Recently the US government (among others) has discovered that it can circumvent inconvenient freedom of speech laws by pressuring private companies to kick people off their platform who say things the government doesn't like. Manifold currently has a pretty hands-off approach to content moderation, and I expect that if it gets more popular, there will be a lot of content here that various governments don't want said.
This market resolves YES if any payment processor, web hosting company, or other service that Manifold relies on chooses to deny them service due to Manifold's unwillingness to moderate certain content. Otherwise it resolves NO at the beginning of 2030.
Feb 8, 9:04pm: Will Manifold be deplatformed by any of their payment processors or webhosting services? → Will Manifold be deplatformed by any of their payment processors or webhosting services over a refusal to moderate content?
1,000
3.00@IsaacKing Well... the headline question just says "deplatformed" without specifying a reason, but the market description is clear that it has to be about content moderation.
I've always thought of the headline and description together as the full list of terms and conditions -- in which case indeed this mess with Stripe doesn't count.
I have the feeling the normies on here sometimes feel betrayed when the headline says one thing and the description says another. For example, because mobile-device Manifold play doesn't show the description by default. I don't really agree with this point of view but I recognize it's there...
On the other hand, I also model normies as caring less about the literal wording of a question than about implications and associations. So, if this question was "clearly supposed to be about" content moderation, then it should resolve NO even if the literal resolution is YES. I have even less sympathy with this viewpoint. I want a question to mean precisely what it says...
So: for me, I wouldn't count this Stripe thing because the question description is quite clear.
What payment processors and webhosting services does Manifold use, and in what countries do they have ties?
Forget about the US -- I can certainly think of some countries that would tell private companies to cut Manifold off, if they ever noticed what Manifold markets had to say about their country. If I found out that Manifold is using services based in [country name redacted] I'd bet this market waaaaay up.