#substack nazis

[readingsquotes]

Tech libertarianism is, fundamentally, an ideology for people who are both cheap and lazy. That is the great advantage that attracts businesspeople to adopt a libertarian perspective on speech regulation. If your first instinct about content moderation is “I would rather not think about this, it shouldn’t be my problem, and I definitely don’t want to spend any resources on it,” then libertarianism is the ideology for you. ... It is bad and weird that Google, Facebook, Apple, and the rest of big tech have been left to play the role of regulator-of-last-resort. Their executives at times complain, at times correctly, that even if they have the right as private businesses to make these decisions, we would all be better off with some other entity making them. (The hitch here, of course, is that one reason we have reduced government regulatory capacity to make and enforce these decisions is that these same companies have worked tirelessly to whittle down the size and scale of the administrative state. It has been a project of attaining great power while foreswearing any responsibility. Which is, y’know, really not great!) .. This is why every tech CEO loves the libertarian approach to speech issues. Tech libertarianism holds that someone else (or no one at all) should expend resources on setting and enforcing boundaries for how your product is used. The essence of the position is “I shouldn’t have to spend money on any of this. And I shouldn’t ever face negative consequences for not spending money on this.” (It’s a bit like someone who refuses to tip at a restaurant and insists its because they believe philosophically that the whole system is unjust and restaurants ought to pay fair wages to their workers. Sure! Fair point! But in the meantime, here and now, you’re still being a cheapskate asshole.)

On Substack Nazis, laissez-faire tech regulation, and mouse-poop-in-cereal-boxes

Dave Karpf

Dec 14, 2023

[ktempestbradford]

From The Atlantic: Substack Has a Nazi Problem

[that link is to an archived version, so no paywall]

Bottom Line: the CEOs/leaders of Substack aren't just being laissez-faire about the fascists and open white supremacists on the platform, they actively boost them by having them on the company podcast, featuring them, mentioning them, and boosting them. Because the newsletters bring in LOADS of money and they love money. Even newsletters that repeatedly violate the basic, useless guidelines of Substack, they do not get punished.

This isn't a huge surprise for anyone who has been following the major issues with Substack that have come up in the past few years. There was the whole scandal where the public discovered that Substack had been paying people secretly to be on the service while advertising that anyone can make it on their own here! Plus, they were paying bigots directly to put their newsletters on the srvice.

Good breakdowns of that from Annalee Newitz and Grace Lavery.

Then there was the disasterous interview one of the CEOs (Chris Best) did with Nilay Patel of The Verge when Substack's Twitter clone launched. Nilay -- who is, if you hadn't guessed, of Indian descent -- asked him pointed questions about content moderation and... well...

[Nilay] I just want to be clear, if somebody shows up on Substack and says “all brown people are animals and they shouldn’t be allowed in America,” you’re going to censor that. That’s just flatly against your terms of service. [Best] So, we do have a terms of service that have narrowly prescribed things that are not allowed. That one I’m pretty sure is just flatly against your terms of service. You would not allow that one. That’s why I picked it. So there are extreme cases, and I’m not going to get into the– Wait. Hold on. In America in 2023, that is not so extreme, right? “We should not allow as many brown people in the country.” Not so extreme. Do you allow that on Substack? Would you allow that on Substack Notes? I think the way that we think about this is we want to put the writers and the readers in charge– No, I really want you to answer that question. Is that allowed on Substack Notes? “We should not allow brown people in the country.” I’m not going to get into gotcha content moderation. This is not a gotcha... I’m a brown person. Do you think people on Substack should say I should get kicked out of the country? I’m not going to engage in content moderation, “Would you or won’t you this or that?” That one is black and white, and I just want to be clear: I’ve talked to a lot of social network CEOs, and they would have no hesitation telling me that that was against their moderation rules. Yeah. We’re not going to get into specific “would you or won’t you” content moderation questions. Why? I don’t think it’s a useful way to talk about this stuff.

Best wasn't willing to get into these "gotchas" around their new social network, which is a pretty clear indication that they won't get into it around content moderation on the original platform. (Their statement after the fact did nothing to make things better.)

It's also really clear from the Atlantic article that the Substack CEOs/Owners are, at best, more interested in making money than in keeping white supremacists and Nazis (literal ones) off their platform. At worst, the Substack CEOs/Owners are supremacist/Nazi sympathizers. Either way:

Substack Directly Supports the Alt-Right, Nazis, and White Supremacists

Openly, brazenly, and without remorse.

[dyrewrites]

"No ethical consumption under capitalism" was not something I expected to apply to newsletters and writing tools but here we are.

There's no safe place to host things, or share things, or edit things.

We are on the site where, despite basically being built by the queer community, being 'the wrong sort' is enough to get you banned after all. There are no places you can be where your presence is not supporting some asshat or another.

I don't have a point to make I'm just annoyed and spiraling and taking all of you with me.

[youngestdaughtersyndrome]

new newsletter 🎧

[fannishfeminists]

[azspot]

But turning a blind eye to recommended content almost always comes back to bite a platform. It was recommendations on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube that helped turn Alex Jones from a fringe conspiracy theorist into a juggernaut that could terrorize families out of their homes. It was recommendations that turned QAnon from loopy trolling on 4Chan into a violent national movement. It was recommendations that helped to build the modern anti-vaccine movement. The moment a platform begins to recommend content is the moment it can no longer claim to be simple software.

