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Comment on Substack says it will not remove or demonetize Nazi content

cashews_best_nut@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

I actually prefer this type of hands-off approach. I find it offensive that people would refuse to let me see things because they deem it too “bad” for me to deal with. I find it insulting anyone would stop me reading how to make meth or read Mein Kampf. I’m 40yo and it’s pretty fucking difficult to offend me and to think I’m going to be driven to commit crime just by reading is offensive.

I don’t need protecting from speech/information. I’m perfectly capable and confident in my own views to deal with bullshit of all types.

If you’re incapable of dealing with it - then don’t fucking read it.

Fact is the more you clamp down on stuff like this the more you drive people into the shadows. 4chan and the darkweb become havens of ‘victimhood’ where they can spout their bullshit and create terrorists. When you prohibit information/speech you give it power.

In high school it was common for everyone to hunt for the Anarchists/Jolly Roger Cookbook. I imagine there’s kids now who see it as a challenge to get hold of it and terrorist manuals - not because they want to blow shit up, but because it’s taboo!

Same with drugs - don’t pick and eat that mushroom. Don’t burn that plant. Anyone with 0.1% of curiosity will ask “why?” and do it because they want to know why it’s prohibited.

Porn is another example. The more you lock it down the more people will thirst for it.

Open it all up to the bright light of day. Show it up for all it’s naked stupidity.

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jjjalljs@ttrpg.network ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
That’s not really how this works. Do you also think advertising and marketing don’t work?

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- cashews_best_nut@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  In what way is advertising and marketing the same as Mein Kampf?
  
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  - jjjalljs@ttrpg.network ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Pinching the bridge of my nose here. Nazi blog posts are marketing for nazi beliefs. They’re posting because they have ideas that they want you to have, too. What do you think marketing is? Ok, let’s assume you’re asking in good faith.
    
    When you see an ad you don’t typically run right out and buy it. But now you’re more aware of whatever they’re advertising. Maybe that’s a new car. Maybe it’s pepsi. Maybe it’s “You should recycle.” And maybe, when it’s a literal nazi post, it’s “the jews are the problem”. Some people will bounce right off the ad… Some people will immediately click through, read the related links, blah blah. And many people who read it will sort of remember it, and now have context for the next post they see. The more ads they see for nazi beliefs (or anything, really), the more likely they are to be persuaded.
    
    If you saw posts every day that promoted nazism as a solution for the world’s problems, it would have an effect on you. Look how effective fox news has been at propagating right wing beliefs.
    
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    cashews_best_nut@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    Ok, let’s assume you’re asking in good faith.
    
    I really wish people would do this more often. Hanlons razor. “Don’t attribute to malice what can so easily be attributed to ignorance”.
    
    Stop assuming you know anything about my motives or beliefs. Stop assuming I’m saying things in “bad faith”. I’m aware right-wing cretins on QAnon have scripts and tricks around making bad faith arguments but that shouldn’t stifle us discussing things. It’s lazy from you, annoying for me and ruins the chance for others to learn something.
    
    Having said that - thank you for your response. When I read the first sentence I started typing a long-winded reply but then I read the rest and had to stop. It’s now been ruminating in my head for most of the day and I’ll be honest - I hadn’t thought of it like that!
    
    Not that it should matter but my political leanings are in the bottom left quadrant of the political compass. “Socialist Libertarian”. I’m not a Nazi and I despise them but I don’t believe in taking away people’s rights to protect me. I’m capable of protecting myself. Those that aren’t capable of protecting themselves (e.g. kids) have parents/guardians to protect them.
    
    My motivation for the comment is probably spurred by recent developments in UK and EU law that are pushing draconian porn ID rules. Creating databases of adults and their porn preferences because parents are too fucking stupid to implement the adult filter on their router or ISP provider. So ALL of us have to suffer for the ignorance of parents.
    
    I have a visceral hatred of any censorship and prohibition. Prohibition of certain texts pushed me and other high school kids to find ways to make bombs. 70% of university students experiment with drugs after a lifetime of prohibition from parents, teachers and government. Having said that you’re right about Fox News! I don’t think it’s healthy for major platforms to pump out dangerous misinformation. Similar channels have cropped up in the UK (GBNews) and it’s been a nightmare seeing idiots taken in by the misinformation.
    
    Which leads me to think there is a solution here: Education.
    
    One of my best lessons in high school 25yrs ago was an English class where we read various newspaper articles and broke down the biases and language used. Another is my A-level politics class where we spent many lessons dissecting the history and realities of political ideologies.
    
    I feel those lessons inoculated me to a great degree from the effects of bullshit throughout life.
    
    I think we’re both right. I see your point that if we normalise these dangerous ideologies we risk acting on them. But at the same time I feel complete prohibition results in making it worse.
    
