Monkey Business is hardcore. Doesn’t get enough consideration. I’m nuts over SJ Perelman. My mother saw the Marx Brothers in their touring stage acts in St. Louis, and they must’ve been unimaginably hilarious.
If you get a chance, a few films worth seeing: American Fiction, of course. Also, She Came to Me. Full of surprise, gloriously strange and smart. I also admired Past Lives, delicate and honest. Rye Lane was lovely. And Rise, Cédric Klapisch’s film about dancers, was fabulous.
Now I want to read your Nazi piece so badly and make the worst comments possible.. just so an underpaid moderator can clean up my mess. Alas. You won't publish and Substack won't moderate.
So what do we do, Dan? Wait it out? The business models are all shit (as with stuff like Uber) but the problem is, nobody’s been trained in the old ways. That’s why I’m doing my print humor mag bystander, but damn few people are stupid enough to get up on that cross. What’s your sense of all this?
Well, death will come for all of us eventually. So we have that to look forward to.
I love AB, by the way. Always get a hearty laugh out of it (except when it's about Nazis).
The business model is, sadly, the one you and I are both pursuing to some extent -- personalized newsletters. If you can get a small but dedicated paying audience, you avoid most of the problems of publishing on the Interwebs. And then, of course, you find out the tools you are using to do that are also being used by the WORST PEOPLE ON THE PLANET.
I am planning to write something about this on my substack today, inspired by yours. I'll share a link when it's up.
"Subjecting ideas to open discourse" is a quaint notion, totally suitable for a high school debate tournament but a complete disaster on the Internet. You might believe you're eviscerating someone's fact-free argument while putting them in their place, but all you're really doing is spreading the stupidity and hatred over a wider surface. You're feeding the algorithms, and the algorithms are not your friends.
One of my cardinal rules is that it's impossible to argue with an imbecile, a drunk, or a lunatic without sounding like an imbecile, a drunk, or a lunatic. So don't do it. Make that your New Years resolution for 2024. Want to make the Internet better? Don't acknowledge these people. Don't interact. Mock, block, and move on. [6]"
I don't want to dredge up the traumatic past, but I'm morbidly curious about what's a Beatle troll agenda is. I can probably guess, but was it just bomb throwing, contrarianism, and "i-love-this-thing-so-much-I-hate-it" type stuff (Revolver sucks, they're all racists, you suck for liking them)? In other words taking the fun out of it?
I'm sure that I can't be the first to point out that if Substack is a publisher then someone would have made the decision to "publish" either your writing or mine in this forum. But of course, no such decision was made.
Not to mention this handwringing about whether or not the drooling masses of the internet are sophisticated enough to understand Nazi satire when they see it goes miles to explain why Substack's ruling class doesn't want to get into the business of deciding what is or isn't "too Nazi" for the benefit of online lynch mobs who are irrationally upset about some perceived slight all day, every day.
Ashley, if you define "a publisher" that narrowly--as Substack encourages us to do--then your conclusion is obvious. No, they don't function precisely like a book publisher, in that every piece is submitted to them, reviewed by editors, and then accepted or rejected.
But they aren't really that different from someone with an Op-Ed sinecure at NYT or WaPo--two outfits that are unquestionably "publishers" in the most traditional sense. David Brooks, Maureen Dowd, Bret Stephens, Russ Douthat--these first-person writers are NOT having each piece accepted or rejected, not like they were coming in over the transom. They are NOT undergoing any kind of intensive, forensic editing process because...look at their work, which is so frequently full of obvious holes. NYT/Web is basically their Substack, for the same reasons--they "drive engagement" or give NYT the appearance of balance, or their "contrarianism" pleases ownership in some way.
Substack thinks it can somehow sidestep a publisher's responsibility by claiming they don't moderate ("see, look, we allowed Gerber to publish his piece without editing so we are not a publisher"). But 1) that doesn't abrogate Substack's responsibility for the informational environment **it creates and profits from**, any more than the NYT's lowered standards for its Op-Ed staff. And 2) Substack
a) DOES exercise editorial selection via its TOS (no porn or SW);
b) has a funding model of selling subscriptions, and taking a cut of those sales;
c) it uses a uniform graphic environment, which it developed and maintains, to confer institutional legitimacy on each individual writer and each piece;
d) it controls distribution of the material;
e) it uses crosspromotion to increase sales of individual newsletters;
f) it solicits material from writers that it feels will increase its circulation;
and so forth. I'm sure I could think of others, as anybody could.
