#tw: nazis

[ktempestbradford]

From The Atlantic: Substack Has a Nazi Problem

[that link is to an archived version, so no paywall]

Bottom Line: the CEOs/leaders of Substack aren't just being laissez-faire about the fascists and open white supremacists on the platform, they actively boost them by having them on the company podcast, featuring them, mentioning them, and boosting them. Because the newsletters bring in LOADS of money and they love money. Even newsletters that repeatedly violate the basic, useless guidelines of Substack, they do not get punished.

This isn't a huge surprise for anyone who has been following the major issues with Substack that have come up in the past few years. There was the whole scandal where the public discovered that Substack had been paying people secretly to be on the service while advertising that anyone can make it on their own here! Plus, they were paying bigots directly to put their newsletters on the srvice.

Good breakdowns of that from Annalee Newitz and Grace Lavery.

Then there was the disasterous interview one of the CEOs (Chris Best) did with Nilay Patel of The Verge when Substack's Twitter clone launched. Nilay -- who is, if you hadn't guessed, of Indian descent -- asked him pointed questions about content moderation and... well...

[Nilay] I just want to be clear, if somebody shows up on Substack and says “all brown people are animals and they shouldn’t be allowed in America,” you’re going to censor that. That’s just flatly against your terms of service. [Best] So, we do have a terms of service that have narrowly prescribed things that are not allowed. That one I’m pretty sure is just flatly against your terms of service. You would not allow that one. That’s why I picked it. So there are extreme cases, and I’m not going to get into the– Wait. Hold on. In America in 2023, that is not so extreme, right? “We should not allow as many brown people in the country.” Not so extreme. Do you allow that on Substack? Would you allow that on Substack Notes? I think the way that we think about this is we want to put the writers and the readers in charge– No, I really want you to answer that question. Is that allowed on Substack Notes? “We should not allow brown people in the country.” I’m not going to get into gotcha content moderation. This is not a gotcha... I’m a brown person. Do you think people on Substack should say I should get kicked out of the country? I’m not going to engage in content moderation, “Would you or won’t you this or that?” That one is black and white, and I just want to be clear: I’ve talked to a lot of social network CEOs, and they would have no hesitation telling me that that was against their moderation rules. Yeah. We’re not going to get into specific “would you or won’t you” content moderation questions. Why? I don’t think it’s a useful way to talk about this stuff.

Best wasn't willing to get into these "gotchas" around their new social network, which is a pretty clear indication that they won't get into it around content moderation on the original platform. (Their statement after the fact did nothing to make things better.)

It's also really clear from the Atlantic article that the Substack CEOs/Owners are, at best, more interested in making money than in keeping white supremacists and Nazis (literal ones) off their platform. At worst, the Substack CEOs/Owners are supremacist/Nazi sympathizers. Either way:

Substack Directly Supports the Alt-Right, Nazis, and White Supremacists

Openly, brazenly, and without remorse.

#tw: nazis #nazis #fascisim #tw: fascists #tw: white supremacists #white supremacists #Substack #newsletters

[himitsusentaiblog]

The only real quibble I have with Godzilla Minus One was in the English translation. The characters in the subtitles kept referring to jet fighters. Japan didn't have any usable jet fighters in World War II. They had a single prototype called the Nakajima Kikka but it only ever flew once in August of 1945 before the war was over and the project scrapped.

It was heavily based on the Luftwaffe's Messerschmitt Me 262 and even looks a great deal like it.

During WWII, the Japanese used prop-driven planes exclusively. Only the Nazis ever fielded a jet fighter and then only at the very end of the war and in a very limited capacity. No one in the movie would have experience with flying jets. The Imperial Japanese also had a Rocket Plane called the Mitsubishi JM8 Shushui but that was powered by a rocket.

Again, it was based one a German design, the Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet

The JM8 did not see much use as there were only 8 operational planes ever made and 60 training versions produced before the end the the war. That may have been way too much historical info for why the characters using Jet Fighter as a term in the subtitles of G -1.0 bothered me.

