"For all the talk of “gun rights” and “standing your ground,” the instruction manual for this society is quite clear: it is only for those who tow the ruling class line and who aren’t pushing to attack this shit-show we call capitalism and white supremacy. The pardoning of Daniel Perry is a warning: that the State is willing to sanction and support extreme violence and outright murder against those it deems as political enemies."
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"Les étudiants du comité #Palestine ne sont pas majoritairement étrangers, #arabes ou anglo-saxons… d’autres étudiants… ne sont pas passés par les campus américains et n’ont pas cette culture marquée par le mouvement #BlackLivesMatter.
D’autres étudiants sont venus à la cause palestinienne par les études qu’ils suivent : les questions géopolitiques, le droit international. …beaucoup …se méfie[nt] de l’invocation des origines pour expliquer [leur] parcours militant."
The far-Right demonstrators coming out to attack the protest encampments see this as an extension of their fight against #BlackLivesMatter and the Left in general.
TikTok CEO #ShouZiChew has said the company will take the fight against the new law to the courts, but some experts believe that for the #US#SupremeCourt, national security considerations could outweigh #FreeSpeech protection.
Young people, in particular, are following the #Israel-#Hamas war on social media, and many are horrified by what they see.
They’ve also grown up with protest movements — #OccupyWallStreet, #BlackLivesMatter, the Parkland, Fla., students’ gun control campaign — as the backdrop of their lives. #VietnamWar
#Sunday inspiration:
"During my lifetime, I have dedicated my life to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against Black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal for which I hope to live for and to see realised. But, my Lord, if it needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.” #Mandela 1962
We spoke with someone on the ground in #Seattle about the city's attack on the #BlackLivesMatter memorial garden and mutual aid hub, which is part of a larger push to remove the poor and houseless from public life.
If we can (please) set aside my ham-handed first draft of the question, the answer to yesterday's #1947League#history quiz is below. The incomparable Tetelo Vargas won 3 batting titles in these 3 systems.
Gentry Jessup allowed a third-inning home run to Jackie Robinson... and that was it in the base-hit department. Cards take 3 out of 4 from Brooklyn at home, winning a pitching-heavy series.
#BlackLivesMatter memorial garden in #Seattle destroyed by city today - officials trying to wash away all memory of the rebellion and attempts by people to engage in self-organization and direct action in the face of state violence and capitalist crisis.
More than 200 Substack authors asked the platform to explain why it’s “platforming and monetizing Nazis,” and now they have an answer straight from co-founder Hamish McKenzie:...
Are you arguing against private entities having editorial freedom? Should private entities not be in charge of their own publications and platforms?
Yes, absolutely. Lemmy.world should be able to ban Nazis if they want to, as should Substack. Personally, I think it would be better in some cases if people didn’t. Although, there’s so much overlap between Nazis and general-toxic-behavior users that I wouldn’t really fault them for banning Nazis outright even if they theoretically supported the Nazis’ right to free speech.
Notably though, I think Substack should also be free to not ban Nazis, and no one should give them shit for it. In particular, they definitely shouldn’t be talking about trying to get their Stripe account cancelled, or pressuring their advertisers, as I’ve seen other posters here advocate for (although I think the thing about advertisers is just a result of pure confusion on the poster’s part about how Substack even makes income).
In this particular case, I think allowing the Nazis to speak is the “right answer,” so I definitely don’t advocate for interfering in anything Substack wants to do with their private servers. But no, I also don’t think anyone who doesn’t want to host Nazis should have to, and it’s a pretty good and reasonable question.
As I said to someone else, there is presumably a line that’s too much to cross. Is it “live stream of grinding up live babies and puppies and snorting them”? If there is no line, I don’t even know where to begin.
Let me say it this way: If what you’re doing or saying would be illegal, even if you weren’t a Nazi, it should be illegal. It shouldn’t suddenly become illegal to say if you’re wearing a Nazi uniform. Threatening violence? Illegal. Threatening violence as part of your Nazi political platform? Illegal. Wearing a Nazi uniform, saying that white people are superior and the holocaust didn’t happen? Legal as long as you’re not doing some other illegal thing, even though historically that’s adjacent to clearly-illegal behavior.
I realize there can be a good faith difference of opinion on that, but you asked me what I thought; that’s what I think. If it’s illegal to wear a Nazi uniform, or platforms kick you off for wearing one, then it can be illegal to wear a BLM shirt, and platforms can kick you off for saying #blacklivesmatter. Neither is acceptable. To me.
Probably the closest I can come to agreeing with you is on something like Patriot Front. Technically, is it legal to gather up and march around cities in threatening fashion, with the implication that you’ll attack anyone who tries to stop you? Sure. Is it dangerous? Fuck yes. Should it be legal? Um… maybe. I don’t know. Am I happy that people attacked them and chased them out of Philadelphia, even though attacking them was interfering with their free speech? Yes. I put that in a much more dangerous category than someone hosting a web site that says the holocaust didn’t happen.
Platforms taking some responsibility for what they allow would go a long way without requiring a heavy handed government solution. Substack could just say “nah, we’re not letting nazis post stuff.”
Would it go a long way, though?
Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter have been trying to take responsibility for antivax stuff and election denialism for years now, and banned it in some cases and tried to limit its reach with simple blacklisting. Has that approach worked?