Looked at this way, it's asinine to call Substack anything BUT a publisher, and since they're so determined to avoid that label, the question must be asked: why? Why do they want to pretend to be some new thing, subject to new rules? And my answer to that--which I think is by this time utterly obvious--is that they saw that conventional publishing is a very difficult dollar not because there isn't demand--people want content--but that quality requires a LOT of support staff. So they redefined an old business in a way that made them able to keep a lot more money up at the top, and spent a lot of that saved money pushing out messaging that provides them cover. It's just like all these other tech "disruptions." Believe them if you want; believe Uber and the "gig economy" has truly liberated people; believe that Prime with ads is vastly different than ad-supported TV. Thirty years in, I think we're finding a lot of this tech PR is bullshit, and that we would've been better off adding to/improving the old versions of this stuff--saving all those jobs, preserving all that institutional knowledge--rather than having to remake it all amidst the ruins, after the bright young billionaires scarper off with all their money.
As to my "hand-wringing," the answer to online lynch mobs isn't to fear them and so not moderate, it's to eliminate their power, via moderation. Substack "doesn't want to get into the business" of publishing, but my point is: they're already IN it, and the only question is, will they be responsible ("we don't publish Nazis") or just go for the buck?
They were HIRED. A decision was made to PUBLISH their work. They can be FIRED and no longer PUBLISHED. In the meantime, your inference that their writing for NYT/WaPo is subject to no editing process (I'm sure their editors would be surprised to hear this), yet somehow Substack's no-porn TOS policy DOES count as "editing," is nonsensical. You're weaving all over the road here.
"it uses a uniform graphic environment, which it developed and maintains, to confer institutional legitimacy on each individual writer and each piece;"
My Facebook page has the same layout as Nike's. Has "institutional legitimacy" been bestowed on both of us?
"it controls distribution of the material"
Because it's more like a distributor than a publisher.
"has a funding model of selling subscriptions, and taking a cut of those sales"
Does this mean anyone taking a cut of my online sales is a publisher? Patreon? Etsy? Amazon? Or is it that anyone "following my work," as on Facebook, is "subscribing," making any social media outlet a "publisher?" Does money have to change hands here or is any platform that provides an opportunity to "subscribe" "publishing" my work?
"it solicits material from writers that it feels will increase its circulation"
Were you solicited? I wasn't. What percentage of Substack content do you suppose is solicited in this way? .0005%? Less?
"Substack "doesn't want to get into the business" of publishing"
That's not what I said. Again, you insist on shoehorning this publisher label into the discussion where it doesn't belong. I said they didn't want to get into the business (as in do the work of) content moderation. You're inferring that any online platform blocking kiddie porn is a "publisher" because they're "editing." And they're all "publishers" by that measure, despite the fact that they review no submissions, take no other editorial control over individual contributions, or do any of the other editorial work ordinarily associated with traditional publishing.
Sorry, but you can make your argument that Substack should police its content without this shaky attempt to stick the publisher label on them. When American Bystander allows me to upload my work into the magazine with no editorial say-so and prints it, along with anyone else's work who wants in, then we can start comparing that to what Substack does.
@Ashley, thanks for the substantive discussion here. I see this as a wrangle over semantics, but I'll engage in the same spirit.
"They were HIRED. A decision was made to PUBLISH their work."
Did Substack not HIRE a bunch of writers at the beginning (Substack Pro)? Were they not then, even by your narrow definition, acting as a publisher? That these writers (theoretically) paid Substack back over time via revenue-sharing is no different than a book advance paid out by a publisher, and paid by via future sales.
"(I'm sure their editors would be surprised to hear this)"
The "editing" over at NYT Op-Ed has become an embarrassment, and reflects our unquestionably degraded political and journalistic culture. You are free to disagree, but I was working with NYT Op-Ed in 1995, and it wasn't the clown car it is today; they had real cultural gravitas, which they worked to protect, and which came from following certain rules. If Jon Katz had published an article in The Atlantic in 1995 that said, "NYT Op-Ed is publishing a bunch of Nazis," NYT Op-Ed would've immediately disavowed that material, and fired the editors responsible for it. EOD, no discussion. And that's a GOOD thing. And today's NYT, which has so much less gravitas, would be less quick to disavow, and much slipperier, because they would think, as Substack did, "Are we gonna lose money? Are we going to be a culture war target? Is there a market in Nazis?"
This is not progress.
"yet somehow Substack's no-porn TOS policy DOES count as "editing," is nonsensical"
No it's not; the essential difference between a "publisher" and a "platform" is that the "platform" asks to be shielded from the cultural responsibilities of a publisher because it is somehow a neutral vehicle for communication, something close to, if not actually, a utility. If Substack says "Yes to Steely Dan but no to sex workers," it is no longer a neutral vehicle; it is acting as a (my word) publisher. You may pick another word, but it's definitely not a neutral vehicle for communication shielded from responsibility by that neutrality.
All these digital outfits, whether it's Substack or Twitter or Facebook, publish and promote certain things and types of things, and choose not to publish and promote certain things and certain types of things, solely for their own monetary benefit--in my words, they act like a publisher. But whenever it is convenient, they define themselves as a "platform," this new privately owned, yet utility-like thing that the tech world has defined for itself and foisted on the rest of us, mostly as a way to privatize the gains ($$$) and externalize the losses (misinformation, antagonism, even bloodshed). "We're definitely owed the profits, but we're definitely NOT responsible for that massacre that we spread. We're just a platform!"