Why Substack is at a crossroads

[boyjoan]

i'm writing again! not a letter this week, but something i wrote in the midst of a sleepless night. much love.

[cetra]

Israel has lost the plot

Mouin Rabbani's latest assessment of Israel's Unfulfilled Objective: Eliminating Hamas

[odinsblog]

The owner of Substack is hosting Nazis because “free speech”

[thatstormygeek]

Before preceding [sic] we should mention what “Nazi ideas” are, since McKenzie didn’t. “Nazi ideas” are: first, that people Nazis consider part of their ethnic and philosophical in-group represent pure paragons of humanity; second, that all other human beings are corrupted and corrupting threats poisoning their bloodstream both literally and metaphorically; and third, that all other human beings therefore should be subjugated, then expelled, then exterminated, so that true humanity can finally thrive. They have other ideas as well, but those make up the core.

The notion of a marketplace of ideas selecting the best idea and rejecting the worse is an interesting one. It suggests that marketplaces always select quality, especially the more unregulated they are, which is not something I’ve noticed to be true about how any actual marketplaces operate. The idea that Nazi “ideas” need to be defeated in open debate, which will cause them to lose power, is also interesting. It presupposes that debates are always won by the most correct idea, which I’ve noticed is often the opposite of how debate works. It also suggest that Nazis plan is to participate in bloodless debate over their ideas, and accept the outcome if their ideas are rejected, which is not a plan I think Nazis have ever pursued, or the sort of arena in which they have ever admitted—much less accepted—defeat. It also suggests that what Nazis have are “ideas,” when we know that what they actually have are intentions, and those intentions always create real-life violence toward marginalized communities along racial, ethnic, religious, and other lines of bigotry—and they do so the more effectively Nazis are able to gather and organize and promote their “ideas” into the mainstream. Most damning of all, it also smuggles in the idea that—in the mind of the person making the suggestion, at least—Nazi ideas haven’t been effectively defeated in the marketplace of ideas yet. Apparently Nazi ideas are still valid and worthy consideration, and need to be debated some more before they are to be considered defeated.

[readingsquotes]

The US National Institutes of Health describes scientific racism “an organised system of misusing science to promote false scientific beliefs in which dominant racial and ethnic groups are perceived as being superior”.

The ideology rests on the false belief that “races” are separate and distinct. “Racial purity is a fantasy concept,” said Dr Adam Rutherford, a lecturer in genetics at University College London. “It does not and has not and never will exist, but it is inherent to the scientific racism programme.”

Prof Alexander Gusev, a quantitative geneticist at Harvard University, said that “broadly speaking there is essentially no scientific evidence” for scientific racism’s core tenets.

The writer Angela Saini, author of a book on the return of race science, has described how it traces its roots to arguments originally used to defend colonialism and later Nazi eugenics, and today can often be deployed to “shore up” political views.

In multiple conversations, HDF’s organisers suggested their interests were also political. Frost appeared to express support for what he called “remigration”, which Ahrens had told him would be the AfD’s key policy should the party win power.

...

The principal benefactor

Andrew Conru founded his first internet business while studying mechanical engineering at Stanford. In 2007, he hit the jackpot, selling his dating website Adult FriendFinder to the pornography company Penthouse for $500m.

In recent years, the entrepreneur has turned his attention to giving away his money, declaring on his personal website: “My ultimate goal is not to accumulate wealth or accolades, but to leave a lasting, positive impact on the world.”

His foundation has given millions to a wide and sometimes contrasting range of causes, including a Seattle dramatic society, a climate thinktank and a pet rehoming facility, as well as less progressive recipients: an anti-immigration group called the Center for Immigration Studies, and Turning Point USA, which runs a watchlist of university professors it claims advance leftist propaganda.

[dyrewrites]

I am begging people to please, please, please do your own research.

Do not believe what some random idiot online says. Not if they're a celebrity, or a politician (especially either of those actually), not if it is your own damn mother without researching it yourself.

Look it up, look at multiple articles before you make a decision on this thing.

Chances are someone is reacting to a keyword given to them on purpose to sell views and clicks and eyes on an article and the actual issue is far more nuanced. Or even the opposite of what you've been told.

Just please. Research it before you fly off the handle and start telling everyone you know to burn bridges and salt the earth.

[hyruviandoctor]

Bouncing off my last reblog about how Substack has become a haven for Nazis, here’s an interview the EIC of The Verge did on his podcast, Decoder, where he asked Chris Best, the CEO of Substack, how they would moderate hate speech.

His response was atrocious and took me from “oh maybe I’ll make a Substack” in the first half minutes of the interview, to “holy shit I’m never touch in that place” in the opening of the second half right after the commercial break.

[azspot]

Before preceding we should mention what “Nazi ideas” are, since McKenzie didn’t. “Nazi ideas” are: first, that people Nazis consider part of their ethnic and philosophical in-group represent pure paragons of humanity; second, that all other human beings are corrupted and corrupting threats poisoning their bloodstream both literally and metaphorically; and third, that all other human beings therefore should be subjugated, then expelled, then exterminated, so that true humanity can finally thrive. They have other ideas as well, but those make up the core. If you want to hear examples of Nazi ideas, you should listen to the leader of the Republican Party, whose name is Donald Trump. He’s saying stuff like this all the time, and his crowds cheer and cheer, when they aren’t claiming to be opposed to antisemitism and other forms of racism and bigotry and supremacy and suppression, that is.

A.R. Moxon