Kulturkampf

[D3RANG3D]

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

Needs more Crocodile Dundee.

[benji]

[Potato]

I'd put up with that for a bit for a go at motorboating those gazoongas honestly.

[Nintex]

Election interference!

[HaughtyFrank]

[Nintex]

2024 is wild 

[TylenolJones]

Only the best lawyers know about the wayback machine.

[Tucker's Law]

Bill's on that full retard-autism mission now.  Business Insider really fucked up here.

[TylenolJones]

[benji]

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

[Nintex]

Team MAGA is on it

[Echelon]

Team MAGA is on it

Footage of MAGA exploring the tunnels:

[Polident]

I’ll admit, if I ever owned a home with significantly sized land, I’d build some tunnel and bunker system. Like the one from Blast from the Past. Maybe those Jews were also fans.

[HaughtyFrank]

One of the most absurd clips I've seen

[HaughtyFrank]

Well if this doesn't result in a ceasefire nothing will

[Nintex]

[Potato]

Cancel culture knows no bounds!!

I stand with Ugluk.

[benji]

Fascist crying over important reporting yet again.

[benji]

Oh god, this far-right terrorist is putting STAFF IN DANGER:

My response to Newton mentioned that I was considering dinging him and his site for not being transparent about the fact that they had found only six accounts they deemed worthy of flagging to Substack. Newton responded: “Extremist researchers encouraged me not to share specific examples or numbers, saying that this had proven dangerous for other people who have challenged Nazis directly. So that’s why we did that.”

I responded: “Ah, interesting — did they specify how it could prove dangerous to reveal how many Nazi accounts you found?” Newton’s reply read, in part, “Basically when the Nazis find out that you’re the reason their account no longer exists, they doxx you and try to make your life miserable.”

This confused me. Newton had just published a post stating that he had flagged some Nazi accounts to Substack and that Substack had banned them as a result. Surely that would be all the information even a particularly dim Nazi would need to ascertain that Newton and his site had been responsible for his newsletter’s banishment. What did the number have to do with it? “Not trying to be difficult,” I responded, “but won’t they find out by reading the newsletter you just sent out announcing that because of your intervention, Substack had banned some Nazi accounts?”

In his next email, Newton changed the subject:

When I started this I never imagined that Substack would frame this entire thing around a list of Substacks that Platformer had submitted — and then have Hamish leak the number to Shellenberger’s reporters, after telling me that all our conversations were off the record. My hope was that our effort would result in a policy change, and that if any numbers were shared by Substack they would be the result of a comprehensive review of the platform, rather than based solely on our partial volunteer effort.

Instead, Substack shared the number, now it’s everywhere, and yes, the Nazis will have all the information they need.

“Shellenberger” is a reference to Michael Shellenberger, who runs Public, a Substack where Zaid Jilani and Alex Gutentag reported on January 5 that “A Substack spokesperson told Public that Newton’s list contains just 6 Substacks with 29 paid subscribers between them, a tiny fraction of the more than 2 million paid subscribers the service has today.” (I reached out to McKenzie about Newton’s claim that he broke an off-the-record agreement and will update this post if I hear back.)

I’m not trying to forensically nitpick Newton’s responses, but it’s interesting how his description of Platformer’s search effort changed. It had been: “Platformer has worked with other journalists and extremism researchers in an effort to understand the scope of far-right content on the platform. We’ve now reviewed dozens of active, monetized publications that advance violent ideologies, including anti-Semitism and the great replacement theory.” After Newton was presented with the fact that the end result of this was the discovery of a grand total of six Nazi Substacks — a fact he hadn’t passed on to readers — he shifted to describing the search as a “partial volunteer effort.”

But I was most confused about Newton’s claim that because “Substack shared the number, now it’s everywhere, and yes, the Nazis will have all the information they need.”