"Because it's more like a distributor than a publisher."
Once it ain't a neutral don't-look-at-us-we're-just-the-phone-company "platform," it really doesn't matter what old-pub name you call it.
"Does this mean anyone taking a cut of my online sales is a publisher? Patreon? Etsy? Amazon?"
I would suspect that Patreon's TOS would not allow Nazis; I suspect Amazon's TOS doesn't allow self-published Nazi stuff on KDP or CreateSpace, but of course they do allow copies of Mein Kampf to be sold by other publishers on the main site. I think these kinds of nuances are appropriate, and show that these entities are taking their responsibility seriously. It is the fundamental unseriousness of Substack's handling of this matter that I object to. They might just as well have written "Sunshine is the best disinfectant!!!!" in Notes; there was no sense that they knew the history of this particular ideology, or Capital's consistent underestimation of its particular power and negative consequences.
"My Facebook page has the same layout as Nike's. Has "institutional legitimacy" been bestowed on both of us?"
As a professional graphic designer, I would argue unquestionably yes, it has. If something crazy looks the same as non-crazy stuff all around it, the reader is more likely to accept the crazy stuff. And I would argue that, while you might not agree with me, the spread of disinfo has been massively helped by just this graphic sameness. Back in the day, LaRouche pamphlets and Jack Chick did not appear next to, or look indistinguishable from, stuff from the NYT. Now, it's just another post on your Facebook/Twitter/Substack feed. Who does this benefit? Not readers. Not "the marketplace of ideas." The manufacturers of ivermectin, I guess? And the businesses that make money from engagement and sharing and blah-blah-blah.
"Were you solicited? I wasn't. What percentage of Substack content do you suppose is solicited in this way? .0005%? Less?"
I say to thee once again: Substack Pro. Which they did to become the dominant player in the space, as any publisher would. Once you're the dominant player, you can let riff-raff like me in, and make money on the margins. Publishing 101.
"You're inferring that any online platform blocking kiddie porn is a "publisher" because they're "editing."
And you're mischaracterizing Substack's policy as being solely about "kiddie porn"--which we all can agree is abhorrent--to make Substack seem ethical and responsible, and to cast aspersions on anybody who disagrees. It's a blanket prohibition on anything **they judge as salacious**, and also sex work. I think the former is (for good or bad) exactly the behavior publishers have exhibited in the past, and the latter is simply unjust.
It's Substack's right to bar anything it wants for what it perceives to be the good of the community. If they want to bar sex, fair enough; but I would say that Nazi ideology is inherently dangerous, and has no redeeming social value, and should be barred. Others may differ, but I think I've done more than my bit explaining why, and nothing anybody has said has made me question the wisdom of barring Nazis on Substack.
Substack, and all these new-media doohickeys are not, in the end, all that new, and they should be held to the same account as publishers have for centuries. I don't think you can ethically run a service like Substack without moderation, and ideally lots of editors. Just like you can't run a meat-packing plant--or shouldn't--without lots of inspectors. This doesn't strike me as an outrageous point, and we shouldn't have to re-enact "The Jungle" every 100 years because people wanna make money by putting rat-heads in the bratwurst. Similarly, we shouldn't have to re-enact Weimar, only with nukes, because a bunch of techlords don't know history.
We'd both agree that Substack isn't the same thing as Bystander; what I'm saying is I think its function and goals are close enough to some kind of old-fashioned publishing entity, or a mix of them, that accepting their self-definition as "a platform" makes something very simple--NO NAZIS--into a something oh-so-very complicated, oh-so-very-new-media, oh-so-very-let's-argue-definitions-in-the-comments. That Hamish & Co. couldn't simply say, as the NYT in 1995 would've, or Bystander would've, "Oh shit! Sorry. Yes, obviously, no Nazis! They're booted!" suggests that either they don't understand their responsibility, or they deny it for money, and try to cover their lack of morality with PR. I have no idea why anybody would want to go to bat for that behavior, especially if you know what happens to reasonable people when Nazis take over a space. Any space.
Yes, let's do that. Though we don't have to look too far because "platform" seems to be working nicely for everyone else having this discussion. You're bending over backwards to try to equate "responsibility" with "publishing," and I'm saying this is limiting the necessary discussion in a detrimental way.
Platforming creators has, for all intents and purposes, replaced the old-fashioned model of publishing. If you insist on disallowing Substack the designation of "platform" then you're the one giving them special status in this debate. The larger and more essential question in the internet age is whether or not platforms - Facebook, Twitter, Patreon, Wordpress, Wix, Amazon Marketplace, Etsy, et al. - have a responsibility to police the content uploaded to their site (and whether or not blocking violations to the Terms of Service is a substantial enough level of policing).
