Salutations HN,
I am Martin, the founder of PinePage.
Our team has been working on creating a Patreon alternative that celebrates differences and controversy.
We want to be a part of crafting a world where people can create without fear of exclusion.
We take pride in being a Free Speech friendly platform - see our Free Speech Manifesto v1.0 (pinepage.com) and uphold a Zero Ban Policy.
On PinePage users can create a free website in seconds, engage with their audience through a forum or blog, accept donations, or design membership tiers, all on their own domain. We welcome all types of content, no matter the genre; Political, Religious, Adult, Explicit…no content category is off limits as long as it doesn’t effectively break the laws of the jurisdiction under which our platform operates.
It’s clear the consequences of censorship are far more dangerous than those of allowing everyone to freely state their beliefs. The past has shown us, time and time again, the effects of silencing the visionaries. Those in power decide what gets written in the history books, and everyone else’s views get crushed under the weight of censorship.
We might be legally obligated to hide content in direct violation of the law, but your account would not be suspended, nor would you face an overall platform expulsion and demonetization.
Feedback from the HN crowd is often super harsh but beneficial, thus we’d love to hear your feedback about https://pinepage.com either here on HN or directly to me martin@mail.pinepage.com
Great point! Most of our hosting happens in Germany, but our official company registration is in Estonia, presently indicated in the Contact Us page on our website.
I'm trying to remember why we've always been told to not do hosting in Germany (adult sites) - something about laws there that are anti-free speech and they have to respond to requests .. something.. it's been a while. I would look towards having servers in several countries and germany would not be one of them.
I'd get off cloudflare too - but you are going to need a dns that can take DDos attacks, as well as attacks of the woke mob warriors -
so they are going to try to get your registrar to take you out too, your hosting, your hosting country / govs.. their def gonna get stripe to kick you quickly.
they are going to hack you, and try to release a DB with customer's doxx plus the donaters..
they will prob try to get visa/ms to ban you and maybe the us gov's int block list, whatever that stuff is called.
with all that being said - there is a need for this and lots of people will use it if the fees are less than the other options.
I've been kicking ideas similar around for a while now - I can see this being used in many forms. If you are pre-prepped for the mobs of haters, I'd like to see this succeed.
not sure if pornhub got a new processor that does the visa/mc - if so I'd chat with them. crypto is sadly the main need here.
I'd split the system up into like 5 different companies - running different jurisdictions - this will help deflect some of the hate and hopefully keep any one fail from taking the whole system down - this is just what I see as the future sadly.
Germany is quite interesting. There is some restrictions and we are aware of them, but at the same time Germany also gives a tonnes of protection. We hedge our bets by making it easy to switch servers to any other place.
Cloudflare is only used for landing page and admin of pages. The pages are hosted on our own servers.
About hacking, it has always been this way and no matter what business security should be of high importance.
They can and probably will ban our Stripe account. That's why every creator will have to connect their own payment providers. This means they could shut down payments to us, but not all creators. A lot of other services uses one payment provider for all transactions, but this makes them vulnerable as their whole business can get shutdown if they don't do exactly what the payment provider says.
Crypto fixes a lot of this.
We opened a can of worms, and it will be tough, but I doubt we are so much trouble as you expect. Rumble, BitChute, Odysee, Locals are all in the same sphere and they had troubles, but not as much as you'd expect.
Germany is pretty strict with copyrighted content in general (don't even think about torrenting a movie there). They even comply with DMCA takedown requests.
The cost of the monthly subscription is the full cost. All creators would be receiving their earnings directly from their subscribers to their own accounts. Not only that, at the moment we are scouting for suitable content creators who are willing to endorse our platform and use it entirely for free as well as earn a commission on the income we generate as a result of their active referral. Could you be one of them?
This seems interesting Martin. Thanks for sharing!
I do have to question your usage of stripe, not because I think stripe is bad, but because I know of numerous creators who have been banned from it. Might I suggest looking into possible direct deposit options?
We use Python/Flask for backend. Postgresql, Redis and Docker Compose. We use Amazon S3 for hosting images, but we have made it easy to switch in case there will be problems (as seen by Parler).
Frontend we use a mix between Vuejs and Jinja2.
And for hosting we run both on our own servers and on Netlify, but Netlify can easily be switched out as well in case of troubles.
While the admiration to free speech is heartening, no one is asking you to be the purveyor of truth anymore then we ask that of the maitre d' at the restaurant. All we want is a decent experience, and free for all "speech" is not that, just like we don't want the table next to us expressing their hateful rhetoric at full volume.
What are you doing to prevent this site from becoming like others that have tried to dethrone patreon, only to find themselves besieged with racists, misogynists, holocaust deniers, nazi's, flat earthers, qanon nutjobs, 3%ers, proud boy losers, bigots and other obtuse miscreants that will inevitably find their way to your app? Because if the answer is a user based reporting system or falling back on the bounds of the "law", there is no way I could recommend this to anyone.
