Substack Faces User Revolt Over Anti-Censorship Stance (theguardian.com) 271
Alex Hern reports via the Guardian: The email newsletter service Substack is facing a user revolt after its chief executive defended hosting and handling payments for "Nazis" on its platform, citing anti-censorship reasons. In a note on the site published in December, the chief executive, Hamish McKenzie, said the firm "doesn't like Nazis," and wished "no one held these views." But he said the company did not think that censorship -- by demonetising sites that publish extreme views -- was a solution to the problem, and instead made it worse. Some of the largest newsletters on the service have threatened to take their business elsewhere if Substack does not reverse its stance.
On Tuesday Casey Newton, who writes Platformer -- a popular tech newsletter on the platform with thousands of subscribers paying at least $10 a month -- became the most prominent yet. [...] Substack takes a 10% cut of subscriptions from paid newsletters, meaning the loss of Platformer alone could represent six figures of revenue. Other newsletters have already made the jump. Talia Lavin, a journalist with thousands of paid subscribers on her newsletter The Sword and the Sandwich, moved to a competing service, Buttondown, on Tuesday. Substack's leadership team said in a statement: "As we face growing pressure to censor content published on Substack that to some seems dubious or objectionable, our answer remains the same: we make decisions based on principles not PR, we will defend free expression, and we will stick to our hands-off approach to content moderation."
On Tuesday Casey Newton, who writes Platformer -- a popular tech newsletter on the platform with thousands of subscribers paying at least $10 a month -- became the most prominent yet. [...] Substack takes a 10% cut of subscriptions from paid newsletters, meaning the loss of Platformer alone could represent six figures of revenue. Other newsletters have already made the jump. Talia Lavin, a journalist with thousands of paid subscribers on her newsletter The Sword and the Sandwich, moved to a competing service, Buttondown, on Tuesday. Substack's leadership team said in a statement: "As we face growing pressure to censor content published on Substack that to some seems dubious or objectionable, our answer remains the same: we make decisions based on principles not PR, we will defend free expression, and we will stick to our hands-off approach to content moderation."
It's not about censorship (Score:5, Interesting)
The right wing is always all in favor of voting with our dollars when it's convenient for them. Remember bud light? But whenever anyone wants to do it against them they cry out censorship and a ball about their rights.
In the lead up to the Nazis taking over Germany they did exactly this. They cried and moaned about their rights to speech.
If these people get in power the first thing they're going to do is censor you. You can't tolerate that. It's the classic problem of tolerating intolerance. Essentially people who openly oppose free discourse and freedom in general are the one group who can't be granted those privileges. And while using the State against them is generally too risky there's absolutely no reason to hold back from private action
Re:It's not about censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
Substack is basically saying, without even a hint of irony, "we believe everyone should have a voice and so we do not wish to silence even those who would use their voice to silence others."
Re:It's not about censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
Sticking up for popular speech is no virtue at all.
"It neither breaks my bones nor picks my pocket." -- Jefferson
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"I know not what paths others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
Did that break anyone's leg? directly? No. But it did call a lot of people to shout "to arms", form an army and shoot a bunch of people. Americans generally consider that the right people got shot, but that rather ignores the point that speech is about the most dangerous thing out there. Patrick Henry didn't assail the battlefield with a coat full of guns and single handedly mow down an entire army. He persuaded people
Re: I don't know if you've been paying attention (Score:2)
Re:It's not about censorship (Score:4, Insightful)
Substack is basically saying, without even a hint of irony, "we believe everyone should have a voice and so we do not wish to silence even those who would use their voice to silence others."
Or maybe Substack is saying that they will banish people who cry fire in the crowded theater but not those that discuss topics that might likely or potentially lead to that scenario. At least in the US, the Supreme Court has already allowed the curtailment of First Amendment rights for the former but not for the latter. Even if most people agreed that the latter is vile, such speech should be protected because it is likely that all people have some thoughts that they might want to vocalize that would fall into the latter.
Remember that the current Supreme Court is right wing. Do you really want that court to determine what is acceptable speech? It's much better to push for overly permissive rights specifically because extremists eventually rise to power, and permissive rights only have strength and staying power when strongly defended at all times for all viewpoints before the extremists try to wield power.
Re:Roads Should be Private (Score:2)
That sounds nice but can you provide an example of a time when strongly defending all viewpoints, including extremist ones, prevented extremists from wielding power?
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Every single thing you take for granted today as a fundamental moral good was at some point considered as intolerable as you now consider "Nazism", and at the time of the Nazis they convinced the public that what they were doing was not only fundamentally morally good but also morally necessary.
Rights are like encryption, you either have it or you don't. There's no middle ground. There's no "good guy bit" that prevents bad actors from using encryption back doors. The same applies to rights.
If you say that s
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What does SCOTUS have to do with this private company deciding what they want on their website?
It's not a constitutional freedom of speech issue. Substack is not a government website.
