El Faro hosts the interview with English subtitles.

I also think the authors that have left Substack have done something admirable, and I agree we should boost their work to encourage more people to follow suit.

I notice you don’t post. I encourage you to give it a try. Following the authors who have left Substack and posting their work in the appropriate communities would be a great introduction to sharing stories on the Fediverse.

There was significant pushback against Lemmy when I first joined based on the prominent role authoritarian apologists for the Soviet Union played in its infrastructure and federation network. I saw the underlying structure of federation between servers and the collaborative nature of the threaded discussion system as unambiguously anarchist. I joined Lemmy to contribute my own thoughts and share the stories that catch my attention to the decentralized discussion, in spite of those valid concerns. I think I made the right choice. Lemmy is not pure, but it is good enough to build upon.

In February 2025 (Pushing Back Against Big Tech), all of our admins in our capacity as moderators and posters agreed to stop sharing stories from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, and Google in response to the leadership of those platforms overt support for fascism. We encouraged our moderators to follow suit, which they’ve done with overwhelming support. This is part of a coordinated movement to de-center these platforms from the web.

Many famous people who used Twitter as their main social media have joined the movement also, and moved to alternative platforms to stop bringing traffic to the enemy. This represents a sacrifice on their part, as many do their own social media, and have to learn a new set of media tools. We support those creators who are making that sacrifice.

Substack is one of those platforms many creators have made their new home. It has shown extreme growth since the collapse of Twitter. As an admin, I’m disappointed to hear that fascist voices are also finding a home on Substack. While Substack has declined to censor them, it has not overtly endorsed those voices, and is not boosting them over their non-fascist content. As a corporation hosted in America where censoring fascists is likely to draw attention from the new regime, their stance has an uncomfortable context. I hope they eventually do better.

Assuming the shared goal of de-centering Twitter and dis-empowering its fascist CEO, blacklisting Substack is counter-productive. Substack is the home of several anarchist, left, and progressive voices. Linking to them should be encouraged. While it would be better if everyone joined the Fediverse or self-hosted instead of choosing another form of corporate social media, this is the home that many people fighting fascism have found. If they are producing anti-fascist content, it is counter-productive to our goals not to link to it.

While many remain on Substack in spite of its poor decision, many authors have shown great moral fortitude by leaving the platform in protest. Authors like Jonathan M. Katz, Molly White, Ryan Broderick, and Casey Newton have left Substack and now publish content directly from their own websites. This is widely considered professional suicide, but you can support their ethical antifascist stance by reading their content and sharing it across the Fediverse. If they can survive and thrive without a corporate sponsor, it will encourage other writers to follow their example.

We are living at a time when writing is dangerous. Rewarding authors with positive attention who take bold anti-fascist actions I think will be much more effective than trying to cut off another source of revenue for struggling writers. It is difficult enough to find content when the corporate behemoths are no longer an option. I think removing Substack in its entirety as a source at this point would make the Fediverse worse.

The Sootie Awards came and went early last month. XRLA hasn’t updated their website, but things are still happening. If you’re in the Los Angeles area, reach out and find out more. You can learn more about Extinction Rebellion on Wikipedia as well.

Not that it matters, because I didn’t make a whataboutist argument in the first place.

I agree that you didn’t make an argument.

Where a ‘liberal’ is anyone a totalitarian disagrees with, and a ‘source’ is a half-hearted general link to a Wikipedia article.

Edit: Davel has now expanded his low-effort response to be more than a Wikipedia link to Five Eyes.

Yes, this would be an excellent !abc@slrpnk.net post. You can find all of the posts on Maja here, they are categorized as [DEU] because the arrest was due to the agency of the German police, and it is due to the injustice of German courts that they are now being tortured in Hungary. Maja’s voice is most loudly amplified by the Dresden ABC, and I’ve been unable to find an ABC in Hungary; those are also factors in its localization.

If you preface the post with [DEU] and highlight Maja in the title, the post will also be easily searchable. You can copy the [DEU] and Maja search links from any other Maja post text.

