https://youtu.be/o25I2fzFGoY

"Sorry guys, the ad people don't like it." was just an excuse, the real goal was censorship of the web.

If Corporations are allowed to set the rules as to what gets talked about and what can't be mentioned, it's easier to flood the net with advertisements for their products.

This was posted on tumblr where trans people being suspended by staff with no good reason is a fairly regular occurrence

Good luck finding a Pepsi ad on Twitter lol

No it's really payment processors.

There have been multiple successful ad-free websites in the past. But they still need revenue to function. Revenue their users happily pay.

But then Visa or PayPal or whoever is handling the transactions starts to pay attention and then all the sudden there's new rules in place or else they hike fees or just stop processing payments altogether.

And on the Internet, there is no true alternative methods of payment (hint: any viable methods are quickly suppressed by those same payment processors).

So the only way any website gets big is left to the whims of advertisers or payment processors (usually both).

I have no idea why we as a people are somehow fine with private companies having a complete stranglehold on all significant online business. Why we've allowed the government to privatize digital transactions, subject to very little rights or protections. It's allowing private corporations to massively suppress free speech, commerce, and social gatherings in the digital sphere.

Honestly our supposed freedoms are more and more limited these days because they only apply to public spaces, but there's been a continual erosion of 'public'. Where is the modern town square? If the only place you can practice your 'rights' is almost nowhere, do you really have those rights at all?

The government should be mandating that 'digital infrastructure' (ISPs, data centers, payment processors, etc) are neutral and can't be utilized to bully others out of business. That their privileged position also comes with extra responsibilities and restrictions so you don't have the digital equivalent of cutting off water to an abortion clinic because the water utility is pro-life.

It should be, and yet almost every single community is still enforcing some kind of stupid decorum or civility "standard" which sounds fine in theory, but almost always leads to a similar (albeit less egregious) thing. You still end up with jackasses who know how to play the civility game and are able to say intentionally antagonistic and awful things within the bound of decorum whose comments are allowed to stand while the decent people who rightly tell them to fuck off are getting moderated for "civility."

So long as we keep pretending decorum and methodology matters more than intent and we keep insisting on civility over decency, we're just doing the same damn shit.

Good riddance, I hope one days there's an alternative to Discord, I don't really trust it anymore, but I can't think of a program that does the same thing but better.