#Godzilla Minus One #Japanese aircraft of WWII #TW: Nazis

[tea-and-antlers]

I love meeting other norse pagans because you get to ask such fun icebreaker questions like✨ What's your favorite rune?✨  and ✨what if any is your favorite norse myth from the eddas?✨  and ✨ are you actually cool or are you another fucking nazi?✨ 

#fuck nazis tho #witchblr #magic #norse pagan #norse paganism #witch #nazis dni #terfs dni #also not saying every norse pagan is a nazi #all the norse pagans I know are super cool and not nazis #but I have met some nazis and I fucking hate them #tw: nazis

[moboxcritique]

knowing that mob is a n*zi, I'm sure the real n*zis would either be weirded out or disgusted by the art. idk, they would hate it prolly

Real n*zis would hate it 'cause they're not gay, normal people who hate n*zis would hate it 'cause it's a glorified portrayal (n*zis aren't gay) and there's nsfw of them...

Nobody wins in this scenario

#mod cagney #ask #anonymous #anon #anon ask #asks #tw n*zi mention #tw: nazis

[thechaosghost]

Alright, let me tell you about a cool history fact.

This one is called, Night Witches

The night witches were a Russian night bombing group (588) during ww2. All female. And witches wasn’t used as an insult, they were called that because when they were approaching the nazi camps, they would turn off their engines and the nazis wouldn’t be able to see or hear them coming. Then the nazis compared their planes to broomsticks and thus they got the name, also they were allowed to exist because it would give the soviets an advantage. Not because Stalin was a feminist (he wasn’t) but they were cool af. You can listen to a song about them, it’s called Night Witches and it’s by Sabaton.

(Also idk if I should do a community label for this, if I should tell me!)

#tw: talking about nazis #tw: Nazis #tw: ussr #tw: war #night witches #ww2 #sabaton

[simnostalgia]

So let me get this straight... The Russians tried to make it seem like there was an assassination attempt... and to prove it they showed the confiscated materials.

But because they don't know the difference between a SIM card (that goes in a cell phone) and The Sims, we're supposed to believe that a group of people who planned to KILL Vladimir Putin were carrying three sims games? Just??? AROUND WITH THEM??

#tw: nazis #The Sims 3 #TS3 #What the fuck #Also love that they wouldn't have the base game #BTW for those wondering this is Master Suite Stuff #Outdoor Living #and I THINK that's seasons

[buggywiththefolkmagic]

What do you think of Joyofsatan.org? They claim to follow the Sumerian God Enki-Satan, they’re pro-choice, they follow gay Pagan Gods and they’re the largest Satanist group in the world

Hi there so I'm gonna be full on blunt. Joy Of Satan is a fucking cult and shouldn't exist full stop. All of those 'facts' you have given are incorrect, I'll breakdown why below: They use the BITE model. They encourage the use of paranoia and isolation as "good things".

They're godsdamned neo-nazis to boot.

There's also been claims of SA from meetings, and they purposefully entice in minors for that single purpose.

This shit doesn't fly with me so I think they shouldn't exist. Thanks for coming to my angry rant anon and I hope to the gods you get outta dodge quick before you lose everything you know and love like many who have fallen for them.

#joyofsatan #psa #tw: sa #tw: Nazis #tw: cults

[storyranger]

Tumblr put an anti-queer post from a random blog in my "based on your likes" section and out of morbid curiosity I clicked on the blog link to see the type of person who would say things like that...

WHAT THE FUCK??????????

those... those are the fourteen words. I can't tell if this person is genuinely ignorant that this is a white supremacist shibboleth or if they are being malicious and I am blocking them before I go on a pointless quest to find out.

excerpt from the post tumblr recommended for me, btw:

Like, fuck that noise, and fuck you tumblr algorithm for putting this in my feed.

#thanks tumblr I hate it #I think this account got recommended because it's a stranger things fandom account #Sorry but I don't want people like this in my fandom thanks #tw: antisemitism #tw: Nazis #tw: white supremacy #blocking spree

[opinated-user]

how old is the n*zi twitter person? surprised she'd do so publicly unless it's like "i tried helping a confused trans(?) person but they were too far gone to deradicalize" assuming it's not a huge troll to begin with (she e ven mentioned in her 'political' vid that she wouldn't bother appealing to ppl on the fence/trying to change minds nayways lol)

even if they were a troll (as they imply when they say they "joke that way for coping"), that still doesn't mean they aren't a nazi. nazi for the lulz is no different than a real nazi doing memes online, they're both one and the same. the only person i think they're trolling is LO by making her side with a "white enjoyer".

i love how making videos about trans predators is harming the community (it does... when they're innocent people and no evidence or victims), but being a nazi for the lulz is perfectly okay.

i don't know how old they're really because nowhere do they say but even if they were a minor this wouldn't be acceptable behaviour.

