This is of a piece with "Mamdani isn't left wing enough for me" / "AOC supports genocide" / "Bernie is a Zionist" kind of glib one-liner reasons why left-wing people need to stop supporting left-wing things, because they're not really virtuous enough, and so we need to abandon them in pursuit of some kind of imaginary virtue solution instead of just having unity.

TL;DR: They took some funding from Marc Andreessen long ago, they were willing to give blogs to everyone including Nazis (bc free speech) and the whole internet yelled at them, so they caved and removed the Nazis. IDK how this particular push notification happened, but I would bet that the blog will be removed. They are not wholly ideologically pure, I think Richard Spenser is the worst person they willingly host and he's pretty bad, but they don't allow Nazis anymore specifically because of the hue and cry it raised up the first time.

More conversation about it here, I don't have the patience right now to write up a full explanation. TL;DR someone who's panicked at you about the Substack Nazi problem is listening to something that's mostly designed to hurt a mostly left-wing platform.

[–] rainwall@piefed.social 7 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (1 children)

Your link is to your older comments, and claims they "kicked out the nazis" they had on their platform. So the nazis are all gone, huh?

Their systems just pushed a very racist notification from the nazis currently on their platform to users. The article also points out that one of the other nazis accounts is being pushed algorithmically to users via substacks "rising" tab, with the nazi account currently at number 46. That's seperate from their "oops, all nazis" notifications issue. How is substack not a nazi platform when its still promoting and platforming nazis?

Also, they just took more funding from Marc Andeerssen in their most recent $100 million funding round 13 days ago, so your TL;DR is also all fucked up.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au -2 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Are you under the impression that a person at Substack manually reviews every notification about every newsletter that gets sent out? It would be surprising to me if that was how it worked.

The URL has a "1" at the end, which usually means someone lost their account the first time and is now making a new one. I can't really make sense of how old the "1" version of the account is or if there used to be one without it. The blog hasn't been deleted yet, which sure isn't great, but I'm fairly sure that the people at Substack didn't make this blog or deliberately take pains to make sure it exists in any way.

I mean, you do understand that when I get a gmail notification about herbal Viagra, that doesn't mean Google has gone into the herbal supplements business, right? And in general how platforms generally work? As I understand it (and tell me if I'm wrong), their currently policy is to ban Nazis and this one should be gone soon. Maybe I'm wrong, I'll check back in a couple days and see what happened with it.

Honestly, it makes infinitely more sense to think that this is a fuck-up that is being spun to sound like a deliberate decision by internet trolls, than to think that Substack has decided to start sending literal Nazi propaganda to their users on purpose.

Also, they just took more funding from Marc Andeerssen in their most recent $100 million funding round 13 days ago, so your TL;DR is also all fucked up.

I mean, not from him personally, any more than they did from Kim Kardashian or Skims, the apparel company. I do agree that lots of VC money flooding in is a significant problem, just because it's usually (almost always) a corrupting influence in the long run. That doesn't mean that "Substack has a Nazi problem" all of a sudden becomes validated.

[–] rainwall@piefed.social 6 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (1 children)

Comparing a platform internal push alert system with a random spam email is asinine. This was the companies own system pushing nazi content they host to users, all with their own tools.

I have no idea what youre on about with the URL, but i absolutely accept that their notification system fucked up and mass spammed users with literal Nazi content they actively host on their platform. Machines break, computers are no exception.

The "actively hosting Nazi content" is the issue. Not hosting Nazis is actually a stunningly good way to prevent your internal tooling from spamming customers with Nazi shit. Its nearly flawless. The fact that Substack does not employ it is the issue.

Do check in and see if the two listed Nazi stacks get deleted. It would be a reasonable thing for Substack to do if they don't want Nazis on their platform. If they don't do it, I would expect that both of us will have our answer of what they want to host.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au -1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Are you under the impression that someone at Substack manually reviews every notification that goes out, for every user-generated post / blog? I feel like you failed to grasp the essential point I was making. Yes, comparing it to "Google is sending me push notifications about herbal supplements!" is precisely the analogy I'm intending to make. You are aware that those email notifications are also push notifications, sent to you by Google, based on user-generated content, right?

I have no idea what youre on about with the URL

Seems pretty straightforward to me. Is there a better way I can explain it to you, do you have any questions about the explanation? What part doesn't make sense?

