisit this link I posted further up in the thread: https://8chan.co/obscenity.html - which clearly states that 8chan does not allow illegal content like child pornography and will actively delete it and even ban entire boards for it. The page also states things like "If you are thinking of posting illegal content to 8chan.co, please think again. We will not protect you and will work with US law enforcement to the best of our ability to help them arrest you." Claiming that it's a "site for child pornography" is, in my opinion, utterly asinine.

Claiming that 8chan on the whole would also be a "hate group" is also ridiculous, unless you're also going to claim that reddit is a "hate group" - after all, as I also mentioned earlier, both sites allow people to create topical boards/subreddits where people can discuss whatever.

This is exactly kind of mob justice in action that I was talking about - people have convinced themselves that something is evil, and demand that justice be done, preferably swiftly and seemingly based on nothing but their word alone.

[ironfroggy]

@Daiz- I don't care if all or most of 8chan partakes, but it is well documented that these activities do exist on the boards and slip the moderation, either by volume or by parading as barely-legal material that still involves real children's images being traded for the pleasure of pedophiles.

Frankly, I don't give a shit if you think this is "mob justice". A lot of people take a moral stance against it and don't want to be supportive of platforms or groups that enable it, and that isn't a mob that's a group of people standing up for what they believe in. Don't you think every individual has that right? Of course you do, because you're doing it yourself right now.

[jhersh]

8chan does not allow illegal content like child pornography and will actively delete it and even ban entire boards for it.

How's that working out for them?

Claiming that 8chan on the whole would also be a "hate group" is also ridiculous

It doesn't particularly matter if you think 8chan or reddit or any other site is properly classified as a hate group. It also doesn't particularly matter how you define "hate group". If your service facilitates those sites, then you will be viewed, correctly and properly, as condoning and even supporting their behavior.

[mimiheart]

Are pictures of posed fully-clothed children in suggestive positions allowed? It's still exploitation of children, whether or not it is legal. (And whether it IS legal or not completely depends on the country. Something allowed in the Philippines may not be in the U.S., Canada, UK, or Australia, etc.)

There's no "mob justice" involved in saying, "We don't want to be associated with this."

[lawduck]

Not to pile on (mob justice, indeed), but earlier on this ticket @whit537 referenced this article regarding 8chan and child porn, which collates quite a bit of evidence that the service is used both for distribution and for directing other folks to images stashed elsewhere:

https://medium.com/@FoldableHuman/the-mods-are-always-asleep-7f750f879fc

[Daiz]

@ironfroggy So are you similarly going to condemn reddit as a child porn / harassment website, since you can pretty much guaranteed to find subreddit for similar kinds of icky matters? Would the admins of reddit be kicked off from Gratipay if people complained about it in a similar manner?

@lawduck That article certainly demonstrates a lot of questionable behavior (that could even be illegal in some places around the world). However, it also pretty heavily implies that said questionable behavior would make up the vast majority of the site, which, if you look at the site yourself, is very clearly not actually the case. There's tons of boards, with only a small fraction of them engaging in this particular kind of icky posting. Feel free to look at the board list of 8chan and see for yourself. Again, this is very similar to the case of reddit and subreddits, where you can certainly find all sorts of legally questionable content. It would be nice if someone could bother to address this comparison I feel is pretty relevant already.

[gilesbowkett]

re this comment from @mimiheart earlier:

Whether or not they're doing anything illegal seems to not be the issue. There are proper authorities to handle that. It's whether or not Gratipay, in setting up a community based on gratitude, generosity, and love, is helping to enable a community based on hatred, harassment, and exploitation.

I think Gratipay has a fundamental confusion going on here over whether it's a community or a public space. It's extremely common for communities to police their members, and to ostracize people who have violated community rules about behavior, even when no crime's occurred. The idea that "you can be here, even if you harm people elsewhere, as long as you're not harming them here" fits a public space much better than it fits a community. It's a completely reasonable way to run a public space, e.g. a shopping mall, but it's a very, very unusual way to run a community.

