I wanted to make sure I sat down and really replied to you before because I generally like your takes and respect you as a person, and a quick reply from my phone would be impossible as a medium for replying to your thoughtful and well stated argument.
Yeah, all good. I mean maybe I am wrong, we can talk about it.
My issue with Substack isn’t that there’s Nazis on there, it’s that Substack’s owners made sure they were there, and made sure they got a cut of the revenue sharing scheme.
Okay so this is actually one of the issues that made me start to say that this is deliberate disinformation, not just people saying some stuff I don’t agree with. The thing is: I don’t think this is actually true. I saw a big article that made this claim, I dug into the details, and it turned out to be one of those “Ship of Theseus” things where, the people they invited were not the Nazis, just some random people with MAGA-type ideas, and they hadn’t expressed those MAGA-type ideas until long after Substack’s dealings with them had been and gone (pre-2017 Matt Taibbi I think was one). Basically, Substack in this aspect did nothing wrong at all. But people wrapped it up like they had sought out Richard Spenser and invited him to the platform and made sure to give him some money to get things started, which is false, and it was weird that people were trying so hard to say that that had happened. What they did was took millions of dollars from VCs and then gave it to good journalists.
Who are you talking about when you say the Substack owners made sure there were Nazis? I want to dig into this a little bit more and where you heard that from.
There’s a whole separate issue of them allowing for real neo-Nazis. I’m probably in the vast minority, but I actually think that was fine. It’s the same like I think Hasan Piker can say whatever the fuck he wants, it’s the same like I think nutomic can have transphobic views if he wants. I think it is fine.
Like I say, I’m probably the minority there.
considered it important to Substack’s future that those Nazis be present and paid.
The question I find myself asking is what views do they hold, what do they tolerate, and how long until they find a new way to promote those views or allow someone to co-opt their waveforms to broadcast their message to us.
Just to be clear: Are you saying that they’re in any way promoting or in favor of Nazis? Or just that they allow them on the platform and that’s the huge problem?
I’ve seen the first thing, and I think that’s what you’re saying, but if you are saying the second thing it’s a different conversation.
I guess ultimately, what I’m driving at, is that it is my view that Substack, like Medium, is a captured outlet. It can only ever show you a distorted version of the truth that serves its holders of power, who are ultimately aligned with the techbroligarchs that are strangling all of us.
I don’t think any of this is true. I haven’t seen any indication at all that they’re distorting anything about the blogs that are hosted there, and the very nature of them (as far as I’m aware) makes it pretty difficult for them to start rigging the algorithm to promote one instead of another, or anything like that.
I do think it’s a problem that Substack is a centralized platform. That I will 100% agree with you on. The point being that regardless of whether the current owners are up to anything, there’s the strong likelihood in the future that it will succumb to the inevitable like so many before it.
I think Ghost is probably a much better model, to be honest. On the other hand, because Substack is centralized, they were able to subsidize good journalism to get the ball rolling, and I think that was a really good thing. And, of course, it’s absolutely impossible to keep Nazis off of Ghost either. Actually, even the purge of Nazis that Substack eventually did, would be impossible on Ghost, because its decentralized nature means they would be there to stay if they chose Ghost. It’s more or less impossible to stop, generally speaking. (Which is part of why I agree with Substack’s original stance on it.)
Yeah, all good. I mean maybe I am wrong, we can talk about it.
Okay so this is actually one of the issues that made me start to say that this is deliberate disinformation, not just people saying some stuff I don’t agree with. The thing is: I don’t think this is actually true. I saw a big article that made this claim, I dug into the details, and it turned out to be one of those “Ship of Theseus” things where, the people they invited were not the Nazis, just some random people with MAGA-type ideas, and they hadn’t expressed those MAGA-type ideas until long after Substack’s dealings with them had been and gone (pre-2017 Matt Taibbi I think was one). Basically, Substack in this aspect did nothing wrong at all. But people wrapped it up like they had sought out Richard Spenser and invited him to the platform and made sure to give him some money to get things started, which is false, and it was weird that people were trying so hard to say that that had happened. What they did was took millions of dollars from VCs and then gave it to good journalists.
Who are you talking about when you say the Substack owners made sure there were Nazis? I want to dig into this a little bit more and where you heard that from.
There’s a whole separate issue of them allowing for real neo-Nazis. I’m probably in the vast minority, but I actually think that was fine. It’s the same like I think Hasan Piker can say whatever the fuck he wants, it’s the same like I think nutomic can have transphobic views if he wants. I think it is fine.
Like I say, I’m probably the minority there.
Just to be clear: Are you saying that they’re in any way promoting or in favor of Nazis? Or just that they allow them on the platform and that’s the huge problem?
I’ve seen the first thing, and I think that’s what you’re saying, but if you are saying the second thing it’s a different conversation.
I don’t think any of this is true. I haven’t seen any indication at all that they’re distorting anything about the blogs that are hosted there, and the very nature of them (as far as I’m aware) makes it pretty difficult for them to start rigging the algorithm to promote one instead of another, or anything like that.
I do think it’s a problem that Substack is a centralized platform. That I will 100% agree with you on. The point being that regardless of whether the current owners are up to anything, there’s the strong likelihood in the future that it will succumb to the inevitable like so many before it.
I think Ghost is probably a much better model, to be honest. On the other hand, because Substack is centralized, they were able to subsidize good journalism to get the ball rolling, and I think that was a really good thing. And, of course, it’s absolutely impossible to keep Nazis off of Ghost either. Actually, even the purge of Nazis that Substack eventually did, would be impossible on Ghost, because its decentralized nature means they would be there to stay if they chose Ghost. It’s more or less impossible to stop, generally speaking. (Which is part of why I agree with Substack’s original stance on it.)
Does this make sense?