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"The brownshirts weren't part of the government therefore people's freedoms weren't infringed on by their actions" is not the winning argument you think it is. Especially in an era where it's already been proven that a handful of ultra-powerful corporations have a near total monopoly on infrastructure and information and have worked hand-in-glove with their preferred political party to abuse that.
Re: It's not about censorship (Score:2)
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Substack is basically saying, without even a hint of irony, "we believe everyone should have a voice and so we do not wish to silence even those who would use their voice to silence others."
Structures of governance and tolerance that ensure nobody actually silences others is far more important and valuable than silencing others in order to prevent them from advocating silencing others.
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What is a "structure of tolerance"?
Re: I disagree (Score:2)
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The grand irony is the people screaming "we must abolish all civil rights because of a nazi crisis" are the very people who are violently attacking Jews around the world right now, and they're getting away with it because they've spent the past few decades steadily increasing their ability to censor all information counter to their position in the name of popper's paradox.
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Censoring such opinions doesn't stop them from existing, it just drives them underground where they then thrive and strengthen since people can now only express them in private environments full of like minded individuals.
If such opinions are out in the open then they can at least be countered.
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we need to use strong social mechanisms to shut down fascism and Nazis or they can and will use those systems against us
Creating those censorship and totalitarian mechanisms is exactly how they will wind up able to do that. You are doing the very thing you claim to be opposing. It's very meta of you, but it's still toxic and dangerous. By your own logic you should be banned from every website and have your credit cards and bank accounts revoked.
Long-term teaching critical thinking and claims evaluation skills in grade school will have that effect but we're a long way off from that being uncontroversial and allowed.
The entire reason Jewish students are being forced to lock themselves in attics by violent mobs is because for decades schools have been doing things your way and using a combination
Re:It's not about censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
Substack is basically saying, without even a hint of irony, "we believe everyone should have a voice and so we do not wish to silence even those who would use their voice to silence others."
But they also silence porn and other sexual content, don't they? So they're fine with censorship, they're just hypocritical about it.
Re:It's not about censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
It's about choosing your customers. And at the same time as a user and potential customer I would certainly have the right to choose which companies I do business with based on which customers they do business with.
You certainly have all the right in the world to the extent you have access to such information in the first place. Not every corporation makes customer lists known. Many corporations don't even know exactly who their customers are. It is also true just because someone can do something doesn't automatically mean they should.
Personally I don't want to think about the objectionable ideology of all the shady people who shop at my local supermarkets or pay utility bills. If I knew that I would have to boycott them and eventually run out of places to buy food and freeze and or starve to death.
The right wing is always all in favor of voting with our dollars when it's convenient for them. Remember bud light? But whenever anyone wants to do it against them they cry out censorship and a ball about their rights.
You betcha, everyone has a right to invoke whatever excuses their little fragile hearts desire not to tolerate others.
If these people get in power the first thing they're going to do is censor you. You can't tolerate that. It's the classic problem of tolerating intolerance.
Are you advocating censoring them before they censor you?
Essentially people who openly oppose free discourse and freedom in general are the one group who can't be granted those privileges.
So are you saying because you are advocating censorship you don't deserve freedom of speech? By the way is freedom of speech a privilege or a right?
And while using the State against them is generally too risky there's absolutely no reason to hold back from private action
To what end? Is your position so weak and perilous the only way you can protect your ideology is to silence those with a different ideology?
Apparently nobody actually wants an open functioning marketplace of ideas, they want a captive market that operates by mob rules - their rules.
Re:It's not about censorship (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a very obvious difference between someone mostly anonymously buying groceries at your shop, and someone using your website to publish their calls for other people to be harmed, and using your subscription system to fund that harm.
If you were a Palestinian living in the West Bank, and a Zionist settler wanted to buy guns and a bulldozer from you, would you sell it to them?
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There is a very obvious difference between someone mostly anonymously buying groceries at your shop, and someone using your website to publish their calls for other people to be harmed, and using your subscription system to fund that harm.
Obviously it is different. How and to what extent is the difference relevant? What if the links to the substack in question appear in the Google search index? Would you stop using Google? The Internet and ISPs are being used, search indexes are being used, CAs and registrars are being used. CDNs are being used... where if anywhere does it end and why?
If you were a Palestinian living in the West Bank, and a Zionist settler wanted to buy guns and a bulldozer from you, would you sell it to them?
If they wanted to simply buy groceries from me I probably wouldn't even sell them that, forget about the bulldozers and don't ask me about guns.
Suppose if
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That's my point. It's much more complex than a simple freedom of speech issue, or a binary all or nothing.
Re:It's not about censorship (Score:4, Insightful)
If you were a Palestinian living in the West Bank, and a Zionist settler wanted to buy guns and a bulldozer from you, would you sell it to them?