I'm sorry to say this, but I think Gratipay's so confused on this fundamental distinction that it's inevitably doomed to failure, and if that failure occurs, there's going to be a day when Gratipay leadership is going to look back on this moment and think, "I probably should have realized there was something wrong with my fundamental assumptions when I welcomed child pornographers into my community of gratitude, generosity, and love."

[zspencer]

I think @gilesbowkett hit the nail on the head. Gratipay is not a government entity. It is not a utility. It is not a public space.

It's a company, a platform, and a community. By allowing the platform to be used to fund continued operations of a site such as 8Chan, Gratipay forces the decision onto it's community members about whether they want to continue to partake in the Gratipay platform.

The last time Gratipay had to make a decision about how to create an inclusive, welcoming community a disproportionate number of services that supported groups with a disproportionately low amount of power were harmed.

Compare the following gratipay recipients (Keep in mind accounts starting at different time have different graphs, but all follow the same "cliff" pattern):

• TransH4ck - An organization devoted to encouraging Transfolk lost almost half it's funding in a single week.
• CallbackWomen - A service devoted to helping women get speaker representation at technology conferences lost 40% of their income in the same week.
• AdaDevAcademy - A free school for women to learn computer programming also lost 50% of their income
• TKWidmer - The founding developer of RefugeRestrooms lost 75 of their income.
• Gratipay itself has seen a downward trend in it's income
• Not to mention the dozens of people and organizations who moved off Gratipay to other platforms.

Meanwhile @whit537 has been mostly unaffected, with ~10% varience here and there.

By refusing to take a stance on what kind of behavior the community can fund, Gratipay forces it's community members, some of whom who depend on Gratipay to make ends meet, to decide between paying their rent or staying on a platform that facilitates the financial support and continued operation of a child pornography ring.

[ironfroggy]

@Daiz-

So are you similarly going to condemn reddit as a child porn / harassment website

Yes. They do not take any semblance of a moral stand on anything and they pretend this faux-neutrality is somehow admirable. This disgusts me.

[Daiz]

@ironfroggy Seems like we rather fundamentally disagree on this matter, then, but I do respect your consistency on it.

[colindean]

I thought about this some more. This issue to too polarized, and it's bringing out the Ellen Ripley in many and Pontius Pilate in others. There's no more academic discussion to be had. As has been said elsewhere, Patreon and others had the privilege of discussing this in private, and it's clear that Gratipay's public thinking-out-loud is sufficiently radical as to be misunderstood as anything ranging from divergent philosophical thought to complacency in the face of what many perceive as a clear and present danger, a crisis, a perversion that should not be suffered.

Fail closed. +1 suspend infinitechan for now, seek legal counsel and the advice of other payment systems. The Gratipayers assembling this weekend should set aside some time to discuss this heavy topic.

A part of me still believes that Gratipay should defer to legal counsel and law enforcement, but it's clear that law enforcement doesn't move at Internet speed. I don't believe that there is a clear and present danger, because 8chan does have rules that seem to be enforced. There's some really disgusting stuff that goes on there (went on it last night, lots of eyebleach and bile duct cleanser necessary afterward), as it goes on on any site that enables users to submit content.

I normally take a very volunteeristic/libertarian approach to things, and I've tried here to apply that logic here as a Pareto efficiency: "Does this make any of us freer, without making anyone less free?" Or, really, more specifically, "If Gratipay goes a certain way, is anyone's freedom impinged?" But, alas, that logic is only truly necessary for a government legislator.

It is a duty of business to lead government by exceeding legal edicts where the business feels such is appropriate, either by internal compulsion or pressure from its customers. Sometimes the deviation from the legal minimum is just enough to sate that compulsion, sometimes it's far and above, wowing customers and winning them over for life on account of a singular gesture and commitment to do the right thing and make it right when it's not.

I will defend to the death someone's right to say and do things I disagree with - so long as no one is harmed - but that does not stop me thinking poorly of them and convincing others to feel the same, nor does that stop me from preventing them from speaking from my land, nor does it stop me from employing a louder bullhorn to drown their disagreeable message with ones of gratitude, generosity, and love.

