>>3736161No, you're misunderstanding the example.
First, political affiliation *is* protected on a state level in most places. This includes California, where Patreon is based.
Second, I already acknowledged that services have every right to moderate the nastiness of the speech. The question is whether this moderation is applied equally. To use your shirtless guy example, the crux would be whether a business chooses to enforce the shirtless rule in such a way that only a certain race, or gender, or sexual orientation, or political affiliation is disproportionately affected. In order for the shirtless rule to be legal, it has to be applied in a fair way.
Again, I don't know the specifics of the claims in this thread. In order to determine what they are doing is legal or illegal, we need to ask if their rules are being applied in a fair way. Your suggestion that they can punish a specific political affiliation because there are alternatives is not a sound defense.
Conversely, those who are crying about Patreon selectively banning the right need to prove that Patreon is applying their rules in an unfair, discriminatory way. Hypothetically, if Patreon is banning more alt-right types because more alt-right types behave like asshats, that in itself is not a problem. My concern is the claim that Patreon is extending the scope of its policing beyond what happens on its own platform. Dig deeply enough, and just about everyone has had an asshat moment.
