Comment on There is a federation problem on Programming.dev
PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 8 months agoThis is of a piece with "Mamdani isn't left wing enough for me" / "AOC supports genocide" / Bernie is a Zionist" kind of glib one-liner reasons why left-wing people need to stop supporting left-wing things, because they're not really virtuous enough, and so we need to abandon them in pursuit of some kind of imaginary virtue solution instead of just having unity.
TL;DR: They took some funding from Marc Andresson long ago, they were willing to give blogs to everyone including Nazis (bc free speech) and the whole internet yelled at them, so they caved and removed the Nazis. IDK how this particular push notification happened, but I would bet that the blog will be removed. They are not wholly ideologically pure, I think Richard Spenser is the worst person they willingly host and he's pretty bad, but they don't allow Nazis anymore specifically because of the hue and cry it raised up the first time.
More conversation about it here, I don't have the patience right now to write up a full explanation. TL;DR someone who's panicked at you about the Substack Nazi problem is listening to something that's mostly designed to hurt a mostly left-wing platform.
For me personally, the A16Z investment is a much bigger issue than the Nazi blogs. From my perspective, it means the management is comfortable working with criminals (pump and dump and pyramid schemes haven’t yet been made legal in the US, have they?).
Performative claims of support for “free speech” is pretty standard stuff, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a part of the go-to-market strategy (it would be funny if they created the Nazis blog themselves to stir things up).
(it would be funny if they created the Nazis blog themselves to stir things up).
Jesus Christ, see this is what I was talking about. You're making up nonsense. What they actually did was invested a bunch of money in paying actual journalism people to do actual journalism things, and then create a new way of doing things that invited a ton of qualified mostly leftist journalists to do real journalism on a platform that's a little closer to how people actually consume media now, and get paid for it, and in a sustainable fashion now that all the previous media empires are either crashing down or getting replaced with explicit propaganda.
That's where some of that A16Z money went: To journalists (some of it literally and directly, to get the ball rolling). That's why there are all these people like Robert Reich and Tim Snyder on Substack right now, doing journalism and getting paid for it. It's a good thing.
Of course, it's super easy to pretend they created a bunch of Nazi blogs instead. They didn't do that, but "it would be funny" is easy to say. Man, get lost.
I am not American (although I have lived there, and have traced extensively and have many good friends); I did not find American polemics around freedom of speech to be in the least convincing.
Absent convincing evidence to the contrary, it is reasonable to be sceptical of Substack’s claims. People in other countries get severally beaten up (or even killed) in an attempt to do real journalism - that is a commitment to free speech. Not some drama about blog hosting.
I do have some exposure to silicon valley go-to-market strategies. It is not at all “nonsense” to speculate that in theory a startup could engage in a guerrilla marketing (especially using free speech copytext, which is extremely fashionable among their target market).
Where did I make any claims about how the A16Z money was used? Sure, it likely was used to fund journalists on the platform, including people who do good work. It is a good thing that they are getting paid.
I think you misunderstand my worldview, I have nothing particularly against substack.
I just don’t buy the colourful story about “commitment to free speech” and the uncritical view of the A16Z investment.
I am not American
Great, congratulations.
it is reasonable to be sceptical of Substack's claims
What "claims"?
People in other countries get severally beaten up (or even killed) in an attempt to do real journalism
IDK if you've been paying attention, but they've been putting journalists here in ICE detention for doing real journalism. IDK why you are trying to frame pro-journalism as a thing that is somehow unique to non-America, or in any way related to Substack. That framing just makes literally 0 sense.
Journalists good. Beating up journalists bad. Hopefully we can agree on that.
Also, hosting journalists good. Hopefully we can agree on that. No? Or does the first thing mean the second one is bad somehow? This is the type of weird circuitous framing I always see when people are bringing in some kind of bullshit narrative. "Substack hosts Nazis, I don't like that" makes perfect sense, I can dig it, we can talk about it. This is just some weird circuitous nonsense.
Where did I make any claims about how the A16Z money was used?
I mean, you sure brought it up as a bad thing. Which, yes, it's pretty suspect. I would actually describe the centralization of Substack (which means it's vulnerable to a single legal action or something torpedoing the whole thing or putting them in a position where they actually do have to skew their journalism in some sort of pro-fascist direction) as the biggest problem, but you didn't touch on that, because it can't be summed up in a bite-sized "What about tthe A16Z money!" nugget.
Sure, it likely was used to fund journalists on the platform, including people who do good work. It is a good thing that they are getting paid.
Great! Glad we finally agree on something. Yes, it is, and it's why the centralization and VC money was maybe a necessary evil to some extent where something like Ghost will have a harder time sending bunches of money to journalists, which is why all these good left-wing journalists are on Substack right now. Which is a good thing. I mean, at least we're getting somewhere on that part lol.
