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PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

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.

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