Very telling choice of metaphor, since Judea was ethnically cleansed of its indigenous Jewish population by literal Waffen SS Nazis and then colonized for only about 20 years. What's even more interesting is that for the duration of that 20 year Nazi occupation and colonization the entire settler-colonial empire behind it staged a public boycott of what they called "Palestinians"... the indigenous Jews who had survived their attempted genocide.
It's very telling that you spend so much time talking about how Nazis can't be tolerated, granted rights, or allowed to exist as part of society at all... and then you turn around and support literal Waffen SS Nazis from World War 2 who committed a genocide against Jews in their indigenous lands, while simultaneously referring to those indigenous peoples as "settlers".
All of this just reinforces the classic point that leftists don't actually have a problem with things like Nazis, colonialism, and genocide... as long as they're the ones doing it to people they don't like.
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To what end? Is your position so weak and perilous the only way you can protect your ideology is to silence those with a different ideology?
So let me get this straight.
President Trump was right to use the power of his office to threaten to take away the NFL's tax status and censor Kaepernick for taking a knee.
But private individuals are wrong for not wanting to support a privately-owned platform that hosts Nazis and that monetizes Nazi propaganda.
Do I have this right?
Re: It's not about censorship (Score:2)
"In the lead up to the Nazis taking over Germany they did exactly this. They cried and moaned about their rights to speech. "
And look how that turned out! Perhaps we should learn from history.
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Even heroically successful black antiracism activists like Daryl Davis have been called nazis and threatened by woke mobs [imgur.com].
You aren't describing Popper's Paradox, you're an example of it. All you're doing is adding on one extra step of first calling the people you want to censor names in order to justify your totalitarianism.
In the lead up to the Nazis taking over Germany they did exactly what you are doing. Hitler didn't wake up and say "Mwahaha I am evil and now a dictator", he won a free and fair election
Re: It's not about censorship (Score:3)
"He claimed everything he was doing was to protect innocent people from systematic and institutionalized oppression by a privileged elite who meant them harm and was responsible for everything bad in the world."
That is exactly what right wingers throughout the world are doing now. Funny how history repeats itself.
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Funny enough, there is some evidence that Anhauser-Busch knew they would react this way and still went for it. The end result was they could shut down a union brewery in New York over "poor sales" and reopen it in Mexico.
Supposedly the plan was in the works, however there was no actual appetit
Platformer is the wrong name (Score:2)
Casey Newton should rename his newsletter to de-Platformer.
Vote with your wallet (Score:2)
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And the free market, in my case me, won't ever go there again-- wanting to never aid or abet those that would provide a platform for the spew of Nazism. It's easy to never go there again. And I won't.
With freedom of speech comes responsibility of speech. Easy choice: Nope.
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And the free market, in my case me, won't ever go there again-- wanting to never aid or abet those that would provide a platform for the spew of Nazism. It's easy to never go there again. And I won't.
With freedom of speech comes responsibility of speech. Easy choice: Nope.
If someone has a substack who put in a huge amount of dedication to a topic you like are you saying you wouldn't contribute to that person on that platform because there are other substacks on the same site with content you disagree with?
What if it's a CDN/forward proxy providing service for a site you disagree with? Would you advocate never going to any site that uses the same service? What about disagreeable domains registered with a particular registrar, TLD, CA or net assignments by a RIR?
What if your
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Stop thumping your chest with misdirection.
I'm merely asking questions. You seem to not have answers.
You get to support whomever you like, and so do I.
This much is obviously true.
And if substack platforms Nazis, I won't go there. My time, my clicks. Your clicks and sense of morality may differ.
This isn't live and let live. This is about an organization specifically poised towards dominate white supremacy at the cost of life and liberty for non-whites. Don't move the cheese.
Freedom of speech is of course extraordinarily dangerous. Unfortunately the alternatives are far more perilous for society.
You get to click, I get to click. Click your conscience.
Personally I sleep well at night knowing there are clowns out there who have all the freedom in the world to advocate for their circuses.
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What a moral coward you are
A crybully
"Waaaah I don't like something. Please protect me from it by making sure nobody else can experience it either"
Re: Vote with your wallet (Score:2)
Re:Vote with your wallet (Score:5, Interesting)
Yup, which is why Twitter has lost over 70% of its value [cbsnews.com] since Musk took over. He wants "free speech"*, have at it. Advertisers prefer not to have their ads appear next to Nazi postings.
* He isn't truly free speech since he regularly censors or even bans accounts which say things he doesn't like [imgur.com].
Re:Vote with your wallet (Score:5, Insightful)
I think Substack is completely overestimating their own value. They seem to think that, like Facebook and Twitter, they have a sort of user base that can be held captive by the social infrastructure they support. But Substack is not like this at all. It's little more than those old Geocities and Tripod sites back in the day, and tacking on a email transmission is hardly novel.