By your ever-expanding definition, all of the above are "publishers." In which case, trying to distinguish Substack's self-policing (or lack thereof) from Instagram's seems self-defeating. I suspect you WANT Substack to be something apart from just another social media maelstrom - and perhaps Substack initially promoted themselves that way - but their idiotic move toward this very Notes scrollfest has been the most obvious indicator that they are not special in the world of platforms at all.
So I'd suggest meeting them on their own terms. Yes, Substack is a platform. Platforming shares similarities with publishing, but is clearly NOT publishing as we traditionally think of it. That being the case, how, if at all, should this change the terms of how content is moderated? And from your standpoint, should the standards of publishing apply to platforming? (Should we all be assigned editors? If we were, it would be an AI effort, and we know how well that would work.)
As it is, you're suggesting that Substack should be held to higher standards than Wordpress, and I can't for the life of me see how this is supposed to help your argument.
So much to reply to here, and no time to do so, but:
1) Why should I, or anyone, “meet substack on their own terms”? Especially if doing so allows them to actually harm intellectual and political life by “platforming” Nazis? Why should we not hold them to the very reasonable and well-defined standards of Old Publishing?
2) “Should we be assigned editors?” This model wouldn’t allow Substack to get rich (they probably won’t anyway; last I read they were in a precarious spot), but it would provide employment for many, many editor-types, so…maybe yes? I once had a piece of advice from Charlie Daly, who was then CEO of Reed-Elsevier. He said, “Mike, there are lots of better ways to make money. We do this to provide a good product, and give good jobs to people.” I agree with this.
3) I used Wordpress every day for 15 years. Substack is not Wordpress in intent, functionality, or as a business. Substack has a whole sharing-spreading-promotion element, which—to my mind—makes Nazi content much more dangerous. Substack is built to SPREAD and AMPLIFY in a way Wordpress is not.
Your wife sounds very wise. I've taken hiatus from social media in the past due to the abuse (and that was on Linkedin! Linkedin, ffs). Is it worthwhile? You can't argue with people who refuse to listen. Its tiring. Happy New Year Michael!
For half a year I've immersed myself in the history, literature, & music of Austria, which was even more culturally dependent on "Jews" than Germany & even more enthusiastically antisemitic (Göring had to call out the SS to rein in the homegrown persecution; it was bad for business), & then after defeat leveraged the freshly minted Cold War to spin themselves as Germany's first victim.
Also, Michael O'Donoghue was my favorite Lampoon writer.
So, as you might imagine, I'm eager to read your piece. Any chance of it appearing in the Bystander? Or here, behind a paywall?
Your reticence is understandable, though. Karl Kraus, the most notoriously outspoken of Austrian satirists, chose not to publish his own anti-Nazi book in 1933, & it would take some deranged bad-assery to go where Karl Kraus fears to tread.
@Ray, I'll consider running the piece in the next Bystander if it doesn't seem too too out of date.
O'Donoghue's Nazi stuff -- and there is so much of it -- only works because it took place in a cultural milieu of universal horror and revulsion. "Children's Letters to the Gestapo" only works as shock-humor because in 1972, the Gestapo was seen as humanity at its worst. If you ran that piece today, you'd get a ton more outrage--and weird Nazi-love--precisely because people today do not see sweet old ladies with numbers on their arms walking around department stores. Since I did see that all the time in St. Louis in the 1970s, it falls to me to say, "Hey! Fuckers! Take Nazis seriously!"
No doubt there'd be a similar reaction to MO'D's "The Vietnamese Baby Book." He walked a very thin line with this and the "Gestapo" piece because his satiric target -- at least one of them -- was the disconnect between the mawkish sentimentality associated with childhood -- children as our future -- and "humanity at its worst," as you call it, Michael. This lifted both pieces to the level of Swiftian satire, a satire aimed at mankind's amour propre more than anything else. Unfortunately mawkish sentimentality has made a particularly strong comeback over the past few decades, so I'm not sure that such essays in satire can work in this culture.
I don't think it's as much an increase in mawkish sentimentality, as a sense that "WTF is reading this piece? I can't assume they'll follow me" and so you don't take the risk. MO'D and all the others at Lampoon were INSULATED from readers in ways we can't even remember -- yes, MO'D got dynamite mailed to him, but that was a supporter. Nobody was swatting O'Donoghue, and today you better believe they would.
@Thomas, there is nothing wrong with writing for yourself, especially fiction. Stripped of narcissism and craving, I think writing could be good exercise for the soul. (I will let you know if I can strip it. :-)
Excellent as always, Mike. Indeed, suggesting that we simply must out-argue Nazis is sort of like suggesting that Constitutional violations should be adjudicated at the ballot box.
My cousins lived in U-city and Clayton. They weren't particularly "fast", although one did enterprisingly import "rugs" from Afghanistan before the Soviet invasion. "Rugs".
Monkey Business is hardcore. Doesn’t get enough consideration. I’m nuts over SJ Perelman. My mother saw the Marx Brothers in their touring stage acts in St. Louis, and they must’ve been unimaginably hilarious.