If I had enough points to flag this or downvote it, I would.
What you've said here is not at all useful to anyone. You've expressed nothing except "what about those people I don't like?" So what? You don't like them. You've spent an awful lot of your post name-calling all the people you don't like. However, not everyone shares your view of a) the people you don't like or b) how they should treat the people that you, personally, do not like.
This other user has created a platform that seems useful, and made very clear where their line is on what is and is not acceptable on their platform. It's quite obvious that they hold different views on how the people you, personally, do not like should be treated, and their view is one that I think is consistent with a) the historically prevailing view, at least in America, and b) the historically prevailing view in the hacker community. It is you who are the outlier, and while it is fine to be the outlier, you cannot and ought not impose your repressive views on everyone else.
Fascism (and other forms of tyrany) can't exist in the face of free speech which is why tyrants always seek to control and limit all forms of communication. The coddling of fascism happened in Europe in the first half of the 20th century because speech was not free. America, however, even allows Nazis to march and it's doing better than places like France and Germany with their web of speech laws.
There is no such thing as "weaponized" speech, speech cannot be a weapon as it does not do physical harm. It can certainly provoke the use of weapons but we already have laws against the use of weapons and as speech is not a necessary cause in the vast majority of cases then it would be silly to make a rule against it. If you disagree then my rebuttal is to urge everyone who reads this to go on a killing spree. I confidently predict that no one will follow that exhortation, and if they did, that would be down to them as others could quite clearly control themselves better (the clue is in control themselves).
Secondly, "hate" speech, "weaponized" speech, objectionable speech, rude speech, loud speech, pick whatever adjective you like… are all free speech as long as they are free to be uttered without punishment, especially with respect to the law. You may claim the opposite but that would be you redefining what free speech is in a way that no one who has ever advocated for free speech has. You may as well tell people who are in a place where cannabis is legal that legal cannabis is not legal. You would simply be redefining things in a way that only suits you, but it would not be via reason and it certainly wouldn't be persuasive.
I think we can all agree that when we attempt to silence certain views, they are often pushed underground instead of being fully eradicated. Not only that...they gain more traction. Honestly, what we are going to try to achieve on PinePage, is foster an environment conductive to dialogue. A place where problematic content can be challenged as opposed to getting it banned outright. Check out the story of Daryl Davis who singlehandedly dismantled his local pocket of the KKK, by attending their rallies and openly challenging their rhetoric.
How are we to foster dialogue with people that want to kill us? That want mass murder and a cleansing of anyone that doesn't agree with them politically? How are we to dialogue with people who accuse anyone who doesn't align with them politically as pedophile satanists? Have you even seen what these people post online?
These people don't dialogue, they use words as weapons, and you are giving them the ability to weaponize and grift, period.
In reddit's r/askhistorians, where experts actually run things, they don't even allow people to ask questions about holocaust denialism, because they already know those questions are disingenuous, and allowing them does nothing to solve any problems.
> I think we can all agree that when we attempt to silence certain views, they are often pushed underground instead of being fully eradicated. Not only that...they gain more traction.
In what world? Study is showing that deplatforming works, it seems you are lying to yourself.
Where did I call you fascist, what I am saying is that your website is going to be over run with them, and for that I could never recommend it for anyone to use. Falling back on the law and misguided notions of "free" speech is intellectually lazy.
> You seem scared of any opinion that is not shared with you, and then go directly to straw man arguments.
And you, too scared to confront your nihilism apparently.
Most people have no clue what the proud boys even are. All they know is "proud boys bad, very bad", because that's the narrative the powers that be want to push. The whole point of a platform like PinePage is to prevent individuals' lives from being ruined by the ignorant masses riled up in socially engineered hysteria that are serving mob justice on behalf of powerful interests (cancel culture). Your comment proves the need for the existence of such a platform.
Have a watch of this short history of the proud boys and tell me if an organisation like the proud boys merits being banned anywhere: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsNlteJQunc
It's also very curious how organisations like BLM or antifa never make it onto these lists of boogeymen that need to be censored, even though they've said and done plenty of despicable (even criminal) things. Ever wonder why? It's for the same reason that not a single piece of fake news about Trump has ever been censored, even though real news about Biden is being censored and called fake news (remember the Hunter Biden laptop?). It's because censorship only serves to consolidate and protect the power of the authoritarians who implement it. That is dangerous no matter which side does it.
Sorry, but your sympathizing with fascists is disgusting. They have no place in our society. I'm not watching your video or even wasting any more time with you.
"They have no place in our society". Who are they? Concretely! And by "our society", do you mean your society? Can we be allowed in? On what terms? What if you're the one not allowed in? Should we close your twitter, facebook, youtube account. Maybe we should go after your bank account, insurance, and your job so that you can't feed yourself or your family?
