The equation “Substack = Nazis” is textbook political misinformation: A thing with a technical grain of truth, entirely missing the point and then dishonestly presented, for the purpose of splintering and confusing the left and getting them to attack each other. I suspect it is deliberately promoted by enemies, because while it has a technical little fig-leaf of truthfulness, it bears so little resemblance to anything real or relevant and is a convenient way to shit on one of the chief leftist platforms for thought and journalism, and leftists love nothing more than a contest of “I am so pure that I hate this thing that everyone else likes because it’s actually evil and I’m super clever and informed so I can see that and you can’t and I’m the first one.”

I guess it is possible that people came up with this all on their own as a purity-test (actually I do think that the original campaign which persuaded Substack to get rid of most of the Nazis, was that), and it’s just a general leftist self-own because of that tendency. I do feel like it’s pretty likely that it has started coming in in some way from outside though. When this argument is presented in print form, it often has so many hallmarks of propaganda or slanty dishonest framings associated with it that it’s hard for me to think that it is entirely self-created organic purity testing gone awry.

Here was my conversation about the details of the underlying Substack Nazi issue the last time it came up. I don’t have a lot to add to it: https://ponder.cat/post/1721638/1949850

Hey, look, I found some.

But to address your request for more information on that admittedly poorly chosen example: that was at the start at the Russian invasion, so I don’t have the source readily available. It might have been Jacobin or a YT geopolitical analyst based in Europe.

Not what I asked. I asked you for general reliable sources about the world, since your international friends are in touch with them and all read them and they’re 100% up to speed on things that idiot Americans are not aware of. I want to know these sources, not this specific claim, but just in general. Surely you want to help me not be a blithering idiot in my news consumption anymore?

IDK, maybe your answer is “YouTube and Jacobin.” I do watch YouTube and I’m familiar with Jacobin.

I come to Lemmy for conversations that are fun, funny, thought-provoking, and helpful. So, on that note, I’m out. Enjoy your day.

Seems to me like you come to Lemmy to snidely insinuate weird pro-Russian points of view, and then become super-friendly and say it was all a big misunderstanding, brother, when someone calls you on it, and then say it wasn’t important and flee into the darkness when asked for details. I stand behind my rudeness to you, it seems like it was well-earned. You’re welcome to defend “US manipulating geopolitics with UA and RU so as to bring the EU to heel,” if you want to, but since you don’t want to, have a wonderful evening.

Yeah, California and Texas have been talking about seceding for decades too. I’m not saying Danielle Smith invented it. I’m saying that it clearly sounds like some let’s-fuck-up-Canada’s-politics bullshit, and oh look! Down below in the comments you can find that she’s super convinced that NATO started the Ukraine war, they had secret biolabs, the separatist regions should govern independently, and Ukraine should be “neutral” (which I am guessing means they are forbidden to get help defending themselves when someone starts blowing up their apartment buildings, power stations, and citizens.)

That’s new. The coincidental overlap between the people who say weird bullshit which inflames internal tensions (or tries to), and the people who really suddenly feel strongly about all these foreign policies that are coincidentally overlapping the exact precise shape of what geopolitical enemies of the US/Canada would like to see, is very much new. No one who was talking about California secession also felt like Osama Bin Laden was provoked and we needed to let the trade center decide on its own whether it wanted to fall down and not interfere.

It happens to states that feel they are the ones providing a nation all the wealth but get an unbalanced return of benefits from the nation

Yeah, especially if someone who wants to weaken the nation is providing tons of funding to make people feel that way, and specifically paying off politicians to give it a voice and make it sound reasonable.

Like I said, I had no idea about this person or any of this, it was just my shoot-from-the-hip reaction to such a nonsensical idea and where it might have come from. And, of course, I learn that the kooky lady who’s been a standard bearer for it super coincidentally has some other random kooky ideas about the war in Ukraine that she wants to be vocal about. What a shocker, how could this have happened, why could such a combination exist and how could I have predicted it.

Danielle Smith

Hm

After she became premier, it was revealed that she made comments on April 29 during a Locals.com livestream about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Smith argued for a peace plan between Russia and Ukraine and advocated for Ukraine’s neutrality. She also made subsequently deleted posts in March that questioned whether breakaway regions in Ukraine should be able to govern independently, and whether NATO played a role in the invasion, citing a conspiracy theory promoted by Tucker Carlson alleging ‘secret U.S. funded biolabs’ in Ukraine.[118]

Theeeere it is.

Honestly? I knew I would find something.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danielle_Smith#Controversies

I guarantee you this is some kind of Russian-backed bullshit.

