Gregory's ServerWelp, Substack Notes has set a new record for fastest time to me to leave a platform after joining.
Libertarian tech bros say no to racism challenge, difficulty: impossible
 95 comments
 @malwaretech okay so I knew this in the abstract but watching this happen in real time was *excruciating* @glyph I don’t think I’ve seen a more painful response to a simple question since president bone spurs  @malwaretech Great article about Substack’s unwillingness to moderate: https://gen.medium.com/substack-is-not-a-neutral-platform-8fc5bdf8e5f2 @frumble @malwaretech Paywalled, though. I spend a *lot* supporting journalism and especially independent journalists. Sure hate paywalls, though. @RockerDoc @malwaretech Aha, they put hit behind a loginwall in some browser situations. You can read it with this proxy: https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fgen.medium.com%2Fsubstack-is-not-a-neutral-platform-8fc5bdf8e5f2  @malwaretech @mshelton maybe he was waiting for a pre-made reply from ChatGPT to what he thought was a trick question 🤡 @ppn @malwaretech @mshelton referring to even the most basic “will you moderate racism” question as a “gotcha” tells us everything we need to know about them. @malwaretech omygosh. "You know this a very bad response to this question?" this interview is a great reason to bring back the "You had 1 job" meme. lol kids: when asked if you should allow overt racism, the response is HELL NO! also, should you punch a nazi? yes @jbowles The interviewer had me rolling. Absolutely wiped the floor with him  @jbowles @malwaretech #PunchingNazis on sight is always an act of self- and mutual defense by very definition. If they don't want that, they can just stop being #Neonazis... People however cannot choose not to be targeted by Neonazis...  @malwaretech i think that has to be among the most awkward interview responses I’ve ever seen in my life.  @malwaretech JFC what is happening to this world? @jerry American politics is what's happening. "Will you allow people to be openly racist" is a hard question to answer in the US  @malwaretech @jerry It's not a hard question to answer, it's just that nazi extremists in the US have made the consequences of answering it in the objectively right way hard, and the rest of the population, consisting mostly of non-extremist, compassionate people, haven't taken to death threats and harassment as a means of countering this pressure from the other side. @mathaetaes @malwaretech @jerry I disagree. White supremacists are used to the public answer being one thing but the actual implementation being different. My only take is that he wants to say yes but doesn't want to be called out publicly for it by antiracists. @malwaretech @jerry it shouldn't be, but there are too many racist selfish assholes in this country. @malwaretech @jerry they're screwed 7ntil they scrap the constitution and start again from scratch #unpopularOpinion @BibbleCo @malwaretech @jerry The constitution isn't the problem, changing a piece of paper won't disrupt the entrenchment of white supremacist good ol boy networks. @ostrich @malwaretech @jerry Agreed; but it would (assuming the replacement were more rational) remove the obstacles to doing so. @BibbleCo @malwaretech @jerry I don't think it'd go down the way you think it would. Text alone does not make a nation; the text is a representation of consensus. Attempting to remake the text, even with consensus, leads to protracted rebellion. The 13th and 14th Amendments and the Jim Crow era that followed them are evidence of that. @BibbleCo @malwaretech @jerry Any alteration to the constitution separate from a comprehensive strategy for systematic elimination of systems of white supremacy is the dog not knowing what to do after catching the mail truck. Sociopathy, indiffence and hedonism. That's what's been on sale for the last few decades. Weaponization of the US constitution to enable all this intolerance.  @demi7en @malwaretech @jerry I didn’t realize til now that one can indeed weaponize something by throwing it in a wood chipper. It's the good intentions that are in the wood chipper. The "letter" has been weaponized to normalize hate speech and intolerance.  @jerry @malwaretech this is about as bad as just openly soliciting the worst people to come join your brand new platform. He's acting like this is a problem that has never been dealt with before. @threatresearch @malwaretech the cynical part of me thinks it’s strategic awfulness intended to controversy and engagement @malwaretech may I recommend Ghost * Open source  @jjcelery @malwaretech seconding the recommendation of ghost! Also the more fediversers (mastodonians?) we get on there, the quicker they'll do activitypub integration @malwaretech @jjcelery @shauna Another vote for ghost 👻 and #federati is definitely great @malwaretech yep. I turned off my blog there TODAY over the inability to NOT PAY transphobes to post there. Then I see the racist stuff now and I'm like, yeah, I'm on ghost now. @philip_cardella @malwaretech You could also, you know, just write a real blog, rather than some newsletter.  @malwaretech "we are building a new thing", yeah, it's not so new, and there are reasons platforms trying to do that don't stay happy "we can talk about everything" places, for too long. Another gang ready to fast track the moderation learning curve. @malwaretech That is fascinating. They are publishers but do not want to engage in any editing. Sometimes I have difficulty reading social cues in a conversation but this was so bleeding obvious that the tech bro who couldn’t say “no” must be the densest thing on the planet. The military is going to be using him for new armour penetrating rounds, he’s that dense. Or he’s a racist and he loves racism and sweet money from racist customers and racist backers. @malwaretech lol This interviewer is fantastic. "You know this is a very bad response to this question, right?" 🤣  @ADHDefy @malwaretech I could take this as an opportunity to say what I think about tiktok, but I'll just say that I would really like to know what he said in response. There is *no excuse* in the Year 2023 for the CEO of any social media company to have such bad answers to a core function in social media: moderation and safety. If a team of Business School students pitched a social media business with such answers + policy, they would get a failing grade. @malwaretech   @malwaretech Wow, the awkward pauses, the repeated attempts to restart a rehearsed answer, the outright refusal to engage a question about social impact as though it were merely a PR trap… That whole exchange is just a pitch perfect encapsulation of the relationship between mediatech corporate leadership and the people who stand to lose the most over what happens on their platforms. @malwaretech Richard Hanania is all-in on it. In a way it's good that we've so easily determined the eigenracist platform.  @malwaretech So I guess Elon was right to consider Substack Notes to be a Twitter competitor after all.  @malwaretech This motherfucker goes on for freedom of speech and freedom of the press, but when brown or other "undesired" folk (and the same folk who happen to be journalists) get in some way removed out of the country to some other country where that kind of freedom of speech and relationships toward journalists isn't like Murrica's because extremists' "not extreme" behaviour got so uncomfortably, uncontrollably bad due to bad moderation... Free speech for me, but not for thee! @malwaretech The ironic part is that if they had the courage to take a stand and say "racists not allowed", then it would actually be a product differentiator between their lame service and Twitter. @malwaretech @hacks4pancakes “we’re building something new” no, you’re building a racist micro blogging platform and we already have Twitter. And Truth Social. And Gab…  @MrWhiskers it’s a pity that “free speech” has just become code for “I want zero consequences for being racist or homophobic publicly” @malwaretech I'm going to be perfectly honest here: deciding whether or not to allow hate speech on your platform is a decision that should be made *before* going live and I'm pretty sure that decision was made by Substack.  @malwaretech  @malwaretech the only truly honest moment in his answer is when he admitted they “hadn’t worked it out”. It’s clear that he’s never given a moment of thought about potential harm, and he doesn’t plan to. @malwaretech Yup. I'm still trying to decide what to do about various newsletters that are running on Substack's platform.  @malwaretech So they’ve started up a platform without previously working out how to handle this issue? Really?  @malwaretech it's worth watching the whole exchange, which is about twice that long. It's pathetic. @malwaretech I wish we could have a platform that didn't require moderation. However history keeps repeating itself. @malwaretech I have a top 10/top 20 substack for the climate category. This shit is why I won’t use notes and why I want to leave substack entirely. @malwaretech Was this the Nilay Patel interview? Why does anyone trust these Libertarian brodudes, they're nothing but selfish, arrogant manbabies? @malwaretech It would have looked better if he just came out and said "look, we're not going to moderate that stuff at all" The fumbling of this kind of question THIS HARD in an interview you had to know shit like this would come up is basically so emblematic of the culture lol   @malwaretech Wow, just forking gobsmackingly Wow. Like, I can’t believe this guy just has so little scruples about this kind of thing. And Nilay gives him a couple chances to rephrase and/or fix the mess, and he just keeps on digging. I always liked Nilay (over in The Verge) but now I think he’s absolute champ for asking an easy question, getting a hard answer, and flat out refusing to back down on pursuing what is actually being said. Bravo.    @malwaretech Reminds me of that old quote. What do you get when 10 normal people sit down with 1 Nazi? 11 nazis. @malwaretech it was stunning to see him deflect to a simple and easy question. His silence spoke volumes @malwaretech dude really wanted to act like moderation is a high minded concept up in the clouds instead of a series of explicit decisions @malwaretech It’s depressing how bigots have become a market demographic, and a constituency. Can’t risk alienating the racists. Too powerful to get on their bad side, apparently. |
@malwaretech The whole episode has a bunch of additional WTF moments. "Like do you check the finances of who you invest in?" It wasn't a 3 letter answer. LMAO