Good morning. Hello. How are you? #1085
Far more time spent on the Substack conundrum than I would like.
Good morning, friend. Hello. How are you? Greetings from North Carolina, the state that has made the 10th most “racial progress,” according to this new study from acclaimed racial experts WalletHub. The temperature is 37°F. The NAS is functioning well, the network is up and running, though perhaps not in the best of health. We are listening to someone named LaFrange do a fairly pleasant cover of Phantom Planet’s “California Here We Come,” theme song to the OC, which, of course, strongly alludes to Al Jolson’s “California.” Paradoxically, however, the cover is titled “California,” not “California Here I Come” which raises all sorts of questions. We have 29 hours left in the 2023 “To Investigate” playlist. Really hope I can clear that out this week.
Jane is off from school today. She is doing DuoLingo on her phone in the other room.
(As an aside, since I was discussing this with a friend yesterday, DuoLingo is remarkably kid safe and all of the features you might find problematic for kids, like leagues and rankings and coins and whatnot, are removed from the kids version, which also has no ads. Recommended.)
There is a misty fog sitting over the pond and it is quite pretty. Here let’s take a picture of it.
In taking that photo, I have noticed that it is raining slightly. Drizzling.
Speaking of drizzling, Uber bought Drizly for more than a billion dollars during the pandemic and they just shut it down. Commented my friend Matt about the situation: “ZIRP was a hell of a drug.”
Hrm and with that it seems we have taken a tech turn, so okay, then, let’s get through a few tech items from my topic list today:
Substack. They really are the worst. If you have not been following events, Substack lets Nazis on the platform. And I don’t mean this in a sort of not-quite-fair, they’re-trying-but-can’t-get-their-act-together kind of way. I mean this in the their-CEO-literally-said-Nazis-are-fine kind of way. They do, of course, have an acceptable use policy, that says you can’t do certain things that are inherent to Nazism, like, you know, call for the death of a group of people or something. But I guess the logic is if you say “I am a Nazi,” that’s fine. But if you say “I am a Nazi and therefore I think all the Jews should be killed” that’s not. This is a weird-ass distinction, of course, because, that is literally what a Nazi is. And if it weren’t such a stupid, horrific situation, there would be all sorts of academically interesting linguistic questions, like: is it okay to say “I am a Nazi and therefore I believe in all the things you’d assume Nazis believe?” Is it okay to say “I am a Nazi and therefore, yeah, do those bad things Nazis want?” Like… How explicit does it have to be? What is a “call for violence?” If you say “I support all the geneocides” is that a “call” for violence? Blah blah blah the answers to these questions are easy for me. Ban ‘em all. But Hamish, the CEO, thinks this is some sort of fascinating, compelling academic area for inquiry I guess.
Anyway, at the beginning Substack was just infrastructure, so you could kind of ignore the Nazis like you could ignore them at your email provider or hosting company. Except I would never ignore Nazis at my hosting company or email provider cuz Nazis are the worst. But it’s hard to actually know who their clients are. So whatever. Substack is basically rubbing it in your face with ill-conceived editorials saying, like I said, “yeah sure we’ll host Nazis.”
But now Hamish and Substack have decided they want to be Twitter, and so there are all these social features and a Twitter clone where they recommend different newsletters to different people and whatnot. So it’s a lot more like being on Facebook with Nazis than a hosting company Because there are editorial features now. And they do not seem to be algorithmic. Which seems to be a violation of Section 230 but what do I know, and what does Ari, our legal counsel at Tumblr know, who always made it clear that this stuff needed to be algorithmic to not run afoul of 230. But no one seems to care, that ship has sailed, and I have digressed.
One other wrinkle I would say is that Substack does not have ads. Hamish has been very vocal saying ads are the root of all evil. He has always been laughably wrong, but now at least we have convenient evidence! So, thanks for that, I guess. But the point I make with this is that unlike other social platforms, where your mere presence makes money for the platform, that is not the case with Substack. I undeniably cost Substack money. The only way Substack makes money is by taking a cut of paid subscriptions. And I do not — and will not ever — have paid subscriptions on Substack.
So for a long time that has been my position: I do not support Substack and indeed I am actively against their position. But I am a leech, I do nothing but bleed money from them, and I am okay with this situation. I am a parasite trying to bring them down.