In the case of the big social media companies, nothing about them is novel technologically, it's just that the nature of social media requires you to be on the same network as everyone else. With Substack, if one of your favorite writers switches platforms or fires up a CMS with a newsletter feature, you just follow them to the new location.
Substack's moderation policy is bound to drive them into more niche territory than they already are. I don't have a problem with that—I just don't think it's a very smart business decision. Everyone has the right to give Nazis a platform, they just shouldn't act surprised when it hurts business.
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Even heroic successful black antiracism activists like Daryl Davis have been called nazis and threatened by woke mobs [imgur.com]. All you're doing is saying that you're completely fine with totalitarianism as long as people justify it by first accusing their targets of witchcraft and heresy.
Unfortunately, Substack is correct (Score:3)
The best solution is to ensure content is very easily categorisable instead, so that end users can take moderation into their own hands by electing to not see content they find objectionable. Whether this is done centrally or is crowdsourced through users collectively tagging content would depend on the site, but in the case of Substack, this could safely be done as a mix of authorâ(TM)s own tags and those crowdsourced (anonymously to the author) by legitimate paying subscribers, perhaps automatically verified through heuristics to prevent obvious abuse.
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From following some cerators on youtube, it does indeed seem like it is the advertisers. There are apparently some really fucked-in-the-head groups that advertise on YouTube. Tagging will not cut it, because who would do it? Content creators _already_ try to avoid the pitfalls, so it cannot be them. YouTube itself tries to run things with as little human involvement on their side as possible (Google is deeply scared about humans making decisions.) That leaves the advertisers. And they do not want to spend t
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Every large-scale platform which has engaged in invasive centralised moderation thus far has ended up far worse off as a result.
Yup, just look at Twitter. Its value has plummeted over 70% [cbsnews.com] since Musk took over and engaged in centralized moderation.
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Presumably you are joking, given Musk's claims about free speech and his unbanning previously banned accounts. Poe's law and all that.
Every site that tries to be a free speech absolutionist dies. Voat, Parker, Gettr, what was that other Twitter knock off? Even Kiwi Farms and 4chan.
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Indeed. This does obviously not solve the problem, but the idea of a "clean world" where people you do not like (for whatever reason) are not allowed to speak publicly is, in fact, a very authoritarian and fascist one and completely unrealistic if you want basic freedoms for everybody. If you do not want it for everybody, then _you_ are an authoritarian and may well be pushing some quite fascist ideas.
Censorship of any group can only backfire. And look, it does.
Cry more (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's ACTUAL, LITERAL nazis, dipshit. People that are avowed white supremacists that want to genocide other people. These are the people allowed to create substacks to get their word out. If they want to run their own servers, fine, but corporations like Substack don't have to aid and abet them.
They ARE wrong. There is 0% of their ideology that is correct.
"Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. B
Re: Cry more (Score:3, Interesting)
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Indeed. But most people avoid introspection like the plague. They may find some things that are not so nice if they looked at themselves.
Substack doesn't like nazis (Score:2)
But they don't mind accepting their business.
Re: Substack doesn't like nazis (Score:2)
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You seem to not have read the story. They do mind Nazi business. They just think, with some rather good arguments, that refusing it makes the problem worse.
Do they censor communists? (Score:3)
Or royaliats or imperialist? Nazis are not the only evil in the world.
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Communists want to guarantee access to basic resources. Nazis want to kill millions or billions of people.
You: I see no difference.
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>"Communists want to guarantee access to basic resources. "
Everyone can be equally miserable... except the always present top elite.
>"Nazis want to kill millions or billions of people."
Yes, disgusting. Now, shall we count the millions or billions of people that were killed by Communist states?
So how much misery or killing should qualify as being censorship-worthy?
Re:Do they censor communists? (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, Nazis want that as well for all people. And Nazis do not generally want to kill people at all, except in war, which they see as a kind of competition. What they actually do is define some groups of "homo sapiens" as not-people and obviously not-people can be killed at will and should not have access to basic resources either. Incidentally, they do not care how many they kill, but they care very much who they kill. (What happens if Nazis run out of "untermenschen" to enslave and kill is unknown as that has never happened so far.) But Nazis are not satanists or nihilists at all. They want a strong society that weathers all challenges it faces and survives long-term. The problem is in what means they deem acceptable to reach that goal.
You see, the problem is actually a bit more complicated than your simplistic view. And that is why censorship makes the problem worse.
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Hahah
Sure they do.
Next will you say, it's never been tried before?
Re: Do they censor communists? (Score:3, Informative)
Re: Do they censor communists? (Score:5, Interesting)
Communism operates under no moral framework whatsoever. The state will do whatever it must to achieve its goals, which invariably results in the deaths or inprisonment of those who prove to be an impediment regardless of their culpability in any actual crime.
Are These Real Nazis or "Nazis" (Score:5, Insightful)
He is right (Score:4, Interesting)
Censorship is itself an authoritarian act and pretty much the complete opposite of protecting freedom. Obviously, the more violent "protectors" of freedom do not understand that and thereby routinely try to establish what they are thinking they are fighting. There is a reason these people are known as "useful idiots".