This have happend to many people who just said something wrong on social media. This is the kind of thing you are advocating, and it is frankly disgusting.
You know the answer to this question, you just don't care. Or you care more about enabling the grift and hate then you do about any sort of truth or free speech.
Just to be clear, I'm gonna call you out now because you falsely accuse me of being a fascist sympathiser: russdpale is so uncertain in his beliefs that he cannot allow himself to even look at an 11 minute historical analysis of the proud boys by a California liberal turned conservative.
It's your loss, he's a gentle spirit and a clear thinker.
All your huffing and puffing, denouncing people who you do not know the slightest bit about with hollow words like "fascist" that get flung around carelessly without regard for the actual definition of the word or for consistency of application, is nothing but a smokescreen to hide the intellectual insecurity that is the result of being trapped in a 'liberal' group think bubble.
You know who else denounced their fellow citizens as evil and wouldn't allow anyone to challenge their beliefs? That's right: Fascists. Now, I'm not saying you are a fascist. I'm merely saying that you exhibit the same kind of bad behaviour that makes actual fascists bad.
But comments like yours are free advertising to services like Pinepage because they illustrate so wonderfully how desperately needed a service like theirs is.
More smoke and mirrors, no fire. You can't argue facts, so you resort to ad hominem attacks. It feels too good to hate, so you can't give up on your negative views or allow them to be challenged.
People come to hacker news for substantive constructive discussion. Passionate disagreement is fine, that's how we learn, but your posts lack any semblance of substance. By that, you've demonstrated that you are not part of this community, so please show yourself the door. Now's the right time to exit this discussion and keep quiet before some mod will do it for you.
The moment you equated blm/antifa and fascism is the moment you showed yourself as someone who is not serious, and thus absolutely not worth my time. You can keep pretending you are serious, but that doesn't make you so.
Ultimately, words don't matter to you. There is no discussion to be had with someone who is as disingenuous as you are.
If you had looked at the video, by now you would have seen why the proud boys are the furthest thing from fascists. I simply disagree with your baseless accusations. Throughout this discussion you have demonstrated that making baseless accusations is all you can do. I have chosen to forgive you for all of the slander you have engaged in. I just hope that one day your eyes will open and you can look at your fellow human beings with more compassion and understanding. Maybe then we can have a more productive discussion. Farewell.
Feedback from the HN crowd is often super harsh but beneficial, thus we’d love to hear your feedback about https://pinepage.com either here on HN or directly to me martin@mail.pinepage.com
Thanks!
You should then indicate clearly in the About page in which country your company, or servers, are located?
I'd get off cloudflare too - but you are going to need a dns that can take DDos attacks, as well as attacks of the woke mob warriors -
so they are going to try to get your registrar to take you out too, your hosting, your hosting country / govs.. their def gonna get stripe to kick you quickly.
they are going to hack you, and try to release a DB with customer's doxx plus the donaters..
they will prob try to get visa/ms to ban you and maybe the us gov's int block list, whatever that stuff is called.
with all that being said - there is a need for this and lots of people will use it if the fees are less than the other options.
I've been kicking ideas similar around for a while now - I can see this being used in many forms. If you are pre-prepped for the mobs of haters, I'd like to see this succeed.
not sure if pornhub got a new processor that does the visa/mc - if so I'd chat with them. crypto is sadly the main need here.
I'd split the system up into like 5 different companies - running different jurisdictions - this will help deflect some of the hate and hopefully keep any one fail from taking the whole system down - this is just what I see as the future sadly.
Germany is quite interesting. There is some restrictions and we are aware of them, but at the same time Germany also gives a tonnes of protection. We hedge our bets by making it easy to switch servers to any other place.
Cloudflare is only used for landing page and admin of pages. The pages are hosted on our own servers.
About hacking, it has always been this way and no matter what business security should be of high importance.
They can and probably will ban our Stripe account. That's why every creator will have to connect their own payment providers. This means they could shut down payments to us, but not all creators. A lot of other services uses one payment provider for all transactions, but this makes them vulnerable as their whole business can get shutdown if they don't do exactly what the payment provider says. Crypto fixes a lot of this.
We opened a can of worms, and it will be tough, but I doubt we are so much trouble as you expect. Rumble, BitChute, Odysee, Locals are all in the same sphere and they had troubles, but not as much as you'd expect.
Thanks again for the comment Steve!
I do have to question your usage of stripe, not because I think stripe is bad, but because I know of numerous creators who have been banned from it. Might I suggest looking into possible direct deposit options?
We use Python/Flask for backend. Postgresql, Redis and Docker Compose. We use Amazon S3 for hosting images, but we have made it easy to switch in case there will be problems (as seen by Parler). Frontend we use a mix between Vuejs and Jinja2.
