Platformer announces it's leaving Substack
platformer.news
platformer.news
Having read many thousands of Substack articles, I’ve seen recommended content from a wide swath of the political spectrum from many countries but never anything Nazi related.
Given the history of Platformer, it's likely they are trying to stir up and monetize outrage. It’s also worth pointing out that Casey is currently working for the NYT as host on the Hard Fork podcast. With the on-going collaboration, this attack on Substack seems incredibly disingenuous and hypocritical.
1) https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/history/articles/new-york...
2) https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/israeli-envoy-b...
> It is our hope that Substack will reverse course and remove all pro-Nazi material under its existing anti-hate policies. If it chooses not to, we will plan to leave the platform.
tldr: They're trying to pressure SubStack into changing their tune on content moderation, and are meeting them today. Suspect this is just a play to push leadership via PR.
[1] The bartender: "You didn’t see his vest but it was all nazi shit. Iron crosses and stuff. You get to recognize them... You have to nip it in the bud immediately. These guys come in and it’s always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don’t want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after awhile they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too. And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh shit, this is a Nazi bar now. And it’s too late because they’re entrenched and if you try to kick them out, they cause a PROBLEM. So you have to shut them down." https://werd.io/2023/leaving-the-nazi-bar
It's not that nazi ideas can't be allowed to exist (you don't hear me calling for 4chan to not exist because of /pol/ for example), but declining to help monetize them is also free speech.
* https://radleybalko.substack.com/p/some-thoughts-on-the-subs...
How can you possibly know that, if you prevent the people in question from speaking? Or are you extrapolating the behavior of all members of a group from that of a potentially non-representative sample?
Anyway, even if someone engages in bad faith, it can still be valuable to let them demonstrate that bad faith to the world. Not in every community or platform, necessarily, but somewhere. (Substack, unlike most social media, has no algorithmic feed; you see content only from authors you choose to visit or follow. So you won't be bothered by bigots there unless you choose to seek them out.)
> discrimination based on race, gender, and sexuality, > hate speech
These terms are often used with many different meanings, can you define them as you are using them here?
I think we've heard enough from them. The talking points are tired, the joke is always the same joke. There's nothing to learn here. And besides that, back when it was pretty normal not to indulge this offensive clown show, we had no issue discussing issues of hate speech without allowing it to proliferate. Imagine that.
> These terms are often used with many different meanings, can you define them as you are using them here?
This is exactly what I mean by bad faith. Come on, man. Every single time an advocate for platforming hate speech gets into a debate, they immediately run to hide in a rhetorical quagmire, hoping someone will follow them into it. Find a bigger idiot, I don't play those games.
Guess there is nothing to say about other 7000 US billionaires than some autist workaholic on drugs.