So, yes, let the Nazis publish their poison. And then do not make it worse by putting some of your own poison on top. Instead explain to everybody that is willing to listen _why_ exactly they are wrong. Obviously, that is not so easy, because Fascism actually has a theory and that theory is well-thought out and works. The issue is in the base-assumptions. The main problem with fascism is that it does not value or respect individual people and has no problems killing off groups of "undesirables". A second problem is that Fascism propagates always being at war and that killing "others" makes the community stronger. There are some other fundamental problems with that world-view. But then you have to go down to something like Human Rights to explain why that Fascist stance is actually not desirable. And there, many people actually find that their own stances are not so clean either. Still possible to explain why fascism is bad, but it does actually some introspection and many people try very hard to avoid that. So they fall back on "Nazis baaad!" and that does not cut it.
Now, explaining this requires knowing it in the first place. Funny thing is that in today's utterly polarized society, most people of either side often do not even know why they are on a side and what the side they chose actually stands for. Ingroup cohesion above everything else, because people are confused and have no clue what is going on bus desperately want to belong to some group, any group. (Also, hence religion of which Fascism is really just a variation.)
So, yes, "fighting" the Nazis by censorship validates them and makes their group stronger. And that allows them to recruit more members, because most people want to belong to a strong in-group. As an "anti-fascist" stance, censorship is a complete failure and decidedly makes the problem worse.
The first amendment only applies to government. (Score:2)
There is no corporate or individual obligation to support free speech, and politics is war where there is no moral obligation to an enemy including supporting their enemy speech.
Moral obligations exist only within consenting groups who establish and impose their morality. Substack can please its customers or not. They owe it nothing.
Freedom of Association (Score:3, Insightful)
This is about freedom of association, not censorship. Substack is a private business and free to make any rules it wants. (And as several people have noted, they prohibit sex workers, so they're already making choices about who is welcome.)
Writers are also free to decide whether they want to be on platform that welcomes Nazis. (And yes there are actual, out Nazis there.)
I just subscribed to someone who moved to another platform.
How we have fallen (Score:5, Insightful)
Whatever happened to "I wholly disapprove of what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it"?
I can't believe this is even controversial. How sad and disappointing. Where does this moral panic come from? Does it really bother people so much that a group might be discussing something you disagree with that you would demand it be stamped out and driven into the shadows?
Let them discuss their silly ideas in the open, and let the facts disprove them. This blind fear of "alternate worldviews" is a side-effect of the kind of misguided absolute relativism that we are seeing oozing from padded cells of academia.,
And don't give me that "post-fact world" shit, if our worthless schools taught even an ounce of critical thinking instead of how to be offended, we would realize this is nonsense.
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Go Fash, Lose Cash. (Score:2)
Byeeeeee.
It's not an anti-censorship stance (Score:2)
They censor lots of things they disapprove of. Their ToS allow them to censor on lots of topics, and they do.
If they were not censoring other things, they might have a better defense. There'd be a real argument there, but it'd at least be an actual argument about the facts. The notion that they have an "anti-censorship stance" is, however, nonsense.
Re: I think opinion vs fact needs to be distinguis (Score:2, Insightful)
lol
Your post on supporting Ukraine gets people killed. Youâ(TM)re censored.
Your post on supporting Russia gets people killed. Youâ(TM)re censored.
People so easily fall for what you did
Better that these things are fought in the marketplace of ideas before you have to fight them kinetically.
Also if you censor Nazis then they gain power the censorship machine you built gets turned against you
I engage with lots of Nazis, there is some really interesting history I learned that I wouldnâ(TM)t have
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>Also if you censor Nazis then they gain power the censorship machine you built gets turned against you
It doesn't work out that way. You remove their ability to create a false consensus and since they're mostly cowards who need to get worked up in a mob to do anything, 'censorship' of statements designed to build murderous hatred of an out-group can not only reduce their ability to cause immediate harm, it also reduces their ability to recruit for the future.
>I engage with lots of Nazis, there is som
Re: I think opinion vs fact needs to be distinguis (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't work out that way.
It always works out that way. The very first thing every two bit despot in the history of the world does upon gaining power is impose censorship. It's an easy proven way of controlling people and maintaining power.
When you engage in censorship you are centralizing power via the act of censorship. This works to erode the state through corrupting influence of progressive power seeking. Before you know it opposing narratives or "facts" as ordained by the state or corporate benefactors, criticizing the state, its leaders or military also become censored activities aggregating more and more power until you are left with a despot who doesn't give a flying fuck about anyone or anything but themselves.
You remove their ability to create a false consensus and since they're mostly cowards who need to get worked up in a mob to do anything, 'censorship' of statements designed to build murderous hatred of an out-group can not only reduce their ability to cause immediate harm, it also reduces their ability to recruit for the future.
