Regarding Baen's Bar, a Phantom reaction.

More Science Fiction fandom nonsense, but worth mentioning because it illuminates the larger political scene these days.

TL/DR version of the retardation so far:

• Toni Weisskopf of Baen Books, venerable SF publisher, lost the Hugo Award for best editor to No Award back in 2015 at Sasquan. That was the year of the Wooden Assterisks, Sad Puppies and etc.
• This year, 2021, it appears certain factions within WorldCon felt pretty bad about fucking her over like that back in 2015, and invited her to be a Guest of Honor at DisCon-III, the 2021 WorldCon.
  
• Mr. Jason Sanford wrote a post at his Patreon page, basically claiming that the ancient and venerable Baen's Bar which started as a BBS and developed into a web-based comment forum. I'm not going to link to it, Mr. Sanford's ramblings amount to unsupported slander which I will not give further attention to here. If you're interested, Google it. The accusations boil down to "unspecified hate speech and promoting domestic terrorism".
  
• Immediately following Sanford's posting of accusations and insinuations, Baen took Baen's Bar offline.  The main reason they took it offline is because a determined group was taking accusations of domestic terrorism to their Baen's web service provider, and trying to get the company kicked off their web service. Apparently taking the whole Bar offline was sufficient to placate the web hosting company, as Baen's website is still up.
  
• Following a couple of days worth of shirtstorm accusations and virtue signalling, DisConIII disinvited Ms. Weisskopf.

Sounds like a lot of inside baseball drama, right? Well, it is. Except for the one little detail, where the determined group of crusaders is trying to get the Baen publishing company dropped by their internet service provider. 

That's a serious thing, particularly right now during the Covid-19 pandemic when retail outlets are shut for quarantine/lock-down/what have you. Losing web pages now is an enterprise-threatening occurrence.

Lots of people have an opinion about this. People like me feel that Baen should be able to post whatever the hell they want on their website, and if they let other people post as well then it's nobody's business. Absent any actionable slander or specific threats, aka illegal activity, it is all good.

But then there is the other side, which basically says everybody needs to shut up especially Baen. That's the Vile666/flopping camel side. None of those assholes get a free click from me. They can suck it.

Now we come to Leona Wisoker. She's an author, apparently. Has a few books out, etc. She's got an opinion. Pretty common one, the opposite of mine.

The following is a comment I put on her blog. Don't know if she'll let it out of moderation hell, but I think it illustrates the general point rather well. Ms. Wisoker's quotes are in bold.

Saw your post and was moved to comment.

"Does the host have the right to cancel the customer’s contract, when a shooting is traced directly back to remarks made on that customer’s forums?"

Has that ever happened, really? That you know of, I mean? Some guy posts a comment on a forum saying "This [person/group] is [bad thing] and so somebody should [bad thing] them!" and then some random guy goes and does it for them? Over a blog post? Because that doesn't seem to be a thing that happens, from what I can see. Maybe you know of a case?

"Do they really have to wait until the shooting happens, if there’s a clear pattern of escalation in progress?"

Yes, the police generally do really have to wait for a person to actually -commit- a crime before they can arrest that person. "Looking shifty" is not, generally speaking, grounds for police action. Well, unless you want to start in creating a Department of Pre-Crime, where people get arrested for thinking about it.

"At what point is it not only okay, but necessary, to start banning forum users, cancelling customer contracts, and generally stopping dangerous speech before that tenth person can get to the point of believing it’s a noble act to go out shooting?"

That is the question, isn't it? In a -free- country, those things are never even an option. Free speech is free, right? People don't have to like it, and they don't have to sit there and be quiet, but there is no question about a person's inherent right to have an unpleasant opinion. They're free to be all the idiot they can be.

What you're talking about is an Un-free country, one where Somebody makes these decisions and imposes them from above. Sounds like a great idea. But historically speaking, it never ends well. Ask the Uyghurs how they're doing with that plan this year. And be aware that there are people out in the world very eager to cancel -your- web presence for any number of reasons.

Personally, I'm pretty happy to take my chances with Mr. OneOutOfTen guy, the random idiot who gets convinced to commit an atrocity by somebody else, according to your theory. I at least have a fighting chance to deal with one guy. I can't deal with a whole police force.

At least in a free country I don't have to worry about the whole government coming after me because I'm a member of [bad thing] group, where the bad thing is my skin colour, religious denomination, orientation, the soccer club I follow or the kind of beer I like. Governments have been known to kill people over stuff like that.

They killed Ashli Babbit, right? Her crime was to climb through an already broken window. Seems excessive, given the video.