If you get a chance, a few films worth seeing: American Fiction, of course. Also, She Came to Me. Full of surprise, gloriously strange and smart. I also admired Past Lives, delicate and honest. Rye Lane was lovely. And Rise, Cédric Klapisch’s film about dancers, was fabulous.
Saw Monkey Business and A Day at the Races.
Was your mom in StL, Neal? I grew up there.
Now I want to read your Nazi piece so badly and make the worst comments possible.. just so an underpaid moderator can clean up my mess. Alas. You won't publish and Substack won't moderate.
Pieces are always better in your head, I've found.
Comments too.
Brilliant, Michael. You remain a badass. Best for the year and years ahead.
Thank you, Neal! And a wonderful 2024 to you, as well! Started the year with some Marx Brothers, as is my wont.
fellow 35 year publishing guy here. You are spot on with all of it.
So what do we do, Dan? Wait it out? The business models are all shit (as with stuff like Uber) but the problem is, nobody’s been trained in the old ways. That’s why I’m doing my print humor mag bystander, but damn few people are stupid enough to get up on that cross. What’s your sense of all this?
Well, death will come for all of us eventually. So we have that to look forward to.
I love AB, by the way. Always get a hearty laugh out of it (except when it's about Nazis).
The business model is, sadly, the one you and I are both pursuing to some extent -- personalized newsletters. If you can get a small but dedicated paying audience, you avoid most of the problems of publishing on the Interwebs. And then, of course, you find out the tools you are using to do that are also being used by the WORST PEOPLE ON THE PLANET.
I am planning to write something about this on my substack today, inspired by yours. I'll share a link when it's up.
And here it is:
https://open.substack.com/pub/crankyolddan/p/why-the-internet-sucks-and-what-you
Dan, I loved this.
So good:
"Subjecting ideas to open discourse" is a quaint notion, totally suitable for a high school debate tournament but a complete disaster on the Internet. You might believe you're eviscerating someone's fact-free argument while putting them in their place, but all you're really doing is spreading the stupidity and hatred over a wider surface. You're feeding the algorithms, and the algorithms are not your friends.
One of my cardinal rules is that it's impossible to argue with an imbecile, a drunk, or a lunatic without sounding like an imbecile, a drunk, or a lunatic. So don't do it. Make that your New Years resolution for 2024. Want to make the Internet better? Don't acknowledge these people. Don't interact. Mock, block, and move on. [6]"
Thanks Michael, I appreciate it.
This was so damn good.
Thank you Julie!
Alas. We are deprived of the Nazis being taken out behind the woodshed one more time for another grand, and well-deserved, shellacking.
Happy New Year anyway.
Great collection of posts on this topic Michael.
I don't want to dredge up the traumatic past, but I'm morbidly curious about what's a Beatle troll agenda is. I can probably guess, but was it just bomb throwing, contrarianism, and "i-love-this-thing-so-much-I-hate-it" type stuff (Revolver sucks, they're all racists, you suck for liking them)? In other words taking the fun out of it?
I'm sure that I can't be the first to point out that if Substack is a publisher then someone would have made the decision to "publish" either your writing or mine in this forum. But of course, no such decision was made.
Not to mention this handwringing about whether or not the drooling masses of the internet are sophisticated enough to understand Nazi satire when they see it goes miles to explain why Substack's ruling class doesn't want to get into the business of deciding what is or isn't "too Nazi" for the benefit of online lynch mobs who are irrationally upset about some perceived slight all day, every day.
Ashley, if you define "a publisher" that narrowly--as Substack encourages us to do--then your conclusion is obvious. No, they don't function precisely like a book publisher, in that every piece is submitted to them, reviewed by editors, and then accepted or rejected.
But they aren't really that different from someone with an Op-Ed sinecure at NYT or WaPo--two outfits that are unquestionably "publishers" in the most traditional sense. David Brooks, Maureen Dowd, Bret Stephens, Russ Douthat--these first-person writers are NOT having each piece accepted or rejected, not like they were coming in over the transom. They are NOT undergoing any kind of intensive, forensic editing process because...look at their work, which is so frequently full of obvious holes. NYT/Web is basically their Substack, for the same reasons--they "drive engagement" or give NYT the appearance of balance, or their "contrarianism" pleases ownership in some way.
Substack thinks it can somehow sidestep a publisher's responsibility by claiming they don't moderate ("see, look, we allowed Gerber to publish his piece without editing so we are not a publisher"). But 1) that doesn't abrogate Substack's responsibility for the informational environment **it creates and profits from**, any more than the NYT's lowered standards for its Op-Ed staff. And 2) Substack
a) DOES exercise editorial selection via its TOS (no porn or SW);
b) has a funding model of selling subscriptions, and taking a cut of those sales;
c) it uses a uniform graphic environment, which it developed and maintains, to confer institutional legitimacy on each individual writer and each piece;
d) it controls distribution of the material;
e) it uses crosspromotion to increase sales of individual newsletters;
f) it solicits material from writers that it feels will increase its circulation;
and so forth. I'm sure I could think of others, as anybody could.