While censorship is certainly effective it is ultimately far more dangerous than tolerating clowns. In this particular case Nazi's are not going away. They will have a platform no matter what and will seek to gain consensus in support of their ideology no matter what. It will just be from a place with even fewer controls, oversight and LEA access than substack.
Then you're a Nazi; by socializing with other Nazis, you're making them feel accepted and comfortable which emboldens them. And most likely the 'history' you think you're learning is a bunch of bullshit spun from whole cloth to support Nazism.
It is counterproductive to dilute terms with this type of rhetoric.
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While censorship is certainly effective it is ultimately far more dangerous than tolerating clowns. In this particular case Nazi's are not going away.
History does not agree with your sentiment. Fun fact, many people though Hitler was a clown sounding off in beer halls. You know until wasn't, took absolute power and completely smashed all democratic institutions.
The thing is your argument hinges on two contradictory things that speech is (a) important and (b) unimportant.
People are only "clowns" to be "tole
Re: I think opinion vs fact needs to be distinguis (Score:5, Insightful)
And that exact kind of disinformation is exactly how so many people are successfully able to repeat what he actually did, which was bait a structurally unsound government into abusing its powers and bypassing the legislature to rule through executive orders. Hitler was elected on a campaign of democratic socialist reform, promising to end authoritarian abuses and protect the working class from systematic and institutionalized oppression by a privileged elite.
to be as rude and obstructive as possible to them and to convince others to do likewise.
That's called the "heckler's veto" and is considered a textbook example of the concept that your rights end where someone else's begin. A historical example of it taken to its inevitable conclusion was Hitler's brownshirts smashing in Jewish owned businesses and terrorizing anyone who disagreed with them to the point people were afraid to speak up.
You're literally admitting in plain english that you don't have a problem with Hitler's tactics and behavior, you just want to be the one in charge.
Re: I think opinion vs fact needs to be distinguis (Score:5, Insightful)
And that exact kind of disinformation is exactly how so many people are successfully able to repeat what he actually did, which was bait a structurally unsound government into abusing its powers and bypassing the legislature to rule through executive orders. Hitler was elected on a campaign of democratic socialist reform, promising to end authoritarian abuses and protect the working class from systematic and institutionalized oppression by a privileged elite.
You speak of disinformation and then trumpet out that lie. First off, Hitler wasn't elected until after he took power (and was the only one on the ballot). Hitlers ascension to power is histories greatest subversion of democracy. He used standover tactics to shut down the government until the Chancellor gave Hitler what he wanted (sound oddly familiar to any modern day parties).
Secondly, Hitler was no socialist, definitely not in the way we define socialism (as in collectivism). Hitler's rhetoric was nationalistic and divisive, focused on recapturing German might and German power, he couldn't care less about the poor, the infirm, the elderly. In fact his government had a policy of euthanising children born with deformities and killing people who were considered burdens to the state (Aktion T4). One of the core tenants of Fascism is that they attempt to control the language, "socialism" was one of these words Hitler tried to change the meaning of, he wanted to retake it from the Bolshevik meaning (the one we use in the modern day, referring to collectivism) and change the definition closer to what we would call nationalism these days.
Re: I think opinion vs fact needs to be distingui (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: I think opinion vs fact needs to be distingui (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I think opinion vs fact needs to be distinguish (Score:5, Insightful)
If they propose to help anti-VAX Covid deniers spread dangerous, unscientific, lies -- that can literally get people killed. Then even I have a problem with it.
Exact same rational people used to silence civil rights activists. Those black folks were going to kill and rape their white daughters if the abolitionists and civil rights people weren't silenced. These tactics worked too. For awhile.
Of course, as everyone knows, you can establish a link between any freedom and someone's death. I mean, Jeffrey Dahmer could not have killed all of those people if he had a government-appointed chaperon at all times, which means that the anti-chaperone people are promoting ideas that could get people killed, and should not be allowed to speak.
I could write a novel detailing why you're all going to die hideous deaths if you don't do my bidding. It would be pretty convincing too. It's the cornerstone of propaganda.
Alas, your position is not novel or unique. It's as old as time itself. When people speak of freedom, what they really mean is the freedom to oppress "the others".
People typically equate "scientific" with "things I agree with", but you'd likely be shocked to realize just how racist and sexist science really is. If you're claiming to support all things scientific, well, be careful, because someone with more time could ascribe a whole lot of awful positions to you.
The world you describe is one where groups of highly-formal educated, largely wealthy/affluent white folks determine what the poor/working-class are permitted to say, and again, it's something that has been advocated by people like yourself for thousands of years. Yours is a scenario in which the power to speak is granted by a overwhelmingly rich and white class. This was the Democratic platform from the 1800s through 1967, so it's not surprising. After all, Jim Crow, like the KKK, eugenics, and slavery, was a Democratic thing. That in 2024 they want to ban all speech that's not theirs is hardly a new or earth-shattering revelation. Rather, it is consistent. They've always wanted this. I'd say at this point in time, you're pretty close to regaining it, so give yourself a round of applause.
