I have a few issues with substack, but truth be told, I dislike requiring handing over information to multiple services without seeing value upfront - and getting rid of obtrusive pop-ups does not qualify as value. Their willingness to platform Nazis just sealed my unwillingness into a conscious refusal.
In a similar vein, the corporate relationship adjustments you mentioned are also steps I’ve taken, but I’m inclined to agree with Naomi Klein’s perspective on consumer boycott being insufficient to address systemic problems. The general advice is to change what is within your power, but when you have close to zero power, does that advice then imply that you should try to do nothing or that you simply can affect nothing?
My substack qualms and the corporate relationship adjustments topics tie in quite nicely with a phrase from your substack that has been bothering me all weekend. It critiques my usual instincts for what to do as first steps, but it also articulates a problem I’ve struggled with for a while: “Documentation without transformation”.
Now I’m not of the opinion that we’ve ever truly been able to trust the information we consume as being objective truth, but AI has certainly suddenly increased the scarcity of reliable information.
The larger issue for me is that transformation is clearly necessary, but the scale of transformation required is so immense that it’s not something I’ve seen happen historically without also incurring immense suffering. This is not to say that the majority of humanity isn’t hugely suffering now, just that this kind of systemic change is one of those “this is going to get a lot worse before it gets better” type situations - in an acute way.
The usual trigger for change at this scale seems to be when realised losses of resource scarcity for too many exceeds the risk of setting what’s left on fire.
So we’re left with a situation where there’s potentially neither reliable documentation nor positive transformation. This does not spark joy.
I suppose my questions for you are then:
- what actions do you think would be sufficient to effect the systemic change necessary?
- how do you remain optimistic about this whole thing?
“I don’t know” is a totally valid answer to either too, in the spirit of acknowledging honest uncertainty.
tover153@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Thank you for taking the time to write this. It is unusually careful and I have been sitting with it for a couple of days. The delay is partly because I have been dealing with Influenza A, but also because your comment deserved more than a quick reaction.
I share many of your objections to Substack, especially around coercive onboarding, data extraction before value is demonstrated, and the choice to platform genuinely abhorrent material under the banner of neutrality. None of that is trivial. My use of the platform is pragmatic rather than enthusiastic, and I would not argue that it is a moral solution to anything. It is just a place where longer form thinking still seems possible, at least for now.
I also agree with you, and with Naomi Klein, that consumer level adjustments are insufficient to resolve systemic problems. I do not think boycotts alone fix extractive systems. At best, they are boundary setting. They change what we personally feed, not what the system is designed to do.
Where I might differ slightly is in how I interpret the phrase “documentation without transformation.” I share the frustration behind it. Documentation alone does not save us. History is full of well documented suffering that did not prevent further harm. At the same time, I am wary of dismissing documentation entirely, because without it we lose continuity, memory, and the ability to coordinate at all.
What I have been circling lately is the idea that trust reallocation itself is a form of pre transformation. Not transformation at the scale that would satisfy the moment, but a shift in where legitimacy, attention, and care are being placed. People are pulling trust out of large systems not because they expect those systems to reform, but because they no longer believe those systems are aligned with human scale values.
That does not prevent acute suffering. You are right about that. Large scale change historically arrives alongside immense harm, and I see no evidence that we have found a painless path through systemic breakdown. I do not feel optimistic in the sense of believing this will be gentle.
Where I do find a narrow form of optimism is this. Even under conditions of scarcity and distortion, people are still making choices about where to place trust, effort, and attention. They are narrowing it, slowing it down, and making it more conditional. That does not fix the system, but it does preserve something essential inside it.
As for your direct questions.
What actions would be sufficient to effect systemic change? I honestly do not know. I do not see a clear lever that avoids significant suffering, and anyone who claims otherwise is probably selling something.
How do I remain optimistic? I am not sure optimistic is the right word. I would say I remain oriented. I pay attention to where trust is still being extended carefully rather than cynically. I try to invest in places where documentation and transformation are at least loosely coupled, even if the transformation is small and local.
“I don’t know” is not a rhetorical move for me here. It is the most accurate answer I have.
Thank you again for engaging so thoughtfully. Comments like this are part of why I bother writing at all.