Thank you for the additional context, I’ve heard peoples criticisms of substack but hadn’t heard any of this additional info
Ghost still seems cool though :)
Comment on Not only is Substack right-wing broligarchy garbage, it's way more expensive than Ghost
PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 1 day ago
A lot of us know by now that Substack has a Nazi problem.
What on Earth? They hosted like three Nazis, which is part of the overall commitment to letting people talk which leads them to host a ton of really good people. And then, when everyone on the internet yelled at them for it, raising a pretty reasonable counterpoint, they kicked the Nazis off. That all happened over a year ago.
It not only profits from fascist voices, it actively promotes their work and recruits them
I read the citation for this statement. What it says is very different from actively promoting the work of fascists and recruiting them. There is a whole fascinating conversation to be had about why some high-profile lefty journalists like Taibbi and Greenwald all of a sudden became Nazis, but it’s very misleading to assign 100% of the blame in this way to Substack, purely because they were working with those people before it really became completely clear to everyone that they for whatever bizarre reason had become Nazis. It’s a lot more complex situation that is being summarized in this extremely glib spin-soaked fashion.
And it’s funded by Silicon Valley anti-democracy billionaires like Marc Andreesen
Okay, fair enough. This is pretty interesting and I hadn’t known it.
On the other hand, Substack also hosts Sy Hersh, Tim Snyder, Salman Rushdie, and God knows who else. If they were planning to slant their coverage based on the fact that Andreesen’s company gave them $15 million in 2019 (which they then quickly turned around and gave big chunks of to working journalists), you’d think they would be making some kind of effort to downplay the leftist voices which they are currently hosting, outnumbering the “problematic” voices which might be there but which I have literally run across on Substack.
Elon Musk also, apparently, tried to buy Substack in 2023, and they told him to fuck off.
This whole article reads like a bad-faith hit piece aimed at one of the organizations that actually is trying to provide a space for good journalism including left-wing authors, and making sure that it’s sustainable and they can get paid. By trumping up some various things into much bigger deals than they need to be.
I wonder who would be interested in ginning up big bad-faith hit jobs against good news outlets, encouraging people on the left to savage and abandon them for various little misdemeanors until the only news outlets left are ones that are either bought and purchased, or too small and scattered to make a difference?
Cris_Color@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 17 hours ago
Yeah, Ghost is great. I’m not trying to say any bad thing about it. I think they’re slightly different: Substack went to bat in a big way to foster a community where real journalists could do their journalism there, and get paid for it, and to a large extent it worked. That’s why there are so many high-profile lefties writing there. Ghost is trying to set up a FOSS-style platform that anyone can use. Ghost has monetization too, but they didn’t prime the pump with it nearly as much as Substack did.
They’re both great. I think it’s pretty likely that anyone who’s screaming about Nazis on Substack is just looking for reasons to scream, and the Nazis have very little to do with it except as an excuse.
techforwhat@lemmy.today 17 hours ago
Really glad you brought the opposite perspective to the table here 🙏 thank you!
Nursery2787@lemmy.ml 15 hours ago
That and the nature of this community lol. I think everybody reading this would prefer federated/distributed communication over centralized control.
Nazis on a server? Don’t visit that server. Nazis visit your server? You got some simple decisions to make on if your server is going to be a Nazi server.
PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 14 hours ago
So like I said, the whole thing is pointless, because Substack changed their minds and kicked out the Nazis about a year ago. Anyone who is attacking them for being a Nazi platform is looking for an excuse, because it isn’t true anymore.
That’s the point, right? Give public pressure to platforms so they will deplatform the Nazis? What sense does it make to fail to notice when they do, and pretend that are still hosting Nazis, and talk incessantly about it when some important non-Nazi is just trying to pursue the critically endangered act of journalism on this platform which has no Nazis?
Why would you do that?
Buelldozer@lemmy.today 23 hours ago
The author of the article. It doesn’t take long to uncover their politics and they are absolutely not involved in any right wing conspiracy.
PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 23 hours ago
How do you know that? Do you know them personally, or audited them or something?
I don’t know that they are, and looking over their resume it does seem unlikely. But, also, I would have said that same thing looking at Taibbi’s or Greenwald’s resume in 2017. I just know that in this story, they are presenting things in this absolutely wildly inaccurate fashion that would be right at home in a right-wing conspiracy. Certainly, working at The Intercept for a long time isn’t some kind of bulwark against being infected with right-wing-propaganda-ism, with Greenwald himself as one absolutely interesting counterexample clearly on offer.