BTW, the CDC website still states that COVID breakthrough infections are "rare", so unless I missed a big outrage, I think you determine the accuracy of information based on who says it, rather of what is said, and I don't think the scientific veracity of said information plays any role whatsoever in your propensity to agree with it or not. Do you know how many scientists were kicked out of the decision-making group for opposing giving vaccines to 6-month olds? Do you care?
Contrary to what you're told, science actually does not speak with one homogenized voice, so it comes back to you defining science being what you want it to be, and having that definition forced on everybody else.
In the end, I think what you really want is a world where people who you agree with can speak, and those who don't agree with you cannot.
Look, I'm not criticizing you, were we honest with ourselves, I think we'd all want that if we could get it.
So yes, I can see why that sounds like Utopia to you, but I hope you can understand if it doesn't sound quite as awesome to others.
Good luck.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
On the Nazi thing, those people do radicalise others into committing murder. It's not an "oh I can't be responsible for every idiot that misinterpreted my words", it's a deliberate policy.
It's one thing to not take action to prevent them speaking elsewhere, and another to provide them with a platform and a revenue stream. Citing freedom of speech is not a defence for doing that, and the "counter with more speech" argument falls apart in the age of engagement algorithms.
Re: I think opinion vs fact needs to be distinguis (Score:2)
Re: I think opinion vs fact needs to be distinguis (Score:2)
In other words, you prefer big tech companies be the speech police instead of having an entity that governs at the consent of the governed.
Reminds me of when I asked a Polish guy who lived behind the iron curtain who was talking about Russian oligarchs taking over the industries "so the former communists like capitalism after all?" and he replied "oh they love capitalism, they just don't like democracy!"
I take it you feel the same way as the oligarchs?
Re: I think opinion vs fact needs to be distingui (Score:2)
Then shouldn't it be the choice of the platform who they do or don't want to host? Because that seems at odds with your comment. It's definitely at odds with what progressives seem to want.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know who you are describing, but I don't recognize them. Figment of your imagination, most likely.
Re:I think opinion vs fact needs to be distinguish (Score:5, Insightful)
those people do radicalise others into committing murder.
You mean like the 50+ people murdered and entire neighborhoods razed to the ground during riots started by leftist disinformation? Like how covid hysteria led to teenage girls being hospitalized just for not masking hard enough? Or how Jewish professors have been forced to flee their campus by armed mobs? Female professors hospitalized with neck injuries after being attacked for attending a talk campus leftists disagreed with? Jewish students forced to lock themselves in an attack and barricade the doors against violent mobs incited to attack them by decades of indoctrination claiming all Jews share responsibility for everything bad in the world, even police brutality?
It's one thing to not take action to prevent them speaking elsewhere, and another to provide them with a platform and a revenue stream.
And your argument falls apart in the age of monopolized infrastructure. People have tried to create new websites, they were denied hosting. They tried to start new providers, they were denied access to server and backbone infrastructure. They tried to build new infrastructure, they were denied payment processing. They tried to handle their own payments, they were denied bank accounts.
Where does your totalitarian ostracism end? Even heroically successful black antiracism activists like Daryl Davis have been called nazis and threatened by woke mobs [imgur.com]. Should he have to invent an entire parallel currency, banking system, telecommunications infrastructure, server farm, and webhost from scratch just so he's able to exercise a fundamental right?
You don't have a problem with any of this, you just want to be the one doing the murdering.
Re: (Score:2)
I actually agree with you to an extent. Things like a bank account are vital for modern life.
I don't think web hosting is though. And in fact things aren't as dire as you claim. The Daily Stormer is still online.
In any case, there has to be a balance, because you are forcing people to associate with people they don't want to associate with. To justify something so burdensome, the argument has to be very strong. Personal banking is necessary for everyone, banking for web businesses is not enough to justify t
Re:I think opinion vs fact needs to be distinguish (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds good in theory. But who decides what is and what is not acceptable? And if you have such a group or person you hand them a lot of power. Power corrupts more often than not and that makes the problem _worse_. Yes, I am all for posting references to actual science and calling out the anti-vaxxers and other deniers. But trying to suppress them makes the problem worse, because it is a deeply authoritarian act and doing it you become what you think you are fighting.
In the end, freedom includes the freedom to make bad personal choices. The line is crossed when you try to impose your choices on others by force. That is an attack on freedom itself and must be opposed decisively or freedom vanishes. Just trying to convince others is something that a free society has to accept. And, obviously, a free society does include the right of everybody to not listen to any group they do not want to listen to.
