Jesse Singal has an excellent piece, with Substack’s full letter to Platformer along with comments from Casey Newton to Jesse, that makes it pretty clear Platformer’s article smelled funny for a reason:
Ah yes, Casey Newton, the millennial neckbeard with the eminently punchable face. May the words of free speech absolutism eternally torment him until he sees the error of his ways and changes course or devolves into a blob of leftist gibberish. And he’s halfway to the latter.
I heard this beehiiv site is really giving substack a run for it's money. I mean it will censor you without question and has jonathan katz. Maybe even kabbas. I mean you guys are great and all but won't think less of me if I just fire up an account at ol beehiiv there for curiosity?
Also i found it particularly satisfying that Katz did a subscriber pitch on substack as his last action on substack.
I wish someone would do a semi spoof of that bigshot "historian" who shows up all the time here at substack. It should be called Richard Cocks Heatherton and there are all kinds of ways to write it. More over the top versions of her scoldy takes, or diametrically opposed, or Dick Cocks could be like twice the credentialist who lives twice as well. Something in the vein of Taibbi's old Exile to take some air out of these fucker's tires.
"As a result, the platform has been embraced by fringe thinkers, who have built large businesses while promoting anti-vaccine pseudo-science, Covid conspiracy theories and other material that is generally restricted on mainstream social networks."
Yeah, see though, they are not going to stop at "nazi's". Platformer is doing the work of actual fascists here.
So supposedly Substack is going to remove Nazi content but not Neo-Nazi content. Aren’t all the Nazis in their mid to late nineties by this point? Am I supposed to believe that they have Substack newsletters? I mean Platformer claims Substack removed publications that promote Nazi ideology but that they won’t remove Neo-Nazis, but don’t Neo-Nazis promote Nazi ideology? Where is the line between explicitly Nazi and Neo-Nazi? Platformer’s interpretation of the letter doesn’t seem to be in keeping with a simple reading of the letter.
Also it’s disingenuous to claim that there isn’t a way to report death threats etc just because there isn’t an easy “snitch to Substack” button. There are a myriad of ways to get ahold of Substack if you have concerns, clearly, since Platformer was able to make their concerns heard.
Hmph. Well, having been one of those gatekeeping moderators years ago at a place that allowed far more free speech that Facebook or XTwitter, I must say that sometimes there really are folks whose presence simply cannot be tolerated, even by free speech absolutists.
Like people coming in and saying "KILL, KILL, KILL!" or "It's all the fault of the Jews!" or, you get the idea.
The devil always resides in the details, so without them I can't really tell what is going on. I don't feel like Substack is just going to cave to these shitlibs, but we still have to remember Ben Franklin's advice and remain vigilant.
Hmm, let us hope it isn't an alarm bell event that said, I'm still gonna back my stuff up on Locals & Ream and urge folks to follow me on both platforms.
Jesse Singal has an excellent piece, with Substack’s full letter to Platformer along with comments from Casey Newton to Jesse, that makes it pretty clear Platformer’s article smelled funny for a reason:
It’s bullshit. Knew it.
Link:
https://open.substack.com/pub/jessesingal/p/platformers-reporting-on-substacks?r=ex433&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
Ah yes, Casey Newton, the millennial neckbeard with the eminently punchable face. May the words of free speech absolutism eternally torment him until he sees the error of his ways and changes course or devolves into a blob of leftist gibberish. And he’s halfway to the latter.
I heard this beehiiv site is really giving substack a run for it's money. I mean it will censor you without question and has jonathan katz. Maybe even kabbas. I mean you guys are great and all but won't think less of me if I just fire up an account at ol beehiiv there for curiosity?
Also i found it particularly satisfying that Katz did a subscriber pitch on substack as his last action on substack.
Whenever they demand you yield an inch, push forward a foot.
🎵My little armalite🎵
I wish someone would do a semi spoof of that bigshot "historian" who shows up all the time here at substack. It should be called Richard Cocks Heatherton and there are all kinds of ways to write it. More over the top versions of her scoldy takes, or diametrically opposed, or Dick Cocks could be like twice the credentialist who lives twice as well. Something in the vein of Taibbi's old Exile to take some air out of these fucker's tires.
There are only two sexes ... male and female. Men cannot become women
This is speech that will be banned as Nazi next
You know that they had to go digging for those 6 people. Because they've never showed up on anyone's feed.
"As a result, the platform has been embraced by fringe thinkers, who have built large businesses while promoting anti-vaccine pseudo-science, Covid conspiracy theories and other material that is generally restricted on mainstream social networks."
Yeah, see though, they are not going to stop at "nazi's". Platformer is doing the work of actual fascists here.
So supposedly Substack is going to remove Nazi content but not Neo-Nazi content. Aren’t all the Nazis in their mid to late nineties by this point? Am I supposed to believe that they have Substack newsletters? I mean Platformer claims Substack removed publications that promote Nazi ideology but that they won’t remove Neo-Nazis, but don’t Neo-Nazis promote Nazi ideology? Where is the line between explicitly Nazi and Neo-Nazi? Platformer’s interpretation of the letter doesn’t seem to be in keeping with a simple reading of the letter.
Also it’s disingenuous to claim that there isn’t a way to report death threats etc just because there isn’t an easy “snitch to Substack” button. There are a myriad of ways to get ahold of Substack if you have concerns, clearly, since Platformer was able to make their concerns heard.
This says they removed 100 paid subscribers, which is about $1000/year (of which Substack only gets 10%)
https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/8/24030756/substack-nazi-newsletter-content-moderation
“According to the letter, none of the publications removed had paid subscriptions enabled and accounted for “about 100 active readers in total.””
Hope the twitter cops are proud! They stopped less than $1000 annually from flowing! Wow! What a joke.
Hmph. Well, having been one of those gatekeeping moderators years ago at a place that allowed far more free speech that Facebook or XTwitter, I must say that sometimes there really are folks whose presence simply cannot be tolerated, even by free speech absolutists.
Like people coming in and saying "KILL, KILL, KILL!" or "It's all the fault of the Jews!" or, you get the idea.
The devil always resides in the details, so without them I can't really tell what is going on. I don't feel like Substack is just going to cave to these shitlibs, but we still have to remember Ben Franklin's advice and remain vigilant.
Appreciate your careful analysis. Seems they're trying to fool and mislead the pro-censorship crowd into complacency. Just a thought!
Hmm, let us hope it isn't an alarm bell event that said, I'm still gonna back my stuff up on Locals & Ream and urge folks to follow me on both platforms.
you might want to tweak the title of this post, I almost missed it. Maybe add "recent news about censorship on substack" or something like that.
Good post though, food for thought.