 

Now I post this not to pick on Leona Wisoker in particular, I really never heard of her before today. I know nothing of this person beyond this post of hers. 

 I posted it because it is typical of the type of thing I'm seeing out there on the WorldCon side of the issue. It is somewhat worthy of remark in the rhetoric department, she uses less swear words and less loaded language than most other partisans have.

"At what point is it not only okay, but necessary, to start banning forum users, cancelling customer contracts, and generally stopping dangerous speech..."

 The Leftist faction in SF fandom particularly and politics generally has decided that point is now.

They have decided it is time to silence conservatives and anyone else who disagrees with their faction about anything at all.

So yeah. That's what time it is, folks. In case you were wondering.

Update: Gentle reminder of who Ashli Babbit was. 

Upperdate: Leona Speaks! And the Phantom answers. 

 "Um. Yes. That is exactly the reason we’re even having this discussion."

But again, no example. So I'm assuming this is a much more theoretical danger for you, and less of a real one. The only arguable example I've been able to come up with of a guy going and shooting people because somebody else said so is Floyd Lee Corkins. Look that one up for a surprise, it does not help your argument much.

"You can say anything you like, sure. That doesn’t mean there won’t be consequences."

Yes, about that. It may interest you to know that there is a small but "motivated" group who have decided to make sure that DisCon-III does not get a hotel this year. If they collect a couple dozen angry fans to write all the vendors and hotels in the area, they could certainly do it. So that's one consequence right there that you probably didn't want.

On a larger playing field, we have Amazon. They have captured 83% of the book market. Currently they have begun banning certain books, due to "activists" protesting the "violent" nature of the books. It doesn't matter which ones, but I will note that "Mein Kampf" was not one of them. If you're interested you can look at my blog.

But historically, once a political faction gets the precedent established that it is perfectly okay to ban a book based on it having an unpopular message, then the things getting banned will only ever increase in number. Pretty soon they'll decide that any Baen book, or any book by an author who -ever- commented on Baen's Bar must be banned.

That happened already to a New York literary agent, Colleen Oefelein. She was fired from her agency because she had a Parler account. Not because she said anything bad on that account, just because she had one.

There's a technical term for this kind of thing: scorched earth. Your team goes and destroys anything and everything it can, leaving behind nothing. The other team therefore does the same, and pretty soon you have a landscape of lost jobs, ruined families, bankrupt companies, and a whole lot of people who are very angry and looking for someone to take it out on.

That's not a fun environment. I'd rather not live like that.

All of the above assumes the government does not get involved. But we know they already are involved, and pushing things along just as hard as they can. I speculate that government involvement is why Amazon is "voluntarily" banning the books they are, and also why Jeff Bezos is stepping down as CEO this year. He doesn't want to get caught in the fighting, or so I suspect.

"If I breach the Term of Service that I agreed to when I signed up for my web host, or break the rules of any forum that I post to, I deserve to be booted."

In the environment that is developing here, you will be taken down no matter what you say or do not say. See Colleen Oefelein for elucidation. I will also be taken down, because same reason. You can see that, right? For spite, if nothing else. Because when people are angry, they do things like that.

Regarding Ashli Babbit, you said "The way you stripped the entire context from that incident is both hilarious and terrifying."

I examined the video of that incident in some detail.

https://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.com/2021/01/rip-ashli-babbitt.html

It stinks. And we have heard -nothing- from the official investigation. But we have heard a number of people, like Jason Sanford for example, use that event on January 6th as the sole justification for deplatforming things like Baen's Bar, or Gab, or Parler, and so forth.

Pre-Crime. In case something might happen. Which inevitably leads to an un-free nation where everybody shuts up in case they might lose their job. And leads there pretty fast, judging from how things are going.

That's more dangerous than one nut with a gun. Haven't we seen enough rioting all last year to understand how much more dangerous it is?

"Interesting that you keep conflating normal market pressures with authoritarianism."

Let's not pretend that these are "normal market pressures", shall we? Jason Sanford's attack on Baen is politically motivated. He thinks Conservatives are bad people who must be silenced, and says so. He has some political allies who agree, and they are busy trying to get Baen kicked off the internet.

The reverse is also true. People trying to get Sanford kicked off his ISP and DisCon kicked out of their hotels are also politically motivated.

There's the potential for some much bigger political players to get involved here, they live for stuff like this. I'm pretty sure we as authors and private business people do not want that.

Bottom line, this push we see these days to make people shut up is historically not a good thing, and will not lead to a happy conclusion. It never has, in the past.

It seems to me that Leona hasn't really thought this through. Oh well.