Re: (Score:2)
If Substack wants to take the pure Free-Speech viewpoint that "the correction to bad-speech, is more speech (calling how how much the original speech are disingenuous hate-filled a-holes)", that seems like an intellectually and morally consistent position. It's literally one that the US was founded on.
That is an argument for free speech but it is far from the only one and certainly not the basis for the inclusion in the US constitution. The reason given by the US congress at the time for the bill of rights was "in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of powers."
Setting aside that we don't have "crowded theatres" in which to shout "fire" in any more, outright lying, grift, fraud, confidence games, and attempts to mislead people into things that will cause them to die, has never been "Free Speech". Ever.
All those receive at least some protection as free speech. There are strict legal tests [wikipedia.org] to determine if speech strays into what can be legally penalized and they all heavily favor being able to say just about anything at all.
You can of course
Re: (Score:2)
There's a deep flaw in that reasoning ("just ban the assholes") and it's that we are all shaped by our culture and that predetermines what thoughts we form, and that happens before we even realise it. I can say that having temporarily lived in countries where the social values and beliefs are completely at odds with other values, and yet ordinary educated intelligent people hold those archaic nasty beliefs as obviously true.
And it's a huge realisation when people start to think outside their culture. As a c
Re:I think opinion vs fact needs to be distinguish (Score:4, Interesting)
Substack isn't taking any moral or ethical stance, they're simply post-hoc rationalising their cashing in on the violent, xenophobic, anti-rationality social media influencers who've been kicked off other platforms who are worried about political blow-back for providing material support to potential criminal conspiracies & acts.
As usual, this is all about market share & money.
Re: I think opinion vs fact needs to be distinguis (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a hint - people waving placards and walking within the velvet ropes aren't participating in an 'insurrection' no matter how much the media wants you to believe they were
Maybe. But what about 'zip tie guy' [nytimes.com]? Not everyone was an insurrectionist. Not everyone was a peaceful protester.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because you chose to watch a specially curated compilation of shots that were not pointing at the insurrectionists who were breaking windows and attacking the Capitol Police does not mean that those things suddenly didn't happen.
Four officers who responded to U.S. Capitol attack died by suicide afterwards [reuters.com]. Do you really think that people waving placards and walking within velvet ropes would inspire officers to end their lives? The way you are trying to change the narrative is disgustingly disrespectfu
Re: I think opinion vs fact needs to be distingui (Score:3)
Well the leadership at the time literally referred to themselves as "trained Marxist", whatever the fuck that means, and plastered communist propaganda all over the website, Twitter, etc, and stated communism as being the fundamental endgame of the movement. So the intent of that association seems obvious to everybody but you, apparently. Sure, it's been removed since, but at the time period referenced, it was in fact there.
Re: I think opinion vs fact needs to be distinguis (Score:3, Informative)
Spoken like someone who had their mind made up prior to "researching" anything at all. Think what you wish, after all there are folks out there stupid enough to embrace Flat Earth so you're in good company I guess?
I use yall as examples of how not to behave like an adult. I just wish everyone else would stop listening to you fucks as if you had any clue about what's going on out here in reality. Again like FlEarfers yall are facts optional idiotic propaganda. Only effective because we basically stopped t
Re: (Score:2)
Censorship isn't the answer, a better argument is.
For many, that is impossible [imgur.com].
Re: (Score:2)
There are some pretty solid numbers: About 20% of the population can be convinced to change their stance by rational argument. Of these 20%, about 10-15% can come up with that rational argument themselves ("independent thinkers") and can change their own stance without being prompted from outside.
That means about 80% of the population cannot be reasoned with. You may still be able to manipulate them into changing their stance, but they will not be able to fact-check whether the new stance actually makes mor
Re: (Score:2)
You are mistaken. Stalin was just one not very sophisticated mass-murderer. Hitler and his group wanted to establish their ideology for a very long time and they were anything but unsophisticated in that. That makes "Team Hitler" massively worse, because "Team Stalin" basically was just him and things reliably collapsed after he died. If "Team Hitler" had not massively overestimated their military capabilities, they could still be around and could be a major power. Fortunately, they did miscalculate rather
Re: Good for them (Score:2)
This is like discussing election procedures with chimpanzees. If you don't understand what epistemology is or why respect for shared epistemological foundations is necessary for a functional and free society, any point made about why Nazi thought is barely thought is gonna be misunderstood at best. This is why funding public education is important - a functional and free society requires access to
Re: "Nazis" (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Funny since the people who call everyone "nazis" these days, especially actual minorities like black people [imgur.com] and jews, are the people who also shout "gas the jews" and violently attack Jews. They're also the people who've spent over a decade using a combination of institutional capture and outright mob violence to silence and terrorize anyone who tries to speak out against them and justified it by calling their victims "nazis".
Apparently the only thing needed for you to support everything you pretend to oppo
Re: (Score:2)
Sexual content and political views are very, very different. Thay may simply have to suppress sexual content because of laws they are subject to.
Re: They already censor people (Score:2)