I have absolutely no evidence or even any indication. But it is exactly the type of suggestion that makes 0% sense for someone to come up with on their own as a good idea, and 100% sense in terms of the way Russia likes to think about what they would like to see people talking about in countries they don’t like. I doubt anyone is even looking at it as some kind of thing that even might happen, it’s just some handy hostile bullshit to throw into the equation to keep everyone busy chasing their tails and arguing and frustrated instead of accomplishing anything running the country.

This has been Philip’s Conspiracy Corner, tune in next week

even I said “WAT,” i.e. my disbelief regarding conclusions at which some people outside the US arrived.

That’s not what you said. You said that it was, more or less, a universal consensus outside the US that the US had manipulated events in Ukraine to weaken the EU, because they couldn’t stand having the EU around because it was a real democracy. So much so that you’re a “blithering idiot” “out of the loop” “depth and breadth of ignorance” and so on because you don’t see it that way because you consume US media, whereas the whole rest of the world knows that that’s going on. Right?

That assertion (that it’s universally believed outside the US, not even touching on whether it is true) is absolutely wrong. And then, you said “WAT” about your own reaction to it, but also seemed to take it very seriously, comparing it favorably to your own ideas which you were very negative about.

Would you care to elaborate on how I called commenters here misinformed?

You said “us,” as in “it becomes very difficult for us to be anything other than idiots”.

I feel like you are digging for an argument that doesn’t exist.

If you would like more clarification or elaboration, rather than making assumptions, I’m happy to discuss.

Okay, sure. Maybe that’s fair. So tell me: What are these reliable sources that your more wise and knowledgeable international friends read, what’s some of what they tell you about geopolitics and the war in Ukraine? Specifically as pertains to “US manipulating geopolitics with UA and RU so as to bring the EU to heel.” Since you’ve identified the idea that that is not happening as the “blithering idiot” viewpoint by contrast, maybe you can help me out of my idiocy by helping and elaborating.

Edit: Rephrasing

Let’s set aside the veracity of the US manipulating geopolitics in the UA/RU war

Let’s not. That’s the exact point at which you departed from accuracy into fantasy-land, and what I was taking note of.

Can we all agree that the US has a long history of fuckery when it comes to stomping out anything it doesn’t like or isn’t in line with corporate interests?

Yes, 100%.

Even if the independent journalist were absolutely presenting the truth, it’s still feels like tinfoil hat shit because of how severely we’re inculcated by “trustworthy” news sources in the US.

I like to think I’m a teeny bit media- and news-savvy, but damn… most days I really feel like a blithering idiot.

This is an impressive type of sophisticated negging whereby you criticize yourself as a way to implicitly criticize the reader, and tell them they’re an idiot.

Most of Lemmy and most of the content on Lemmy isn’t from the US as far as I’m aware. This whole media blackout you’re talking about is a very real thing for most US people, but it simply won’t apply on Lemmy or the sources that are usually prevalent on Lemmy. For example I host some news sources on rss.ponder.cat; four out of the top five of the popular ones are non-US sources.

If you are telling the truth about your self-assessment, I would really urge you to re-examine that leap you took from “most US readers are misinformed” to “most of the people in these comments are misinformed” and definitely the one you took to “US is skillfully manipulating the Ukraine situation, and definitely not fucking it up because they don’t care about much of the issues involved all that much, except insofar as their friends can sell tons of weapons to all parties involved.”

Talking with my longtime acquaintances and friends in CA, DE, VN, and JP, the conversations invariably become “Did you hear about [current event causal factors]? This is super obvious, and here is [their reliable news sources].” Well, shit.

Tru dat

For example, the one that really blew me away was the US manipulating geopolitics with UA and RU so as to bring the EU to heel.

Lolwut

Never change, lemmy.world. Your opinions are always a magical adventure.

It’s a little different scenario: You don’t need to have a 486 to compile the Linux kernel for a 486. It’s not even cross compilation, it’s just setting particular flags and how to do the compile and what processor features to enable or not. It’s probably useful to test it periodically on the actual processor but in a strict sense it’s not needed.

You do, in general, need to be running on a 68000 to compile parts of the actual whole OS for 68000, since so much stuff is different or custom for each architecture and there is plenty of work involved without trying to introduce emulation or cross-compilation into the mix in any way.

I still remember when Debian had problems with the 68000 autobuilders, because the fastest ones of those processors that existed literally could not compile packages fast enough to keep up with the uploads. I think they decided to add more autobuilders instead of give up on the architecture lol.

Hm.

Here are my thoughts:

I don’t really care about picking the better debater. That actually seems kind of antithetical: In a perfect world, the truth should win, and it doesn’t really matter if someone’s more “skillful” or forceful or just willing to type and berate more. Actually one of the things that bothers me about the propaganda on Lemmy is that it is often (not always) pretty skillful at changing minds, independent of the validity of the content.

