Comment on There is a federation problem on Programming.dev
PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 3 weeks agoAre 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.
Also, they just took more funding from Marc Andeerssen in their most recent $100 million funding round 13 days ago, so your TL;DR is also all fucked up.
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 3 weeks 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 3 weeks 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.
rainwall@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
Are you even reading the comment you're replying to? It doesn't seem like it.
Gmail doesnt "push notifications" for anything besides receiving email. Recieving a spam messsage, i.e an interaction with a federated service that anyone can run, is not at all the same as a company's app, that they full control, pushing a notification, that they fully control, from content on their site, that they full control. Comparing that to Gmail, which is in this case would be a neutral party to the content of the push notification, is not the same.
I very clearly pointed out that i expect the notification came from a computer fucking up. You should re-read the comment, because i made that very clear. I also made it very clear that if you have nazi shit on your platform, your computers may fuck up and push that that Nazi shit out to people. The best way to combat that is not having Nazi shit.
Either way, it's good to see you accepting that "Substack welcomes Nazis" is accurate now. Maybe it wasn't in 2023, the last time they made headlines press for paying Nazis tthat post on their platform, but it is now. I expect with the very recent 100 million cash influx from far right Trump supporters, that isn't going to change.
Maybe stop carrying so much water for a site that is clearly super cool with Nazis?
PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 3 weeks ago
They don't. Or, rather, to exactly the degree that Google "controls" the mail servers that forwarded the spam email to you.
Anyway, you seem to be grasping the point I was making now, so great. Anyway, to me, the bottom line is:
It's better to let people talk. I federated with Hexbear and lemmy.ml, too (or did, back when I had a server of my own, sniff), for exactly the same reason. It's not Substack's fault that there are Nazis in the world, and in this particular case and framing, I don't think moving them to some other segregated platform does anyone any good. I actually think it helps the Nazis a lot to separate them from the main flow of information exchange. I realize I'm in the minority in thinking all of this.
Banning Nazi shit, especially if you are now taking a ton of money from standard silicon valley VCs, is the first step towards banning all "antisemitic" shit. It's just a hop, skip, and a jump away. I think I actually had this exact conversation specifically about Substack with someone, at great length, a few years ago, and they were pointing to Germany as an example of how it should work (banning Nazi shit), and I pointed out that the same laws could easily be used against pro-Palestinians, and they all told me I was crazy.
AND OH, LOOK WHAT HAPPENED IN GERMANY
We're probably not going to see eye to eye on it. Whatever. Anyway: I'm not in favor of Nazis. I'm in favor of left-wing platforms. I'm noticing that you are not taking the standpoint "We need to get the Nazis off Substack, because it's a good thing, but the Nazis are horrifying." That would actually be totally reasonable to me even though it's not my opinion. You're taking the standpoint "Fuck Substack all the homies hate Substack," apparently, which I have a problem with. Or that seems to be your stance. Am I wrong? Maybe so, if so tell me.
I don't like policing people's speech, even when literal Nazis are involved. I'm probably in the minority on that. But I just don't like all the disingenuous ways of attacking Substack that all seem to boil down to some pretty dishonest framings... everything you're saying now, I think is more or less reasonable, we just don't agree on it. As long as you're not saying "SUBSTACK IS PROMOTING NAZI BLOGS ON PURPOSE BECAUSE THEY'RE NAZIS," as some people seem to be, I think we good.