Nazi stuff is unpopular because it’s abhorrent and people can see that when they read it. I genuinely don’t think that allowing Nazi speech on Substack is a step towards wider acceptance of Naziism. I don’t think there are all these people who might have been Nazis but they’re prevented by not being able to read it on Substack. I do think allowing Nazi stuff on Substack would be a step towards exposing the wider community to the actual reality of Naziism, and exposing the Nazis to a community which can openly disagree with them instead of quarantining them in a place where they can only talk to each other.
I do think responsibility by the platforms is an important thing. I talked about that in terms of combatting organized disinformation, which is usually a lot more sophisticated and a lot more subtle than Nazi newsletters. I just don’t think banning the content is a good answer. Also, I suspect that the same people who want the Nazis off Substack also want lots of other non-Nazi content to be “forbidden” in the same way that, e.g. Dave Chappelle or Joe Rogan should be “forbidden” from their chosen platforms. Maybe I’m wrong about that, but that’s part of why I make a big deal about the Nazi content.
Notably though, I think Substack should also be free to not ban Nazis, and no one should give them shit for it.
Substack can host nazis given the legal framework in the US. But why shouldn’t I speak up about their platforming of evil? Substack can do what they want, and I can tell them to fuck off. I can tell people who do business with them that I don’t approve, and I’m not going to do business with them while they’re engaged with this nazi loving platform. That’s just regular old freedom of speech and association.
Their speech is not more important than mine. There is no obligation for me to sit in silence when someone else is saying horrible things.
It feels like you’re arguing for free speech for the platform, but restricted speech for the audience. The platform is free to pick who can post there, but you don’t want the audience to speak back.
Let me say it this way: If what you’re doing or saying would be illegal, even if you weren’t a Nazi, it should be illegal. […] I realize there can be a good faith difference of opinion on that, but you asked me what I thought; that’s what I think. If it’s illegal to wear a Nazi uniform, or platforms kick you off for wearing one, then it can be illegal to wear a BLM shirt, and platforms can kick you off for saying #blacklivesmatter. Neither is acceptable. To me.
You’re conflating laws and government with private stuff. The bulk of this conversation is about what can private organizations do to moderate their platforms. Legality is only tangentially related. (Also it doesn’t necessarily follow that banning nazi uniforms would ban BLM t-shirts. Germany has some heavy bans on nazi imagery and to my knowledge have not slid enthusiastically down that slope)
A web forum I used to frequent banned pro-trump and pro-ice posts. The world didn’t end. They didn’t ban BLM. It helps that it was a forum run by people, and not an inscrutable god-machine or malicious genie running the place.
I’m also not sure I understood your answer to my question. Is there a line other than “technically legal” that you don’t want crossed? Is the law actually a good arbiter?
Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter have been trying to take responsibility for antivax stuff and election denialism for years now, and banned it in some cases and tried to limit its reach with simple blacklisting. Has that approach worked?
I don’t think they’ve actually been trying very hard. They make a lot of money by not doing much. Google’s also internally incompetent (see: their many, many, canceled projects), Facebook is evil (see: that time they tried to make people sad to see if they could), and twitter has always had a child’s understanding of free speech.
I do think responsibility by the platforms is an important thing. I talked about that in terms of combatting organized disinformation, which is usually a lot more sophisticated and a lot more subtle than Nazi newsletters. I just don’t think banning the content is a good answer. Also, I suspect that the same people who want the Nazis off Substack also want lots of other non-Nazi content to be “forbidden” in the same way that, e.g. Dave Chappelle or Joe Rogan should be “forbidden” from their chosen platforms. Maybe I’m wrong about that, but that’s part of why I make a big deal about the Nazi content.
A related problem here is probably the consolidation of platforms. Twitter and Facebook as so big that banning someone from it is a bigger deal than it probably should be. But they are free to move to a more permissive platform if their content is getting them kicked out of popular places. We’re not talking about a nationwide, government backed-by-force content ban.
I’m not sure what to do about coordinated disinformation. Platforms banning or refusing to host some of it is probably one part of the remedy, though.
An Oklahoma inmate has been exonerated by a judge after serving nearly 50 years in prison, the longest time a prisoner has served before being declared innocent, according to The National Registry of Exonerations. Glynn Simmons, 71, was released in July after prosecutors said key evidence was not shared with his defense attorneys, and was officially ruled innocent today. Read more about the case from NPR.
It's #linkdump time! Saturday has arrived and I once again find myself with a zillion tabs' worth of things that I couldn't squeeze into this week's newsletters. This is lucky linkdump number 13 - here's the previous dozen installments:
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
It's nice to see Google guarding its customers' backs every now and again, even from its depraved enshittified depths. Google also just announced that it will move GMaps' location data storage to your device. That means that it will no longer be able to use Maps data to answer #GeofenceWarrants (AKA #ReverseWarrants), where the cops demand the identities of everyone in a location - say, all the participants in a #BlackLivesMatter demonstration:
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Substack says it will not remove or demonetize Nazi content ( www.theverge.com )
More than 200 Substack authors asked the platform to explain why it’s “platforming and monetizing Nazis,” and now they have an answer straight from co-founder Hamish McKenzie:...