Looked at this way, it's asinine to call Substack anything BUT a publisher, and since they're so determined to avoid that label, the question must be asked: why? Why do they want to pretend to be some new thing, subject to new rules? And my answer to that--which I think is by this time utterly obvious--is that they saw that conventional publishing is a very difficult dollar not because there isn't demand--people want content--but that quality requires a LOT of support staff. So they redefined an old business in a way that made them able to keep a lot more money up at the top, and spent a lot of that saved money pushing out messaging that provides them cover. It's just like all these other tech "disruptions." Believe them if you want; believe Uber and the "gig economy" has truly liberated people; believe that Prime with ads is vastly different than ad-supported TV. Thirty years in, I think we're finding a lot of this tech PR is bullshit, and that we would've been better off adding to/improving the old versions of this stuff--saving all those jobs, preserving all that institutional knowledge--rather than having to remake it all amidst the ruins, after the bright young billionaires scarper off with all their money.
As to my "hand-wringing," the answer to online lynch mobs isn't to fear them and so not moderate, it's to eliminate their power, via moderation. Substack "doesn't want to get into the business" of publishing, but my point is: they're already IN it, and the only question is, will they be responsible ("we don't publish Nazis") or just go for the buck?
"David Brooks, Maureen Dowd, Bret Stephens, Russ Douthat"
They were HIRED. A decision was made to PUBLISH their work. They can be FIRED and no longer PUBLISHED. In the meantime, your inference that their writing for NYT/WaPo is subject to no editing process (I'm sure their editors would be surprised to hear this), yet somehow Substack's no-porn TOS policy DOES count as "editing," is nonsensical. You're weaving all over the road here.
"it uses a uniform graphic environment, which it developed and maintains, to confer institutional legitimacy on each individual writer and each piece;"
My Facebook page has the same layout as Nike's. Has "institutional legitimacy" been bestowed on both of us?
"it controls distribution of the material"
Because it's more like a distributor than a publisher.
"has a funding model of selling subscriptions, and taking a cut of those sales"
Does this mean anyone taking a cut of my online sales is a publisher? Patreon? Etsy? Amazon? Or is it that anyone "following my work," as on Facebook, is "subscribing," making any social media outlet a "publisher?" Does money have to change hands here or is any platform that provides an opportunity to "subscribe" "publishing" my work?
"it solicits material from writers that it feels will increase its circulation"
Were you solicited? I wasn't. What percentage of Substack content do you suppose is solicited in this way? .0005%? Less?
"Substack "doesn't want to get into the business" of publishing"
That's not what I said. Again, you insist on shoehorning this publisher label into the discussion where it doesn't belong. I said they didn't want to get into the business (as in do the work of) content moderation. You're inferring that any online platform blocking kiddie porn is a "publisher" because they're "editing." And they're all "publishers" by that measure, despite the fact that they review no submissions, take no other editorial control over individual contributions, or do any of the other editorial work ordinarily associated with traditional publishing.
Sorry, but you can make your argument that Substack should police its content without this shaky attempt to stick the publisher label on them. When American Bystander allows me to upload my work into the magazine with no editorial say-so and prints it, along with anyone else's work who wants in, then we can start comparing that to what Substack does.
@Ashley, thanks for the substantive discussion here. I see this as a wrangle over semantics, but I'll engage in the same spirit.
"They were HIRED. A decision was made to PUBLISH their work."
Did Substack not HIRE a bunch of writers at the beginning (Substack Pro)? Were they not then, even by your narrow definition, acting as a publisher? That these writers (theoretically) paid Substack back over time via revenue-sharing is no different than a book advance paid out by a publisher, and paid by via future sales.
"(I'm sure their editors would be surprised to hear this)"
The "editing" over at NYT Op-Ed has become an embarrassment, and reflects our unquestionably degraded political and journalistic culture. You are free to disagree, but I was working with NYT Op-Ed in 1995, and it wasn't the clown car it is today; they had real cultural gravitas, which they worked to protect, and which came from following certain rules. If Jon Katz had published an article in The Atlantic in 1995 that said, "NYT Op-Ed is publishing a bunch of Nazis," NYT Op-Ed would've immediately disavowed that material, and fired the editors responsible for it. EOD, no discussion. And that's a GOOD thing. And today's NYT, which has so much less gravitas, would be less quick to disavow, and much slipperier, because they would think, as Substack did, "Are we gonna lose money? Are we going to be a culture war target? Is there a market in Nazis?"
This is not progress.
"yet somehow Substack's no-porn TOS policy DOES count as "editing," is nonsensical"
No it's not; the essential difference between a "publisher" and a "platform" is that the "platform" asks to be shielded from the cultural responsibilities of a publisher because it is somehow a neutral vehicle for communication, something close to, if not actually, a utility. If Substack says "Yes to Steely Dan but no to sex workers," it is no longer a neutral vehicle; it is acting as a (my word) publisher. You may pick another word, but it's definitely not a neutral vehicle for communication shielded from responsibility by that neutrality.