I have no idea if Substack is planning to take this blog down (actually I kind of doubt it, now looking into it more). But it seems like you're failing to grasp really incredibly simple things that I'm saying, which makes me kind of not trust your overall judgement about what the far more complex issue of what the right overall judgement and opinion to hold towards Substack is.

[–] rainwall@piefed.social 3 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (1 children)

Are you even reading the comment you're replying to? It doesn't seem like it.

Gmail doesnt "push notifications" for anything besides receiving email. Recieving a spam messsage, i.e an interaction with a federated service that anyone can run, is not at all the same as a company's app, that they full control, pushing a notification, that they fully control, from content on their site, that they full control. Comparing that to Gmail, which is in this case would be a neutral party to the content of the push notification, is not the same.

I very clearly pointed out that i expect the notification came from a computer fucking up. You should re-read the comment to make sure you understand it. I also made it very clear that if you have nazi shit on your platform, your computers may fuck up and push that that Nazi shit out to people. The best way to combat that is not having Nazi shit.

Either way, it's good to see you accepting that "Substack welcomes Nazis" is accurate now. Maybe it wasn't in 2023, the last time they made headlines for paying Nazis to post on their platform, but it is now. I expect with the very recent 100 million cash influx from far right Trump supporters, that isn't going to change.

Maybe stop carrying so much water for a site that is clearly absolutely cool with Nazis?

[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au -1 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

from content on their site, that they full control

They don't. Or, rather, to exactly the degree that Google "controls" the mail servers that forwarded the spam email to you.

Anyway, you seem to be grasping the point I was making now, so great. Anyway, to me, the bottom line is: It's better to let people talk. I federated with Hexbear and lemmy.ml, too (or did, back when I had a server of my own, sniff), for exactly the same reason. It's not Substack's fault that there are Nazis in the world, and in this particular case and framing, I don't think moving them to some other segregated platform does anyone any good. I actually think it helps the Nazis a lot to separate them from the main flow of information exchange. I realize I'm in the minority in thinking all of this.

The best way to combat that is not having Nazi shit.

Banning Nazi shit, especially if you are now taking a ton of money from standard silicon valley VCs, is the first step towards banning all "antisemitic" shit. It's just a hop, skip, and a jump away. I think I actually had this exact conversation specifically about Substack with someone, at great length, a few years ago, and they were pointing to Germany as an example of how it should work (banning Nazi shit), and I pointed out that the same laws could easily be used against pro-Palestinians, and they all told me I was crazy.

AND OH, LOOK WHAT HAPPENED IN GERMANY

We're probably not going to see eye to eye on it. Whatever. Anyway: I'm not in favor of Nazis. I'm in favor of left-wing platforms. I'm noticing that you are not taking the standpoint "We need to get the Nazis off Substack, because it's a good thing, but the Nazis are horrifying." That would actually be totally reasonable to me even though it's not my opinion. You're taking the standpoint "Fuck Substack all the homies hate Substack," apparently, which I have a problem with. Or that seems to be your stance. Am I wrong? Maybe so, if so tell me.

I don't like policing people's speech, even when literal Nazis are involved. I'm probably in the minority on that. But I just don't like all the disingenuous ways of attacking Substack that all seem to boil down to some pretty dishonest framings... everything you're saying now, I think is more or less reasonable, we just don't agree on it. As long as you're not saying "SUBSTACK IS PROMOTING NAZI BLOGS ON PURPOSE BECAUSE THEY'RE NAZIS," as some people seem to be, I think we good.

[–] rainwall@piefed.social 3 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

Your gmail notification point doesn't track, but its the most minimal point so i'll drop it.

I dont think Substack is specially just a Nazi platform. I think they are Capitalists that will use any kind of speech to make money. While bootstrapping, they found a niche in leftist independent journalism. Now, they view far right hate as profitable, both directly with Nazi commentors and being paid large sums to enshittify the platform from far right figures.

They dont care about racism or hate because they are rich and it makes them money. That does make them bad people, no matter how many leftists they also profit from.

I absolutely expect they will follow a Twitter style path from here on out, with or without Musk at the helm. Once you let the Nazi's into the bar, they take over by driving everyone else out. Substack has said "come on in!" so they will. Some leftist will remain for a while, but eventually the Nazis will be all that's left.

I expect you make some kind of living off Substack? Maybe look into Ghost as an option. They take way, way less money even when fully hosted.

load more comments (15 replies)

load more comments (21 replies)