#tw: nazis #tw: racism #tw: antisemitism #lily orchard #lily and mikaila orchard #lily orchard is an antisemite

[jackredfieldwasmyjacob]

can't stop won't stop thinking about this post

distopic yankee [statian] novels: what if n**is had won the war?

spaniards:

#tw: antisemitism #tw: nazis #spanish history #sorry to censor the word like that but tumblr wouldn't let me post it otherwise for some reason??? #it would just reload the page and all my progress on the post would be lost?? #anyways for those of you who don't know #in spain nazis did won and we lived in a distopia for 40 years #funny thing is? the spanish nazis won with the help of the italian and german nazis of the time (the war was from 1936-39) #while the other side of the war aka the republicans didn't receive any direct help :)))) #i think the closest nations who provided the most aid were the urss and mexico #MEXICO #A NATION ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ATLANTIC #i wonder how things would've turned if france the uk etc would've helped #and the urss more directly as well

[ktempestbradford]

Content Moderation Isn't As Hard As They Say

Another issue from the Atlantic article on Substack that bears discussing is this bit:

Moderating online content is notoriously tricky. Amid the ongoing crisis in Israel and Gaza, Amnesty International recently condemned social-media companies’ failure to curb a burst of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic speech, at the same time that it criticized those companies for “over-broad censorship” of content from Palestinian and pro-Palestinian accounts—which has made sharing information and views from inside Gaza more difficult. When tech platforms are quick to banish posters, partisans of all stripes have an incentive to accuse their opponents of being extremists in an effort to silence them. But when platforms are too permissive, they risk being overrun by bigots, harassers, and other bad-faith actors who drive away other users, as evidenced by the rapid erosion of Twitter, now X, under Musk. In a post earlier this year, a Substack co-founder, Hamish McKenzie, implied that his company’s business model would largely obviate the need for content moderation. “We give communities on Substack the tools to establish their own norms and set their own terms of engagement rather than have all that handed down to them by a central authority,” he wrote. But even a platform that takes an expansive view of free speech will inevitably find itself making judgments about what to take down and what to keep up—as Substack’s own terms of service attest. ... Ultimately, the First Amendment gives publications and platforms in the United States the right to publish almost anything they want. But the same First Amendment also gives them the right to refuse to allow their platform to be used for anything they don’t want to publish or host.

I don't agree that moderating online content is "tricky" in the way that the article writer posits it. Even that first example is presented as if it's somehow talking out of both sides of one's mouth to condemn social media companies for allowing anti-Semitic and Islamophobic speech while suppressing pro-Palestinian posts and accounts. What?

And that bit about partisans using a network's propensity to use the banhammer as a tool to silence their opponents is indeed a thing, but is only effective if the network's banning "policies" (used very loosely here) are vague and mostly run by bots. It can even be a problem when humans get involved in the moderation if said humans don't truly understand what they're looking at or they have been trained improperly.

Back in 2017 ProPublica published a deep dive into what people who are tasked with reviewing flagged content are trained to see as appropriate or not. It wasn't a pretty picture.

There's also the part about language and cultural understanding. If a platform outsources their content moderation to a country where they can get that labor for "cheap", the individuals reviewing the content may not know English well enough to spot a problem or know the culture of the post origin well enough to understand dog whistles or even outright bigotry if it's not on the list given to them of what's not acceptable.

For issues at the scale of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and other very large networks, the main solution is and has always been money. Money to pay people inside of a country or culture to review the materials. Money to train them properly. Money to support the mental health tolls this work takes on people. You know what companies hate to do? Spend money on stuff that isn't CEO pay.

But let's be real here: the ultimate problem in content moderation isn't that it's tricky, it's that corporate owned networks aren't willing to take an ethical stand on things like what constitutes racism, sexism, homophobia, or any other true bigotry. They're also not willing to take a stand against ideas like "reverse racism" or "reverse sexism" and similar. You won't see them saying: Those reverse isms aren't a real thing and we won't tolerate that crap around here.

You can't create a moderation policy that covers every tiny detail of what is and isn't okay and what words are and aren't okay and such granular stuff as that. You can have a code of ethics and a morality that prioritizes harm reduction, especially for marginalized groups. Not so ironically, I've seen these kinds of policies most when looking at various Mastodon instances suggested to me and others. Here's a good example.

Yes, I know that scale is a huge factor here and I don't discount it. Scale doesn't mean this kind of moderation is impossible, just more difficult or costly as things grow. Yet it's not difficult to take a stand and say: We don't want white supremacists or Nazis on our platform, period. As The Atlantic points out, platforms and social networks have a First Amendment right to do that.