That’s some really low-effort whataboutism.

The tactic is an old favorite of the Soviet Union, and Marxists/the far left in general; the strategy was originally used in the form of “And at your place, they hang black people.” The term ‘whataboutery’ itself, however, only dates back to 1974 with its use in The Troubles in Northern Ireland, whereas the term ‘whataboutism’ dates back to 1978 with reference to the Soviet Union.

In recent years, whataboutism made a comeback in Russia under Vladimir Putin’s regime (since they seemingly learned all the wrong lessons from the Cold War), and has also seen a rise in usage by Donald Trump, his support base, and the rest of the far-right.

One possible group on Reddit to reach out to are the people doing /r/50501 - they’re organizing a large protest on Feb 5th, but it looks like a continuing resistance movement. They have more visibility on platforms outside of the Fediverse, but it’s only a matter of time before those platforms begin to throttle their visibility.

If they also grow a 50501 community on the Fediverse, when the throttling inevitably happens and the news pays attention to it, both their movement and the Fediverse will get a boost. They’ll probably lose their ability to organize on Reddit, but they will win more followers and help develop a better social media system.

If they promise not to link back to Reddit, I’d like to host them here.

Now is not the time for the climate movement to say “yes you’re right, those kids really are too disruptive, shame on them.” I’m not suggesting that people publicly support tactics they don’t approve of, but perhaps just…shut up once in a while? Let a protest tactic you don’t agree with slide now and again? Skip the op-ed about how the fringe climate radicals are turning people off? Leave the armchair criticism for another day?

This needs to be a Solarpunk copypasta.

When Alfredo Cospito kneecapped Roberto Adinolfi, Adinolfi yelled “I know who sent you!” as if they were professionals and he was expecting a hit from a rival. It’s not impossible, but Hollywood has produced enough assassin movies that 1) people know how to pull off a hit and 2) when others see the hit, they think “just like the movies, this guy is a professional”

That sounds like a really nice neighborhood to live in.

Biome name ideas:

• Arroyo
• Chaparral
• Garrigue
• Maquis (pronounced mah-KEE)
• Tundra
• Taiga
• Veldt
• Oued (pronounced “Wade”) / Wadi
• Xeric is a pretty cool name

Ronald Wilson Reagan.

A reasonable criticism. Be the change you want to see in the world.

Great find.

I enjoy her writing too. Her piece on the threat of Facebook entering the Fediverse does a great job of making the case.

Congratulations!

Most of the darker skinned ones were already run over further back on the track.

The second half of Luthen’s conversation with Saw is him trying to convince Saw to lend air support to another faction so that they can make a combined hit on an Imperial power station. In rage, Saw tells off Luthen for calling his adherence to his own ideology as “petty differences” and says that he’s not risking his people for someone else. Saw has a reputation for being an extremist, and Luthen knows that his operation is well-funded and successful. Saw, however, is right to refuse the tactical alliance.

I’d like to add that the doomed faction Luthen was trying to get Saw to support were remnants of the separatist forces from the Clone Wars. The Separatists were often coded in fiction as the Confederate side of the US Civil War by emphasizing their role as the aggressor and their colonial / race-supremacist / pro-slavery politics. Names in Star Wars often are linguistic and historical references, with Gerrera being both similar to Guerrera (warrior in Castilian) and the character is directly inspired by Che Guevara, for example. The name Anto Kreegyr conjures the German word ‘Krieger’ which also means warrior. This is perhaps intentional to draw a comparison between Saw and Anto, both warriors and rebels, but with very different implied motivations. Anto is linguistically similar to Anton, a common Slavic name. The German language is unfortunately closely associated with the Kaiser during WWI and Nazis during WWII to English audiences, and Russian is similarly associated with the authoritarian Soviet Union.

The implied subtext is that the opportunist Luthen wants the anarchists to work with fascists and authoritarians in the name of defeating a greater fascist threat. Saw’s outrage at the suggestion is much more reasonable given this interpretation, as well as his eventual decision to permit their sacrifice to increase the chances of ultimate victory.