All these digital outfits, whether it's Substack or Twitter or Facebook, publish and promote certain things and types of things, and choose not to publish and promote certain things and certain types of things, solely for their own monetary benefit--in my words, they act like a publisher. But whenever it is convenient, they define themselves as a "platform," this new privately owned, yet utility-like thing that the tech world has defined for itself and foisted on the rest of us, mostly as a way to privatize the gains ($$$) and externalize the losses (misinformation, antagonism, even bloodshed). "We're definitely owed the profits, but we're definitely NOT responsible for that massacre that we spread. We're just a platform!"
"Because it's more like a distributor than a publisher."
Once it ain't a neutral don't-look-at-us-we're-just-the-phone-company "platform," it really doesn't matter what old-pub name you call it.
"Does this mean anyone taking a cut of my online sales is a publisher? Patreon? Etsy? Amazon?"
I would suspect that Patreon's TOS would not allow Nazis; I suspect Amazon's TOS doesn't allow self-published Nazi stuff on KDP or CreateSpace, but of course they do allow copies of Mein Kampf to be sold by other publishers on the main site. I think these kinds of nuances are appropriate, and show that these entities are taking their responsibility seriously. It is the fundamental unseriousness of Substack's handling of this matter that I object to. They might just as well have written "Sunshine is the best disinfectant!!!!" in Notes; there was no sense that they knew the history of this particular ideology, or Capital's consistent underestimation of its particular power and negative consequences.
"My Facebook page has the same layout as Nike's. Has "institutional legitimacy" been bestowed on both of us?"
As a professional graphic designer, I would argue unquestionably yes, it has. If something crazy looks the same as non-crazy stuff all around it, the reader is more likely to accept the crazy stuff. And I would argue that, while you might not agree with me, the spread of disinfo has been massively helped by just this graphic sameness. Back in the day, LaRouche pamphlets and Jack Chick did not appear next to, or look indistinguishable from, stuff from the NYT. Now, it's just another post on your Facebook/Twitter/Substack feed. Who does this benefit? Not readers. Not "the marketplace of ideas." The manufacturers of ivermectin, I guess? And the businesses that make money from engagement and sharing and blah-blah-blah.
"Were you solicited? I wasn't. What percentage of Substack content do you suppose is solicited in this way? .0005%? Less?"
I say to thee once again: Substack Pro. Which they did to become the dominant player in the space, as any publisher would. Once you're the dominant player, you can let riff-raff like me in, and make money on the margins. Publishing 101.
"You're inferring that any online platform blocking kiddie porn is a "publisher" because they're "editing."
And you're mischaracterizing Substack's policy as being solely about "kiddie porn"--which we all can agree is abhorrent--to make Substack seem ethical and responsible, and to cast aspersions on anybody who disagrees. It's a blanket prohibition on anything **they judge as salacious**, and also sex work. I think the former is (for good or bad) exactly the behavior publishers have exhibited in the past, and the latter is simply unjust.
It's Substack's right to bar anything it wants for what it perceives to be the good of the community. If they want to bar sex, fair enough; but I would say that Nazi ideology is inherently dangerous, and has no redeeming social value, and should be barred. Others may differ, but I think I've done more than my bit explaining why, and nothing anybody has said has made me question the wisdom of barring Nazis on Substack.
Substack, and all these new-media doohickeys are not, in the end, all that new, and they should be held to the same account as publishers have for centuries. I don't think you can ethically run a service like Substack without moderation, and ideally lots of editors. Just like you can't run a meat-packing plant--or shouldn't--without lots of inspectors. This doesn't strike me as an outrageous point, and we shouldn't have to re-enact "The Jungle" every 100 years because people wanna make money by putting rat-heads in the bratwurst. Similarly, we shouldn't have to re-enact Weimar, only with nukes, because a bunch of techlords don't know history.
We'd both agree that Substack isn't the same thing as Bystander; what I'm saying is I think its function and goals are close enough to some kind of old-fashioned publishing entity, or a mix of them, that accepting their self-definition as "a platform" makes something very simple--NO NAZIS--into a something oh-so-very complicated, oh-so-very-new-media, oh-so-very-let's-argue-definitions-in-the-comments. That Hamish & Co. couldn't simply say, as the NYT in 1995 would've, or Bystander would've, "Oh shit! Sorry. Yes, obviously, no Nazis! They're booted!" suggests that either they don't understand their responsibility, or they deny it for money, and try to cover their lack of morality with PR. I have no idea why anybody would want to go to bat for that behavior, especially if you know what happens to reasonable people when Nazis take over a space. Any space.
Thanks for the chat.
"You may pick another word..."
