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Well, the problem with your second point ("free speech") is that it tends to attract and retain a specific kind of writers: those who aren't accepted anywhere e
by bambax 5y ago
Well, the problem with your second point ("free speech") is that it tends to attract and retain a specific kind of writers: those who aren't accepted anywhere else.
Substack already tends to specialize on hyper-conservative and anti-woke ramblings; I'm curious to see how this will play out in the long term.
And I also think that the very model of Substack (subscribe to a specific writer, instead of a newspaper that typically bundles many different voices) also attracts readers that are ideological/obsessive.
That's a feedback loop that could end not well.
- mst 5y ago
- bambax 5y agoI can't edit the above comment anymore, but I would like to add this: my point isn't really about Substack specifically; it's about the fact that it's difficult (impossible?) to be "content neutral", and pretending otherwise is a fallacy. (And how is porn not speech? If you ban porn then you're not defending free speech in any meaningful manner.)
- native_samples 5y agoThis can be defended in two ways: 1. Practical. Porn is banned because Stripe doesn't allow payment for porn. In turn Stripe doesn't allow that because the chargeback rate on such payments is very high, supposedly due to the number of people who buy porn because they want it and then get caught by their spouses and claim their card must have been stolen. At any rate, a blogging/newsletter platform is not exactly optimized for porn anyway. The people who want to buy and sell that are better served by other platforms. 2. Theoretical. Porn is not "speech" because speech encodes ideas or viewpoints. The reason freedom of speech is important is because ideas and viewpoints are important, as it's only through the competition of ideas that progress occurs. Defending free speech takes a lot of work, but can be justified by the benefits. Defending porn would take even more work, but wouldn't yield the same social benefits.
- Lascaille 5y ago>Substack already tends to specialize on hyper-conservative and anti-woke ramblings; I'm curious to see how this will play out in the long term. Probably very well, for the same reason that Joe Rogan's podcast is the most listened to podcast in the US: those views are widely accepted by about 50% of the population. Despite your pejorative labelling you aren't actually finding extreme minority viewpoints on substack, you're finding modern-day mainstream conservative perspectives. The readership potential is huge.
- bambax 5y agoWell, to mention just one example, "The Abbey of Misrule" (https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com) pushes antivaxx rhetoric. I don't know if that represents "50% of the population" (let's hope not) but it's abhorrent in any case.
- Lascaille 5y agoI read all of the articles that are available for free by that author and didn't see anything out of the ordinary. Well within the overton window. Y'all really think that moderate conservative writing - it didn't stray in terms of emotion into what I would consider rhetoric - is abhorrent? Wow. That's some thick-walled bubble you're in.
- Gareth321 5y agoI don't find any of this offensive or extreme. Easily within the mainstream conservative spread. I think you need to broaden your news sources.
- inopinatus 5y agoSubstack links go to the bottom of the reading pile for exactly this reason. It’s a dumpster fire of extremist ranting, and I don’t have the time or energy to sift it. I can’t imagine ever wanting to share a platform with their authors.