I see now that Gratipay the site can take this to heart and act cautiously, minimally failing closed on this issue while counsel is sought. If 8chan et al. want to use Gratipay the open source project, well, good luck with that.

[lawduck]

@Daiz-

You asked for people to not tar & feather 8chan without evidence, and you specifically pointed to their obscenity policy as "proving" that bad stuff doesn't happen. I reposted the article that says the obscenity policy is not enforced, and provided examples of people using 8chan for exactly the thing that is "banned." You're now complaining that the article is tarring and feathering 8chan with evidence of a "few bad apples" (if you'll forgive my paraphrasing).

There are an infinite number of "not good enough" responses that you can employ, and I believe that no matter what anyone presents or posts, the evidence will be insufficient to condemn 8chan in your eyes. Similarly, I understand your argument against curation to be that any effort to police users or evaluate consumer complaints about users is doomed because "what is evidence anyway." Skepticism is great - it's an effective tool in any rhetorician's toolbelt, and it is based in scientific principles. However, it doesn't extend to cover the position that you're advocating. Skepticism demands more than mere assertions for proof. In the face of "more than mere assertions," skepticism takes a back seat to more evaluative mechanisms - the process of sifting proof may be skeptical, but having been presented with proof, you don't jump to a complementary but different position and state that the proof is a hasty generalization.

What's great (from my perspective, at least) is that it does not matter at all whether you or I believe or disbelieve that 8chan is a "kiddie porn" site. It does not matter in the slightest whether or not reddit is a hive of scum and villainy or democracy in action. The broader question at issue is whether Gratipay should engage in the admittedly difficult work of limiting its pool of users to those that fit the values of the company. As I said above, assuming that Gratipay actually lives those values, the answer seems blindingly obvious to me.

[Daiz]

you specifically pointed to their obscenity policy as "proving" that bad stuff doesn't happen

Err... The fact that they say they remove illegal content and have banned whole boards pretty clearly means that bad stuff does happen, and I never implied otherwise - the page just says that they do in fact deal with bad stuff.

There are an infinite number of "not good enough" responses that you can employ, and I believe that no matter what anyone presents or posts, the evidence will be insufficient to condemn 8chan in your eyes.

This statement is pretty funny considering that the article you linked is basically a "not good enough" response to 8chan's moderation policies, and I would say the very same thing in return - no matter what 8chan did, it likely would never be enough to be considered "good" in the eyes of people who have deemed it evil.

As for myself, I'm always open to changing my mind given convincing arguments, but having read through the linked article, I don't find it to have much of those - it definitely points to some shady (but not necessarily illegal according to the US laws that 8chan operates under) behavior happening in certain parts of the site, and I'm not going to deny that wouldn't be happening. However, I disagree with the article's claims that it would be what 8chan is all about / forms the majority of content on 8chan, as this is very simple to prove wrong with just a quick glance through the board list of the site. As such, I am indeed going to say the article is tarring the whole site based on a few bad apples.

The broader question at issue is whether Gratipay should engage in the admittedly difficult work of limiting its pool of users to those that fit the values of the company. As I said above, assuming that Gratipay actually lives those values, the answer seems blindingly obvious to me.

Well, let's take a look at 8chan's Gratipay page. The profile states:

STATEMENT I am making the world better by creating an open source imageboard where users can create their own boards, as well as maintaining an installation of this software on free speech friendly hosting at 8chan.co.

I don't really see anything wrong with that in itself. Do you?

Now, people are calling for 8chan to be banned from Gratipay not because of anything in this statement, but on the basis that it is a "child porn site" due to a small minority of users who are (ab)using 8chan's stance on free speech to post some shady/icky (possibly illegal, possibly not) content on the site. Even though 8chan does moderate, delete and ban (illegal) content in this area, because apparently they don't "do enough."