    Ultimately, I think a balance needs to be struck and I think language, history and political education are key to making sure we don’t fall for these things.
    
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  - lolcatnip@reddthat.com ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    In a lot of languages advertising and propaganda are literally the same word. The only difference is whether the goal is commercial or political.
    
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    cashews_best_nut@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’m still not sure how that relates to the point I was making.
    
    I don’t want anyone to censor what I’m allowed to see.
    
    If you’re asking if that’s how I feel about advertising then yes - of course. Like I said I want to be wholly responsible for what I see or don’t see. I don’t want people a government or corporation parenting my viewing.
    
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  - GeneralVincent@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Exposure
    
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mo_ztt@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Agreed. I actually had come back to this topic specifically to make this exact point, which for all the time I’d spent on this at this point I feel like I hadn’t said.

People are adults, generally speaking. It’s weird to say that you can’t have a newsletter that has a literal swastika on it, because people will be able to read it but unable to realize that what it’s saying is dangerous violence. Apparently we have to have someone “in charge” of making sure only the good stuff is allowed to be published, and keeping away the bad stuff, so people won’t be influenced by bad stuff. This is a weird viewpoint. It’s one the founding fathers were not at all in agreement with.

Personally, I do think that there’s a place for organized opposition to slick internet propaganda which pulls people down the right-wing rabbit hole, because that’s a huge problem right now. I don’t actually know what that opposition looks like, and I can definitely see a place for banning certain behaviors (bot accounts, funded troll operations, disguising the source of a message) that people might class as “free speech,” or adding counterbalancing “free speech” in kind to misleading messages (Twitter’s “community notes” are actually a pretty good way of combating it for example). But simply knee-jerking that we have to find the people who are wrong, and ban them, because if we let people say wrong stuff then other people will read it and become wrong, is a very childish way to look at people who consume media on the internet.

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- jjjalljs@ttrpg.network ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  This article is not about government censorship. This is about a private entity actively deciding to allow nazi content on their platform. Hang wringing about founding fathers belongs in some other thread where the topic is the government prohibiting content from being published.
  
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  - mo_ztt@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’m aware of how the first amendment applies, yes. I agree with the spirit of it in addition to the letter, though. You’re free to delete the one sentence where I talked about founding fathers, and respond to the whole rest of my message which doesn’t reference them or government censorship in any way.
    
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    jjjalljs@ttrpg.network ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Fine.
    
    It’s weird to say that you can’t have a newsletter that has a literal swastika on it, because people will be able to read it but unable to realize that what it’s saying is dangerous violence. Apparently we have to have someone “in charge” of making sure only the good stuff is allowed to be published, and keeping away the bad stuff, so people won’t be influenced by bad stuff. This is a weird viewpoint.
    
    How is “can’t” happening, here? It’s not the government. Are you arguing against private entities having editorial freedom? Should private entities not be in charge of their own publications and platforms? And if they do choose to publish nazi stuff, shouldn’t the rest of us be free to say “Fuck off, nazi scum” ?
    
    As I said to someone else, there is presumably a line that’s too much to cross. Is it “live stream of grinding up live babies and puppies and snorting them”? If there is no line, I don’t even know where to begin. That’s a whole other conversation. If there is a line, I think nazi content should be on the far side of it. Don’t you? And if the line is something like “whatever’s technically legal”, well that’s just punting responsibility to a slower, less responsive, ruleset run by the government.
    
    Personally, I do think that there’s a place for organized opposition to slick internet propaganda which pulls people down the right-wing rabbit hole, because that’s a huge problem right now.
    
    Platforms taking some responsibility for what they allow would go a long way without requiring a heavy handed government solution. Substack could just say “nah, we’re not letting nazis post stuff.”
    
    But if a platform is making a lot of money with nazi content, they’re probably going to be reluctant to deal with it. So if you still don’t want heavy government involvement (which can be a reasonable position, probably), you fall back to individuals saying “Fuck you. I’m not going to use your service while you serve nazis.”
    
    But then you have several related problems. Something that’s a hugely dominant player in a market is hard to avoid. YouTube doesn’t have a lot of major competitors, for example, and is pretty ubiquitous. AWS is basically impossible to avoid. And on top of that, many people are apathetic or too busy trying to survive to spend a lot of time curating things.
    
    I agree with the spirit of it in addition to the letter, though
    
    What even is the spirit of it?
    
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matthewmercury@reddthat.com ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Substack bans pornography but allows Nazis.

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sc_griffith@awful.systems ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
fascinated that you think it would somehow be harder for you to go out and find nazis if substack weren’t hosting and paying them. it will always be easy to find and read Nazi content. the reason substack matters is that the platform helps them find you, or a suggestible journalist, or a suggestible politician, etc

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