Two recent developments:
Platformer, a giant tech newsletter, is leaving Substack after a fairly evil and misleading conversation with Substack wherein Substack operated in bad faith, intentionally missed the point, and were general doofuses. Platformer’s logic is fairly sound. They live off of paid subscriptions, so moving is both more profitable for them (the alternative for them, Ghost, is way more complex but ultimately cheaper) and more morally necessary. This didn’t change a lot for me, but it made me even more annoyed with Substack’s facile logic.
The other thing that occurred to me is that there is evidence of that facile logic staring us in the face: In all of this nifty new recommendation architecture that Substack is building, none of it promotes Nazi content. Like… Substack knows the Nazis are bad, and is shadowbanning them and has already built a ton of infrastructure to keep them over in their little dark corner of Substack. Which is, of course, the exact opposite of their “sunlight is the best disinfectant” metaphor for free speech — this is wrong but whatever. Topic for another day. The point here is that it is obvious to even Substack that sunlight on these blogs is not a good idea.
Ridiculous.
Anyway (good word), after realizing that, I dislike them even more.
(Also, I’ve always sort of known they were doofuses. Back at the beginning, I had a call with Hamish where he encouraged me to start a Substack. Someone had recommended me to him and he told me all about how great they were. I demurred, because I was already aware even then I no longer wanted to write “think pieces” about “important topics” on the “internet.” And hilariously once I did start a Substack, this one, about nothing, Hamish was very very uninterested since it was not filled with Silicon Valley bullshit. Or maybe cuz I wasn’t big enough. Or something. But anyway, I knew he was dumb because GMHHAY is the greatest thing on the internet, obviously).
So I guess now I am at a “crossroads,” like Indonesia in the Economist on the Simpsons. Is my “parasite” logic still solid? I think so. But man, I really dislike them more and more and it feels more and more icky. And as much as I should my parasite logic from the rooftops, no one else understands my parasite logic, because it is not part of the popular discourse, because I haven’t written a “think piece” about this “important topic” on the “internet” and it doesn’t seem to have crossed any other pundit’s mind.
I do think it’s a very interesting activism conundrum here. With traditional social media, the advertising, “you-are-the-product” angle meant that traditional boycotts were applicable in this new world: you witholding your patronage still meant they were losing money, even if they money they lost wasn’t coming from you, but rather advertisers. The boycott approach was so applicable we barely even thought about how the economic dynamics of the boycott were different with social media compared to, say, Bud Light (I was gonna say New Coke cuz I’m old and Gen X but I am trying to be accessible here).
But with Substack… there’s nothing! They will not care at all if I leave, unless I go put on my old internet-suit and ride into Journalism Town and browbeat one of my old friends into letting me do an op-ed or something. But I am still more in my Asoka-on-the-farm phase here I don’t want to go “back in the arena.” So they will not care at all, and me moving will save them money.
But no one gets that! And I will always have to explain it! And that is a giant pain! And I am not costing them that much!
I just don’t know.
Buttondown looks very tempting, but it would cost me money, which I suppose is for the best, but I am so sick of spending money.
I just don’t know.
Speaking of spending money, I was going to explain to you why even though I think AI is the devil, I just decided to spend $20 on ChatGPT. But I guess that will have to wait till tomorrow, because Jane’s tummy hurts. She will not take any medicine, she will not get on the pot. She is curled up in a ball next to me.
Very auspicious start to the workweek. My absolute favorite thing Jane does is sit next to me and say “what should I do” over and over, rejecting every suggestion, because all she really wants to do is whine to you so you have to stop everything you’re doing and hold her and let her whine, which is super maddening at first but slowly the importance of whatever you were working on seeps out of you and you embrace the loving, parental task at hand and succumb to it and it slowly goes from super annoying to tender and one of those parental moments you will treasure.
So I guess I will go do that.
I’m coming Janey!
Today’s Media of the Day is They Worshipped Cats by the Swedish (I think) band Les Big Byrd. I don’t know where I came across this band but I love them so much. Pop and drone and a little psych but accessible, bit of a Super Furry Animals vibe with their humor. Love them. All their albums are recommended.
Until tomorrow. Have a good day.