I would say banning 8chan from using Gratipay to be rather unfair to all the other users of the site who have nothing to do with any of the icky matters and just want to support a site they use. I would also say that this situation it itself is a pretty murky matter, not something "blindingly obvious", and as such, if it's enough to ban 8chan from Gratipay, then what else could be banned next? Will you define a clear policy on how many bad apple incidents can happen / what kind of bad apple incidents they can be? What about the fact that the site claims to deal with said bad apples? How will you define insufficient moderation to the point where it qualifies a site for a ban? Or will it just be based on how many people complain about it? Where exactly will the lines be drawn? (Would Gratipay also ban 4chan on the same principles?)

The trouble of drawing those lines is a big reason of why I'm against banning 8chan. If no clear lines are defined, then the policing will be effectively arbitrary. Of course, if you're fine with having an arbitrary policy of "we will ban whatever we don't like", then that's up to you, but if something's going to be forbidden, I'd much prefer the rules for that to the very, very clear so that users don't have live under fear, uncertainty and doubt about breaking them.

[tshepang]

"Where do you draw the line?" seems to me the toughest question to answer by those who want controversial users to be banned. The line is simpler for the other side... "let the state decide".

Regardless, it's not an easy issue (I'm a bit split), but @Daiz- makes great points, so :+1: to allowing "shady" users.

[jhersh]

Now, people are calling for 8chan to be banned from Gratipay not because of anything in this statement, but on the basis that it is a "child porn site" due to a small minority of users

1 user or 1 million users; it matters not. Gratipay is directly funding a site that deals in child porn and other snuff, full stop. This is unconscionable.

What about the fact that the site claims to deal with said bad apples?

The policy is irrelevant. This content persists on the site.

Would Gratipay also ban 4chan on the same principles?

Yes.

[interfect]

@jhersh Gratipay is funding a site that is widely regarded to be insufficiently moderated. Gratipay presumably needs to somehow determine if this is because the site's owners don't really want to moderate it, or whether it's because they're understaffed, and whether, in either case, they should be allowed to get money through the platform.

Personally I think the existence of 8chan makes the Internet worse, because my impression of it is that it used more to be mean to people than it is to be nice to them, regardless of the legalities involved. It recently collected some of the angrier elements off of 4chan, the well-known "Internet hate machine".

Does Gratipay want to restrict itself to only funding things that are, on average, good in their effects? Given the mission and branding, I would think so, and I'm not sure that 8chan qualifies.

I think if Gratipay wants to live up to its mission, it does have to do more moderation than just making sure things being funded aren't illegal. Things being funded on Gratipay should not make the world worse.

[ctrlcctrlv]

Perhaps I was mistaken about Gratipay's mission, I viewed it as a personal tip account for software developers, and I set it up so that people who appreciate my contributions to the vichan (https://github.com/vichan-devel/vichan) and infinity (formerly named "8chan") (https://github.com/ctrlcctrlv/infinity) software packages could donate so that I can keep releasing bug fixes, security fixes and new features.

Some vichan installations that have benefited due to work I have put into this project (namely: multiple image posting, unanimate GIF option, security fixes in $config[debug], ?/config, et cetera): http://pl.vichan.net http://int.vichan.net http://neuschwabenland.org/ http://wizchan.org

If you have a problem with disabled developers who do not fit the common mould of wealthy, white San Francisco elite please come out and say so rather than point out content posted by random internet trolls on 8chan.co as "proof" that the vichan/infinity software packages are evil.

Also, @jhersh, I wonder how a "site that deals in child porn" could even exist on the clearnet given current international law, not to mention US law where we are based. I would direct your attention to the fact that (A) Twitter, a multi-million dollar corporation with far more resources than us has had CP problems http://www.mommyish.com/2013/11/19/twitter-child-porn/ (B) less than 0.001% of posts on 8chan.co the website are made by an administrator (C) our policy pages at https://8chan.co/obscenity.html and https://8chan.co/faq.html and (D) Reddit's struggles with this very same issue, but I doubt you care.

[interfect]

@ctrlcctrlv Are you the dev behind the account in question? What's the relationship between the chan software you develop (which probably is on average a public good) and the particular chan hosting platforms that people are up in arms about?

[AManInBlack]

I'm not going to pretend to be anything but an outsider to Gratipay's community. Keep that in mind with any of my comments.

