DTRPG Says 'Don't criticize us or we'll ban you'

[Jer]

Except that what you are suggesting is bad business.

Diversification of outlets is not automatically good. If consumer focus is primarily aimed at a single provider, and that provider carries your product, you are well-positioned to sell.

Except you as a supplier are at the mercy of a single seller - and that's bad business 101. You end up in a Wal*Mart situation where the retailer dictates terms to you if you allow that to happen.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I disagree I believe that the farmer's market has only a minor convenience to offer, and has little ability to gatekeep an individual seller from the market. That is not the case with DriveThruRPG.

The difference being that if you ignore the farmer's market, you can set up a stall a few feet away for marginal time and trouble and reap near-identical rewards. If you want to set up your own sales website for pay-for-download RPG products, you not only need much greater technical skills, but you'll also be unable to effectively reach most of your customers.

DriveThruRPG has created a barrier to entry simply by virtue of its overall success, in other words. By becoming the single largest venue, it has effectively made it more difficult for alternative venues to viably compete, and so discourages publishers to use those other venues, let alone creating new ones. That's far and away more than the farmer's market can do, hence why it's a bad example.

That's a distinction without a practical difference. Either way, you need to engage with DriveThruRPG in order to engage with your potential customer pool. By demanding that publishers adhere to certain conduct guidelines, they're effectively leveraging the barriers they've created (whether intentionally or not) to exclude meaningful market access from people whose behaviors they disapprove of.

Anti-competitive practices alone are not the hallmark of a monopoly, nor are they the sole indicator of a barrier to entry. DriveThruRPG might not mean to drive other venues out of business, nor discourage new stores from opening up, but the fact of the matter is that they do simply by virtue of being so successful that they've become, for all intents and purposes, the only game in town.

When a publisher only gets 5% of their storefront sales from Paizo, and 10% from the OpenGamingStore, and the other 85% is DriveThruRPG, that's an indicator that the latter has monopoly power, and so they've achieved a de facto barrier to entry for publishers who don't meet their conduct guidelines.

This is not correct. By this definition, monopolies don't exist, since anyone who could effectively open up a sales venue, no matter how localized or how limits its scope or reach, is always "in competition" with even the largest and most omnipresent corporations. That does not truck with what we can see in the world around us.

I believe this is an inaccurate assessment of the market for pay-for-download digital RPG products, which is the market under discussion here. The small publishers for whom most/all of their products fall under that market are adversely affected by DriveThruRPG's decision to leverage the barrier to entry that they have (and they do have it, even if they didn't seek it out) against publishers who don't meet their conduct guidelines.

When you're the only ladder in town, and you say that only the people who approve of can climb the ladder, then you are effectively acting as the barrier to entry, even if you say that the fence was already there. All the more so when getting over the fence is the only way to reach the market that's beyond it. The fact of the matter is that just because your own success has made you assume greater responsibilities, doesn't mean that you not wanting to have ever assumed them to begin with is a viable reason for ignoring or otherwise shirking them.

DriveThruRPG is not what enables a business to exist, they're what enables a business to reach the customer pool that they've managed to corner. In so having cornered it, they've gained the ability to regulate who accesses it. That's a responsibility that they need to manage appropriately, with regard to not gatekeeping those publishers.

I disagree. When you get so big that you've managed to be the source of 85% of the market revenue, the analysis is no longer the same.

Yeah, no, you can't redefine a service that enables businesses to participate in the market that would not otherwise be able to participate in the market as creating a barrier to entry in the market if they don't give the leg up. The analysis here is very simple -- remove DTRPG as an option -- does this suddenly enable more businesses to be able to compete? No, it doesn't. It's not a barrier, then.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I strongly disagree. When a private enterprise has effectively assumed the mantle of being a gatekeeper over a particular market, they have a responsibility to not exclude others based on their personal feelings about them.

No, they do not. Full stop. No private entity is obligated to actively facilitate the publication of material they find offensive, much less material directly associated with and written in support of a violent ideology that proposes oppression and genocide of marginalized peoples.

You know that we are literally discussing this because an actual neo-nazi got kicked off a platform and then defamed the platform for exercising it’s rights of expression and assembly, right?

No platform is obligated to uphold and facilitate literal nazi propaganda.