And for hosting we run both on our own servers and on Netlify, but Netlify can easily be switched out as well in case of troubles.
What are you doing to prevent this site from becoming like others that have tried to dethrone patreon, only to find themselves besieged with racists, misogynists, holocaust deniers, nazi's, flat earthers, qanon nutjobs, 3%ers, proud boy losers, bigots and other obtuse miscreants that will inevitably find their way to your app? Because if the answer is a user based reporting system or falling back on the bounds of the "law", there is no way I could recommend this to anyone.
What you've said here is not at all useful to anyone. You've expressed nothing except "what about those people I don't like?" So what? You don't like them. You've spent an awful lot of your post name-calling all the people you don't like. However, not everyone shares your view of a) the people you don't like or b) how they should treat the people that you, personally, do not like.
This other user has created a platform that seems useful, and made very clear where their line is on what is and is not acceptable on their platform. It's quite obvious that they hold different views on how the people you, personally, do not like should be treated, and their view is one that I think is consistent with a) the historically prevailing view, at least in America, and b) the historically prevailing view in the hacker community. It is you who are the outlier, and while it is fine to be the outlier, you cannot and ought not impose your repressive views on everyone else.
In short, you have it the wrong way round.
Secondly, "hate" speech, "weaponized" speech, objectionable speech, rude speech, loud speech, pick whatever adjective you like… are all free speech as long as they are free to be uttered without punishment, especially with respect to the law. You may claim the opposite but that would be you redefining what free speech is in a way that no one who has ever advocated for free speech has. You may as well tell people who are in a place where cannabis is legal that legal cannabis is not legal. You would simply be redefining things in a way that only suits you, but it would not be via reason and it certainly wouldn't be persuasive.
How are we to foster dialogue with people that want to kill us? That want mass murder and a cleansing of anyone that doesn't agree with them politically? How are we to dialogue with people who accuse anyone who doesn't align with them politically as pedophile satanists? Have you even seen what these people post online?
These people don't dialogue, they use words as weapons, and you are giving them the ability to weaponize and grift, period.
In reddit's r/askhistorians, where experts actually run things, they don't even allow people to ask questions about holocaust denialism, because they already know those questions are disingenuous, and allowing them does nothing to solve any problems.
https://slate.com/technology/2018/07/the-askhistorians-subre...
> I think we can all agree that when we attempt to silence certain views, they are often pushed underground instead of being fully eradicated. Not only that...they gain more traction.
In what world? Study is showing that deplatforming works, it seems you are lying to yourself.
You seem scared of any opinion that is not shared with you, and then go directly to straw man arguments.
Talking works - Daryl Davis is a proof of that.
https://www.ted.com/talks/daryl_davis_why_i_as_a_black_man_a...
> You seem scared of any opinion that is not shared with you, and then go directly to straw man arguments.
And you, too scared to confront your nihilism apparently.
free speech includes opinions that are slightly more conservative than you. name-calling does not change that.
Have a watch of this short history of the proud boys and tell me if an organisation like the proud boys merits being banned anywhere: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsNlteJQunc
It's also very curious how organisations like BLM or antifa never make it onto these lists of boogeymen that need to be censored, even though they've said and done plenty of despicable (even criminal) things. Ever wonder why? It's for the same reason that not a single piece of fake news about Trump has ever been censored, even though real news about Biden is being censored and called fake news (remember the Hunter Biden laptop?). It's because censorship only serves to consolidate and protect the power of the authoritarians who implement it. That is dangerous no matter which side does it.
You know the answer to this question, you just don't care. Or you care more about enabling the grift and hate then you do about any sort of truth or free speech.
It's your loss, he's a gentle spirit and a clear thinker.
All your huffing and puffing, denouncing people who you do not know the slightest bit about with hollow words like "fascist" that get flung around carelessly without regard for the actual definition of the word or for consistency of application, is nothing but a smokescreen to hide the intellectual insecurity that is the result of being trapped in a 'liberal' group think bubble.
You know who else denounced their fellow citizens as evil and wouldn't allow anyone to challenge their beliefs? That's right: Fascists. Now, I'm not saying you are a fascist. I'm merely saying that you exhibit the same kind of bad behaviour that makes actual fascists bad.
But comments like yours are free advertising to services like Pinepage because they illustrate so wonderfully how desperately needed a service like theirs is.
Your opinion is worth less than dogshit on a shoe, an 11 minute propaganda piece isn't going to change that.
People come to hacker news for substantive constructive discussion. Passionate disagreement is fine, that's how we learn, but your posts lack any semblance of substance. By that, you've demonstrated that you are not part of this community, so please show yourself the door. Now's the right time to exit this discussion and keep quiet before some mod will do it for you.
Ultimately, words don't matter to you. There is no discussion to be had with someone who is as disingenuous as you are.