Fediverse

I've seen people defend Substack saying it's not so bad, or the bad is a necessary evil to protect free speech.

I'm gonna say it: fuck free speech, I like myself some censorship. I sincerely believe some things are too harmful to be allowed to openly proliferate, that there's often a feasible path to reaching that conclusion, and it's not that difficult.

We mustn't avoid this because "it harms free speech." Nazis love that argument, and they're a threat to much more than just free speech. They shouldn't get to block attempts at censoring them, and they specially shouldn't get support to do so, because they're one of the reasons it's necessary in the first place.

"But not every case is clear-cut like Nazis," people will say, "you shouldn't support censorship, since it can be used for evil. Innocent ideas always get censored, too." To which I'll reply, "tell me more about those innocent ideas." When that happens, tell me. I'll reach out to people in charge, spread the news, get mad, help you in any way I can to fix it. We'll do it together. Fucking tell me more.

But lo and behold, many innocent ideas turn out to be dog-whistles or worse, it's always the same shit.

I don't care if it's Substack, or Ghost, or Twitter, or Reddit, or whatever. It's one thing to platform harmful views unaware. I get it, moderation is hard. Once aware, though, if your response is "but free speech," fuck off. It is moral and correct to censor Nazis. Same for people saying immigrants will eat your pets, or that gays want to sexualize children, change their genders, and harm women. Fuck that.

Platforms defining themselves on free speech is a red flag. "We're popular with both extremes" isn't a defense, it's a self-report that you're just a mercenary and like it that way—both sides being users means double the revenue.

Substack may not be Nazi-central, but it's surely a product of broligarchy.

Suppose it makes sense to use a cybertruck as the hero photo then

A lot of us know by now that Substack has a Nazi problem.

What on Earth? They hosted like three Nazis, which is part of the overall commitment to letting people talk which leads them to host a ton of really good people. And then, when everyone on the internet yelled at them for it, raising a pretty reasonable counterpoint, they kicked the Nazis off. That all happened over a year ago.

It not only profits from fascist voices, it actively promotes their work and recruits them

I read the citation for this statement. What it says is very different from actively promoting the work of fascists and recruiting them. There is a whole fascinating conversation to be had about why some high-profile lefty journalists like Taibbi and Greenwald all of a sudden became Nazis, but it's very misleading to assign 100% of the blame in this way to Substack, purely because they were working with those people before it really became completely clear to everyone that they for whatever bizarre reason had become Nazis. It's a lot more complex situation that is being summarized in this extremely glib spin-soaked fashion.

And it's funded by Silicon Valley anti-democracy billionaires like Marc Andreesen

Okay, fair enough. This is pretty interesting and I hadn't known it.

On the other hand, Substack also hosts Sy Hersh, Tim Snyder, Salman Rushdie, and God knows who else. If they were planning to slant their coverage based on the fact that Andreesen's company gave them $15 million in 2019 (which they then quickly turned around and gave big chunks of to working journalists), you'd think they would be making some kind of effort to downplay the leftist voices which they are currently hosting, outnumbering the "problematic" voices which might be there but which I have literally never run across there.

Elon Musk also, apparently, tried to buy Substack in 2023, and they told him to fuck off.

This whole article reads like a bad-faith hit piece aimed at one of the organizations that actually is trying to provide a space for good journalism including left-wing authors, and making sure that it's sustainable and they can get paid. By trumping up some various things into much bigger deals than they need to be.

I wonder who would be interested in ginning up big bad-faith hit jobs against good news outlets, encouraging people on the left to savage and abandon them for various little misdemeanors until the only news outlets left are either bought and purchased by open fascists, or too small and scattered to make a difference?

Can a reader user on Ghost follow multiple Ghost accounts? I haven't used Substack but my understanding is that it is similar to Patreon and OF in that I can subscribe to multiple accounts and have them show up in a central feed. Can I do this as a subscriber on Ghost? And do multiple servers federate to allow for that?

The attraction of substack for at least some writers is that substack actually pays their more popular or prestigious writers. I don't know how many or whether there is a published list of them, but at least a few of them are getting paid rather well (6 figures/year or maybe more). If Substack is recruiting and paying Nazis, then that is of interest and concern. Most writers there aren't getting paid by substack, though they may have readers who buy subscriptions. That is open to pretty much everyone and the fanfiction saying "don't like, don't read" works for me here. Saying Ghost is a more attractive platform because it has more censorship is kind of a head scratcher. And calling Taibbi and Greenwald Nazis is ridiculous. Disliking the Democrats doesn't make someone into a Nazi.

That said, I don't personally like substack very much and am always glad to hear about alternatives.

Substack has had a Nazi problem since its inception. At first, there was a liberal backlash, but they all eventually went there anyway.

Has Ghost refused to host "Nazi" publications?

How do readers access Ghost? I got sucked into a trial membership but I don't intend to publish, just read, like I can do on substack. I don't want to be on the problematic platform but can't figure out how to gradually use Ghost instead, especially since hardly anyone's over there yet.

I think i only follow Robert Evans. Have any ghost recs?

Someone needs to tell Carole Cadwallader to move her resistance headquarters out of the Nazi bar. There are a lot of people who’d subscribe to her journalism if it didn’t also involve funding the enemy.

Newsletters? Google killed RSS so we could have newsletters?

Is there no FOSS alternative we can promote?