I just don't buy the colourful story about "commitment to free speech"
Honestly, why not? If a platform is 80% left wing voices and raised money specifically to give to those left wing voices, and then also hosts a tiny minority (much less than 20%, just kind of the ones who show up who don't cross certain objective lines, like being Nazis) of right-wing voices, why would "free speech" not be the most logical explanation for why they're doing that?
I am aware that "free speech" is often used as a code-word to excuse Nazi platforms, but those ones are usually pretty easy to identify because they host majority Nazi voices, they kick the left-wing ones off instead of raising funding for them, and so on and so on. I get the knee-jerk suspicion of "free speech" at this point in the American media landscape, but I don't get why someone who took more than a cursory look at what Substack's doing would come to any other conclusion about why they're doing it.
and the uncritical view of the A16Z investment.
Sounds good! If I find anyone taking an uncritical view of the A16Z investment, I'll let you know, and you and they can hash it out.
Honestly, thanks for updating my knowledge.
A nuanced take in response to casually lobbed accusations of Nazism? How come you haven’t been banned?
!fediverse@lemmy.world hasn't yet succumbed to the international shittymod conspiracy. Give it time, I'm sure once they secure their hold over dbzer0, they'll get to work on some of the medium-sized LW communities, and start booting out defenses of Substack because of "trolling" or something.
(I am joking. I think. Maybe not.)
rainwall@piefed.social 8 months ago
Your link is to your older comments, and claims they "kicked out the nazis" they had on their platform.
This current issue is about their systems pushing racist notification from the nazis currently on their platform to users. The article also points out that one of the other nazis accounts is being pushed algorithmically to users, seperate from their "oops, all nazis" notifications issue. How is substack not a nazi platform when its still promoting and platforming nazis?
Also, they just took more funding from Marc Andeerssen in theit most recent funding round, so your TL;DR is also all fucked up.
PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 8 months ago
Are you under the impression that a person at Substack manually reviews every notification about every newsletter that gets sent out? It would be surprising to me if that was how it worked.
The URL has a "1" at the end, which usually means someone lost their account the first time and is now making a new one. I can't really make sense of how old the "1" version of the account is or if there used to be one without it. The blog hasn't been deleted yet, which sure isn't great, but I'm fairly sure that the people at Substack didn't make this blog or deliberately take pains to make sure it exists in any way.
I mean, you do understand that when I get a gmail notification about herbal Viagra, that doesn't mean Google has gone into the herbal supplements business, right? And in general how platforms generally work? As I understand it (and tell me if I'm wrong), their currently policy is to ban Nazis and this one should be gone soon. Maybe I'm wrong, I'll check back in a couple days and see what happened with it.
Honestly, it makes infinitely more sense to think that this is a fuck-up that is being spun to sound like a deliberate decision by internet trolls, than to think that Substack has decided to start sending literal Nazi propaganda to their users on purpose.
I mean, not from him personally, any more than they did from Kim Kardashian or Skims, the apparel company. I do agree that lots of VC money flooding in is a significant problem, just because it's usually (almost always) a corrupting influence in the long run. That doesn't mean that "Substack has a Nazi problem" all of a sudden becomes validated.
rainwall@piefed.social 8 months ago
Comparing a platform internal push alert system with a random spam email is asinine. This was the companies own system pushing nazi content they host to users, all with their own tools.
I have no idea what youre on about with the URL, but i absolutely accept that their notification system fucked up and mass spammed users with literal Nazi content they actively host on their platform. Machines break, computers are no exception.
The "actively hosting Nazi content" is the issue. Not actively hosting nazis is actually a stunning good way to prevent your internal tooling from spaming random customers of yours with Nazi content. Its nearly flawless. The fact that Substack does not employ it is the issue.
PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 8 months ago
Are you under the impression that someone at Substack manually reviews every notification that goes out, for every user-generated post / blog? I feel like you failed to grasp the essential point I was making. Yes, comparing it to "Google is sending me push notifications about herbal supplements!" is precisely the analogy I'm intending to make. You are aware that those email notifications are also push notifications, sent to you by Google, based on user-generated content, right?
Seems pretty straightforward to me. Is there a better way I can explain it to you, do you have any questions about the explanation? What part doesn't make sense?
I have no idea if Substack is planning to take this blog down (actually I kind of doubt it, now looking into it more). But it seems like you're failing to grasp really incredibly simple things that I'm saying, which makes me kind of not trust your overall judgement about what the far more complex issue of what the right overall judgement and opinion to hold towards Substack is.