The Substack CEOs? Aren't willing.

#Substack #content moderation #terms of service #ethics #morality #tw: Nazis #tw: white supremacists #long post

[radioactiveradley]

There was a dude who proved it was possible to catheterise the heart through arm arteries by self-experimentation in 19-freaking-29

.........he also got kicked out of the hospital for said self-experimentation, because as a rule the medical profession doesn't approve of that

...........................he was also a fucking nazi.

(yeah, I was rooting for him until that point, too)

what I learned from this was, no matter how cool a thing someone did, always check to make sure if they were a literal fucking Nazi before making a post yelling about how awesome they were. Because sometimes they will be a literal fucking Nazi.

#I'm making this unrebloggable JUST in case any .......... pro-atrocity creepers get ahold of it #sucks when a guy who pioneered the advent of a really cool tech was also an atrocious human being #but that is the reality of humanity & existence on this earth alas #sometimes people who did interesting stuff were also abominable and you gotta reconcile those facts #tw: nazis #tw: white supemacy

[myinterestsvary-writes]

Was the term Feminazis even a thing in the early 2000s? I think it was referencing that if so. The Zuka Club is intended I believe to be more than just the offensive “Aggressive Lesbian” stereotype and are likely intended to be social commentary on what we now call radical feminists. I’m thinking this way because so much of how they behave harkens to how I’ve seen people today think about inherent women superiority. This, I believe as they go so far as to parody it, does show the author’s views on things such as this. I don’t think you have to agree with it to enjoy the show and it’s humour but it’s telling that this is the way people (who often sound similar to Benibara and her crew when talking about their opinions on social issues) sound like when criticizing this show. I don’t think Bisco Hatori truly wanted to truly challenge anything other than to make fun and casually throw around some ideas. The only time things came off as serious and preachy was in the Beach episode…which, again, is telling…

N*zi symbolism below:

#tw: antisemitism #tw: radical feminism #tw: homophobia #tw: lesbophobia #ohshc #ouran high school host club #anime #manga #tw: nazis #Bisco Hatori #tw: radfem

[apersonwholikeslotus]

“I have spent most of my life, since I was your age, studying Germanic matters (in the general sense that includes England and Scandinavia). There is a great deal more force (and truth) than ignorant people imagine in the ‘Germanic’ ideal…. Anyway, I have in this war a burning private grudge—-which would probably make me a better soldier at 49 than I was at 22: against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler. Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light. Nowhere, incidentally, was it nobler than in England, nor more early sanctified” - J.R.R Tolkien

y'all know how just yesterday I was complaining about not being able to read about Runic alphabets without having to read about n@zis?

#I found this and I literally rushed down stairs and pointed it out #I was just talking about this yesterday!!!! #apersonwhotalks #tolkien #tw: nazis

[moboxcritique]

wait simobox says that the drawings he made about the nazis

It was just to make fun of Nazis, so how do you explain all the Nazi drawings he did with it? How do you explain that Nicholas made a Nazi Oc?

with that also to make a group about this group with which they show photos images of several Oc that belonged to this group but only to show the same characters with the same suit that the Nazis wear but with another logo to hide the fact that they no longer wear it They are Nazis and make the same main character, don't use that logo anymore to use another, how ingenious you are like mobox

nothing discreet wow nothing discreet it's like when they found out that she was drawing Nazi things with her boyfriend it's like all of a sudden they were the same drawings again only with a different logo and just saying it was just a joke

^^^^^

Exactly, none of what she said about it adds up, because it's all lies and excuses

#mod cagney #ask #anonymous #anon #anon ask #asks #tw n*zi mention #tw: nazis

[incorrect-benny-quotes]

Benny: I never said I was gonna get back together with him. But I was thinking, he's on the Collection now, would it be the worst thing in the world if I gave him a call?

Brax: No. No, Benny, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. It would be the fourth worst thing. Number One: A Nazi invasion. Number Two: The Collection gets clouded by sex pollen. Number Three: All the Britney Spears albums are lost. Number Four: You call Jason. Number five: Adrian gets eaten by a sentient mirror.

Adrian: As Adrian, I approve the order of that list.

#bernice summerfield #irving braxiatel #jason kane #adrian wall #life during wartime #summer of love #a life of surprises #the mirror effect #incorrect benny quotes #incorrect quotes #tw: nazis