Not needed, not better
Dave Rubin is launching an alternative to Patreon.

Jordan Peterson is also launching a similar effort, which isn't ready yet. Peterson smells like Agent Provocateur to me, so I'm not interested.

Rubin seems benign, but it's not clear why his effort is needed or better than existing methods. The definitely good part is paid subscriptions instead of advertising. Customer, not product. But Patreon already works by subscription, and Patreon has taken down a number of "controversial" creators. The same external forces that act on Patreon will be acting on Rubin's setup. Paypal can shut off the payments whenever it wants.


Not needed:

All sorts of "controversial" info is easily available through all sorts of channels. If Youtube chops a clip, it doesn't matter. Many other clips with the same "controversy" are still there.

I've been saying lots of "controversial" things here for 15 years, and I've never had anything taken down for that reason. The only things that were removed were a couple of OTR clips and a couple of photographs, both for copyright reasons, not political reasons.


Not better:

One commenter says that paywalls make it hard to persuade people by inviting them to look at a video or text.

Persuasion doesn't work that way. Nobody is going to watch a clip that comes from The Horrible Other Side, whether it costs money or not. Discussion and debate are totally pointless.

Changes of attitude happen through serendipity.

When you're working on a neutral and important task, working with people of other religions and ethnicities, you see the good and bad parts of their ethnicities more objectively. You lose both positive and negative prejudices.

When you're reading old technical or literary material, you bump into references to other ways of thinking in a non-threatening context. That's how I changed my attitudes toward Islam and the Soviet system around 2012. It wasn't from watching Al-Jazeera or RT.

But you have to be open to serendipity first. You need to unplug the TV. You need to be dissatisfied with standard modes of thought and propaganda.

= = = = =

Apologetic sidenote: When I first wrote about attempts to compete with the tech-monsters last year, I didn't understand the payment connection. I assumed falsely that subscription vs advertising was the only variable. Later I realized that payment systems were the real controller.
  ¶ 10:32 AM