That's not an accurate definition of what the phrase means. The phrase means that attacking someone else is legitimized if you say their opinions were upsetting to you, which is untrue; someone else's beliefs are, unto themselves, not justification for your attacking them.

This is an entirely made up definition with no relation to reality.

 

[Alzrius]

Yeah, no, you can't redefine a service that enables businesses to participate in the market that would not otherwise be able to participate in the market as creating a barrier to entry in the market if they don't give the leg up. The analysis here is very simple -- remove DTRPG as an option -- does this suddenly enable more businesses to be able to compete? No, it doesn't. It's not a barrier, then.

Except that's not the analysis. The analysis is, if DriveThruRPG kicks someone off their platform, does that suddenly cut that publisher off from the (vast) majority of the customer base? If the answer is yes, then they have monopoly power, and need to be held to the higher burden that entails of them.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

That's a very snappy catchphrase that doesn't help with examining the idea that a single venue, when they're the gateway to 85% of a market, is being irresponsible when they gatekeep who can access that market based purely on their own ideology.

Sure it does. Ideologies that propose intolerance and violent oppression are not valid. The Nazis can still publish their worthless trash. Easier than ever in history, in fact.

No one, not even public entities, is obligated to help them do so, and private entities especially are morally obligated to avoid doing so.

 

[Alzrius]

No, they do not. Full stop. No private entity is obligated to actively facilitate the publication of material they find offensive, much less material directly associated with and written in support of a violent ideology that proposes oppression and genocide of marginalized peoples.

Again, I disagree. There are instances where private entities are, indeed, obligated to not regulate the content that they sell based on their personal feelings as to said content.

You know that we are literally discussing this because an actual neo-nazi got kicked off a platform and then defamed the platform for exercising it’s rights of expression and assembly, right?

And this is another issue that quite often gets wrapped up in this: the overstatement of egregiousness and the lessening of criteria by which the label you're using is applied. Posting an anti-choice product, or one that criticizes contemporary progressive politics, does not unto itself warrant what you're saying here.

 

[Alzrius]

Sure it does. Ideologies that propose intolerance and violent oppression are not valid. The Nazis can still publish their worthless trash. Easier than ever in history, in fact.

No one, not even public entities, is obligated to help them do so, and private entities especially are morally obligated to avoid doing so.

When a private entity has gained monopoly power, they are in fact obligated to cease gatekeeping access to a market based solely on whether or not they like the ideology (though it should be noted that neither they, nor you, get to decide what's "valid" or not).

 

[Gradine]

As much as it might offend conservative and libertarian ideologies, businesses whose degree of influence over the market(s) they cater to – at least once they hit a certain outsized threshold (which can, admittedly, be very hard to delineate) – do (in my opinion) have an obligation to serve the public interest, at least in some regard, rather than only themselves and their stakeholders, which means not being able to cut off access for individuals whom they personally disapprove of.

This here is the crux of this entire back-and-forth argument, in that it is fundamentally correct except in its conclusion. The public interest is best served in not allowing nazis and other bigots on their platform. That this is not self-evident is the biggest problem. These are not the kinds of values that we can allow to act "value-neutral" about. Popper's Paradox covers this, or even better, that story about not allowing nazis in your bar.

I've seen plenty of people try to dismiss these concepts but I've never seen any particularly compelling arguments debunking them

 

[Ovinomancer]

Except that's not the analysis. The analysis is, if DriveThruRPG kicks someone off their platform, does that suddenly cut that publisher off from the (vast) majority of the customer base? If the answer is yes, then they have monopoly power, and need to be held to the higher burden that entails of them.

No, it doesn't cut them off. It increases the costs of reaching that customer base to what it would be if DTRPG did not exist -- ie, you have to buy ads and get word out and do all the normal things businesses have to do to reach their customers. DTRPG does not have a captured customer base that can only access the market through DTRPG. It's not a mining town where you have to shop at the mining company store and you can't leave. I bought Blades in the Dark from the publisher. Same with my copy of Alien RPG. DTRPG didn't come for me, even though I have bought things there as well.

This claim that DTRPG has completely captured the customer base and the only access to that base is through DTRPG is an extraordinary claim needing some kind of support.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I have, and it isn't. My point is, avoid blanket statements, because you don't speak for everyone.

My statement was just that it was a widely understood term among free speech advocates, which I think is not a very controversial position.