I do like the idea of formalizing it a little bit. Having a limited number of “rounds” is an interesting idea. Right now, one of the issues I see that I’m trying to deal with with this thing is the strategy of kind of blathering endlessly or constantly changing the subject, not really being responsive but talking without end. The current iteration of the bot will call you out on it when that happens, but it might be kind of better if it’s your chance and once it’s done it is done. Kind of like court: If the opponent raises a point, and you just ignore it, than by default they “win” that point and you don’t even have a chance to go back and correct it.

I don’t even necessarily like the idea of picking a “winner.” To me, that’s up to each reader, and often the truth is kind of in the middle or they are both valid arguments. It’s more of kind of a pass/fail on both sides: Are you being reasonable? There are a lot of strategies that look really reasonable, or at worst just like aggressively asserting your side, but if you’re good at using them you can literally make almost anything sound plausible. So, if neither side is doing that, then it’s fine! They just had a conversation, responded reasonably to each other’s points, everything moved forward. I am more on the side of “what truth did we figure out” as opposed to needing to assign a winner and a loser mechanically to each debate.

Yeah, modern day political TV debate is nonsense. Actually, even this format of debate in the video you sent, I don’t completely like. The woman is clearly full of shit. They’re setting up this format structure, this respect, this kind of “objective” format, and then they are welcoming someone to take an honored position within it that doesn’t deserve the respect. I didn’t watch much beyond the beginning, but I can almost guarantee that she is lying and rationalizing, and her underlying position is “red man good blue man bad.” I don’t really know how you can expose that in a taking turns long form “debate” format, that’s just my reaction seeing her. I feel like having something like Jon Stewart interviewing her and challenging her, still being fair and letting her talk but not letting her get away with bullshit, would be better than implicitly pretending that she is upholding the social contract when she is not.

Maybe I am wrong, that’s just my snap judgement seeing the first little bit. Actually, setting up a framework where being unfriendly to that kind of dishonesty is allowed and sanctioned, but being dishonest or shifty in your debating is “not allowed” in the same way that overt incivility is “not allowed” currently on Lemmy, is part of my goal here.

Those are my thoughts about it, in no real coherent order, it just took me a little time to watch a piece of the video and get back to you.

Well, but you do though. Making comments and getting the respect and agreement of the people in the community is how you get influence.

I really don’t like this Lemmy thing where certain people are empowered by the software to control the communications of other people (beyond just removing spam or abuse or something). I feel like you don’t need that. I really don’t feel like you or me or anybody being put in a position where they can “influence” someone else’s communications unilaterally is really necessary to a good community. Often it is counterproductive. Maybe that’s the issue, you just activated one of my pet peeves in a way that has nothing to do with what you want to do.

Can you tell me more about what you want to do, how you would want to apply Oxford scoring and such? Maybe that could be a whole separate community / idea, I was envisioning this one as being a lot more basic, just can people talk with each other without blatantly mischaracterizing the other person’s points or ignoring questions or etc. But IDK, maybe I just don’t understand the basic concept even yet.

Do, or do not. There is no try.

Yeah, I’d be happy to post it up along with some of the other little tools I use here, that’s a good idea.

Nothing is stopping you from making that tool without mod powers…

I generally don’t even touch the mod buttons except in exceptional circumstances; I don’t expect that this place would be any different. Maybe events will change my mind but I would hope that a lot of this stuff can get worked out with talking and culture, as opposed to by removing comments.

Ooh… that’s a good point. Any discussion which gets fed into the debate bot will get fed into OpenAI’s API, which means it’ll be used for training. (I trust their “do not use this data” checkbox not at all.) And I think you’re right that having that happen will be a deal-breaker for most people and just a totally different thing than the purpose of the community as stated.

Let me think on that a little more. I won’t do anything with the tool until I can look into self-hosting it or something. I think consider it as purely a human community until further discussion, then.

See my other comment. I wasn’t saying at all that Lemmy was a US-only thing, I was just trying to say that that the whole network is probably enough of a niche platform that it’s not worth the substantial effort that would be involved in trying to interfere too much with US users on non-US instances. Big instances in the US, they can fuck with, and so why not (and especially since the Take it Down act is structured to empower individuals to go after them without the government needing to spend resources on it.) Instances outside the US, never mind, we have bigger fish to fry.

Oh, I am sure most of Lemmy is outside the US. I was saying that, in general, Lemmy (and even Mastodon) is probably too small and difficult a problem for them to want to attack through any systematic method. I think, if anything, they’ll just surveil and punish individual US-based users as opposed to trying to shut down or block instances outside the US.

It’s one of the advantages of ActivityPub services. Bluesky will be easy for them to attack at the root and I fully expect them to do so, whereas for truly federated services I think the reaction will be “ah what the hell too much trouble, how much harm can they really do.”