“What information do they now have that you’re worried about?” I asked him. Again, he wouldn’t explain exactly how reporting the number of sites he had submitted to Substack would have put him in danger — a serious claim. Instead, he changed the subject again:

Substack has framed this as a response to a handful of user reports from Platformer as opposed to proactive enforcement of its own guidelines. Typically when platforms remove content they own the decision rather than say “after this guy asked us to, we. . . ” Anyway it doesn’t feel great.

I think I’m done answering questions, good luck with your story Jesse!

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

Doug
Jan 9
After twisting my brain into a pretzel, I think I finally understand what Newton believed he was saying. Essentially “we didn’t share the number in our reporting because we expected our complaint to Substack to spur a larger, platform-wide investigation of extremist content. That would, in turn, lead to *many more* ‘nazi’ Substacks than the original six we reported being removed from the platform, thus obscuring Platformer’s role in banning any individual site. Instead, they just looked at the ones we reported, banned the 5 of 6, and left us holding the bag.” This feels deeply unfair to him and is not the way he thought the situation would go, because he feels entitled to dictate the internal politics of media organizations like Substack and expected this to go down entirely on his terms.

John
Jan 10
Yes -- I think Doug is being too generous. The simple explanation is that vagueness allowed Newton to imply that he had discovered much more "nazi" content than he did in fact find. Then it felt "unfair" to him that Jesse called him on it.

[HaughtyFrank]

[Potato]

Art that can be easily replicated by artificial intelligence is “meaningless”, according to the Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei, who believes even Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse would have had to rethink their approach if AI had existed in their era.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/jan/11/art-that-can-be-easily-copied-by-ai-is-meaningless-says-ai-weiwei

[Potato]

Lots of retards in this story.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-01-11/woolworths-big-w-shops-australia-day-merch-sales-decision/103309612

Major retailers Woolworths and Big W have decided not to stock Australia Day merchandise this year due to a "gradual decline in community demand".

The decision has prompted Opposition Leader Peter Dutton to call on Australians to "boycott Woolworths", while Reconciliation Australia has welcomed the move.

But while Woolworths is the biggest retailer to make that announcement so far, experts say they're unlikely to be the last.

When I grew up in the 80s and 90s, overt patriotism was viewed as an idiotic yank thing and Australia Day was just another day off to cut the grass and enjoy the summer.

All it took was a bunch of lefty fucks to screech about invasion day and changing the date for things to change dramatically and now 26 January is the annual day of overt idiotic patriotism and retards yelling at each other about a meaningless public holiday.

This is peak culture war down under.

[Uncle]

Art that can be easily replicated by artificial intelligence is “meaningless”, according to the Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei, who believes even Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse would have had to rethink their approach if AI had existed in their era.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/jan/11/art-that-can-be-easily-copied-by-ai-is-meaningless-says-ai-weiwei

I don't know about meaningless, but there is no weird "soul" imparted to human creations, it's all in your own emotional response to what you see

if you can extract just as much meaning from something AI generated, then...yeah, you won't know the difference

git gud, artists and writers

[HaughtyFrank]

I'd really love to know if any of the normal people actually care about the voice actor's race. Does a kid suddenly feel less represented by these characters? Pretty sure most kids don't even know what the VAs look like. Even when we're talking about "The problem with Apu" the real problem wasn't that a white guy voiced him, the problem was the stereotype it leaned into.

[Potato]

I'd really love to know if any of the normal people actually care about the voice actor's race. Does a kid suddenly feel less represented by these characters? Pretty sure most kids don't even know what the VAs look like. Even when we're talking about "The problem with Apu" the real problem wasn't that a white guy voiced him, the problem was the stereotype it leaned into.

To answer your question...no.

[NekoFever]

I for one was disgusted when the Japanese Shredder was voiced by a black man.

[Uncle]

I for one was disgusted when the Japanese Shredder was voiced by a black man.

how did you feel about Elmo

[benji]

I for one was disgusted when the Japanese Shredder was voiced by a black man.

Dismissing concerns about representation in ancient ninja clans.

[benji]

Potato called out:

[benji]