I think there is a fundamental mistake in arguing about whether Gratipay is curating a service or a community. Gratipay is, in a moral sense if not a strict legal one, a business partner of the people it handles funding for. As long as 8chan as is allowed on Gratipay, you are a business partner with Fredrick Brennan. You need to ask yourself if you want to be a partner to someone who feels that "banning [drawn porn of children] takes away [their] ability to compete". (https://twitter.com/HW_BEAT_THAT/status/547013158116663296) Taking someone who feels that way on as a partner is not a morally weightless decision.

e: Confirmation that I'm AMIB: https://twitter.com/a_man_in_black/status/550132930513608704

[ironfroggy]

@ctrlcctrlv You pretend like the volume of content on sites like 4chan, 8chan, reddit, twitter and the like make these issues inevitable and fail to imagine the idea that if you can't properly moderate deplorable content you are responsible for hosting that you shouldn't be providing that space in the first place because you're obviously unable to do so properly and neither is any other site that cannot deal with or refuses to deal with these issues and pretends the blame is squarely on the users.

[ctrlcctrlv]

@interfect I would say that it is very similar to the relationship between wordpress.org and wordpress.com.

wordpress.org offers the open source WordPress software which people can use to make their own websites on their own servers, while wordpress.com offers an installation of this software that people can use.

[glyph]

Please ban 8chan from Gratipay. Not only are they pretty clearly a hate group, they specifically have attempted to subvert charity and use others' generosity as a weapon of harassment, which is why they are being banned from other, similar sites for collecting funding.

[dstufft]

I agree with many other people here that I view enabling morally repulsive people and groups in itself morally repulsive. I urge the gratipay team to not allow these types of people and groups to use gratipay to enable themselves to do further harm upon the world.

[glyph]

Regarding “neutrality” - “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” - Desmond Tutu

[PiedProtoman]

"They have attempted to subvert charity", Really? What a poor accusation. I'm not even upset you accused 8chan and or #Gamergate of something that vile, I'm disappointed in how silly it is to assert. You cannot subvert donating to charity, it is a yes/no event. There is no cause to subvert, merely a yes or a no. You either donate to the charity and assist in what it does, or you do not. Also,the claim that 8chan subverts charity couldn't be possible in the first place considering /gamergate/ is one of 1000+ boards on 8chan. 8chan doesn't have charity drives. Some boards owned by the users do. Many boards disagree with each other, including a lot of people who disagree with #gamergate. That board would be /leftypol/, a board dedicated to communism and leftist ideals.

Most of the charity raising comes through twitter anyway, generally through @Gamingandpandas or @Totalbiscuit. Need I remind you of the 100k #Gamergate has raised for charity? Most notably $16,000 for Pacer anti-bullying. Or how about the $5.5k raised for suicide prevention? All of that came from the hashtag on twitter, not 8chan. 8chan's only role in gamergate is hosting a board where people can discuss it. On to your next point, "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor." That's a fallacy dressed up to look like poetry. Or in layman's terms: It's propaganda. Here's the better version: "You're either with us, or you are against us, you are either black or you are white."

Finally, the donation to 8chan through gratipay, patreon, or Paypal is either a donation to Frederick Brennan's living expenses, or it is to server costs to keep 8chan up and running. It is not a donation to a hate campaign full of coordination of any kind, it's a donation to a website, full of users that disagree with, and sometimes revile one another. You're not donating to any board, the boards are owned by the users, so you aren't donating to /gamergate/, you're only donating to keep boards online, and to allow users to continue creating and moderating their own boards.You're basically requesting to get Reddit kicked off of Gratipay because their are subreddits you find offensive. 8chan supports the first amendment, and the concept of free speech as an ideal. Everyone who donates to 8chan knows this, it's in the homepage. Removing 8chan from Gratipay because they say things that you find offensive or hurtful is censorship. You cannot twist that. Be aware of that. Some of you will find that a worthy sacrifice, but know that at it's core it is censoring a site for people to voice their opinions, for no other reason then they disagree with you and you don't like it.