Yes, let's do that. Though we don't have to look too far because "platform" seems to be working nicely for everyone else having this discussion. You're bending over backwards to try to equate "responsibility" with "publishing," and I'm saying this is limiting the necessary discussion in a detrimental way.
Platforming creators has, for all intents and purposes, replaced the old-fashioned model of publishing. If you insist on disallowing Substack the designation of "platform" then you're the one giving them special status in this debate. The larger and more essential question in the internet age is whether or not platforms - Facebook, Twitter, Patreon, Wordpress, Wix, Amazon Marketplace, Etsy, et al. - have a responsibility to police the content uploaded to their site (and whether or not blocking violations to the Terms of Service is a substantial enough level of policing).
By your ever-expanding definition, all of the above are "publishers." In which case, trying to distinguish Substack's self-policing (or lack thereof) from Instagram's seems self-defeating. I suspect you WANT Substack to be something apart from just another social media maelstrom - and perhaps Substack initially promoted themselves that way - but their idiotic move toward this very Notes scrollfest has been the most obvious indicator that they are not special in the world of platforms at all.
So I'd suggest meeting them on their own terms. Yes, Substack is a platform. Platforming shares similarities with publishing, but is clearly NOT publishing as we traditionally think of it. That being the case, how, if at all, should this change the terms of how content is moderated? And from your standpoint, should the standards of publishing apply to platforming? (Should we all be assigned editors? If we were, it would be an AI effort, and we know how well that would work.)
As it is, you're suggesting that Substack should be held to higher standards than Wordpress, and I can't for the life of me see how this is supposed to help your argument.
So much to reply to here, and no time to do so, but:
1) Why should I, or anyone, “meet substack on their own terms”? Especially if doing so allows them to actually harm intellectual and political life by “platforming” Nazis? Why should we not hold them to the very reasonable and well-defined standards of Old Publishing?
2) “Should we be assigned editors?” This model wouldn’t allow Substack to get rich (they probably won’t anyway; last I read they were in a precarious spot), but it would provide employment for many, many editor-types, so…maybe yes? I once had a piece of advice from Charlie Daly, who was then CEO of Reed-Elsevier. He said, “Mike, there are lots of better ways to make money. We do this to provide a good product, and give good jobs to people.” I agree with this.
3) I used Wordpress every day for 15 years. Substack is not Wordpress in intent, functionality, or as a business. Substack has a whole sharing-spreading-promotion element, which—to my mind—makes Nazi content much more dangerous. Substack is built to SPREAD and AMPLIFY in a way Wordpress is not.
I think I’m done here, Ashley! Thank you!
Your wife sounds very wise. I've taken hiatus from social media in the past due to the abuse (and that was on Linkedin! Linkedin, ffs). Is it worthwhile? You can't argue with people who refuse to listen. Its tiring. Happy New Year Michael!
For half a year I've immersed myself in the history, literature, & music of Austria, which was even more culturally dependent on "Jews" than Germany & even more enthusiastically antisemitic (Göring had to call out the SS to rein in the homegrown persecution; it was bad for business), & then after defeat leveraged the freshly minted Cold War to spin themselves as Germany's first victim.
Also, Michael O'Donoghue was my favorite Lampoon writer.
So, as you might imagine, I'm eager to read your piece. Any chance of it appearing in the Bystander? Or here, behind a paywall?
Your reticence is understandable, though. Karl Kraus, the most notoriously outspoken of Austrian satirists, chose not to publish his own anti-Nazi book in 1933, & it would take some deranged bad-assery to go where Karl Kraus fears to tread.
@Ray, I'll consider running the piece in the next Bystander if it doesn't seem too too out of date.
O'Donoghue's Nazi stuff -- and there is so much of it -- only works because it took place in a cultural milieu of universal horror and revulsion. "Children's Letters to the Gestapo" only works as shock-humor because in 1972, the Gestapo was seen as humanity at its worst. If you ran that piece today, you'd get a ton more outrage--and weird Nazi-love--precisely because people today do not see sweet old ladies with numbers on their arms walking around department stores. Since I did see that all the time in St. Louis in the 1970s, it falls to me to say, "Hey! Fuckers! Take Nazis seriously!"
No doubt there'd be a similar reaction to MO'D's "The Vietnamese Baby Book." He walked a very thin line with this and the "Gestapo" piece because his satiric target -- at least one of them -- was the disconnect between the mawkish sentimentality associated with childhood -- children as our future -- and "humanity at its worst," as you call it, Michael. This lifted both pieces to the level of Swiftian satire, a satire aimed at mankind's amour propre more than anything else. Unfortunately mawkish sentimentality has made a particularly strong comeback over the past few decades, so I'm not sure that such essays in satire can work in this culture.
I don't think it's as much an increase in mawkish sentimentality, as a sense that "WTF is reading this piece? I can't assume they'll follow me" and so you don't take the risk. MO'D and all the others at Lampoon were INSULATED from readers in ways we can't even remember -- yes, MO'D got dynamite mailed to him, but that was a supporter. Nobody was swatting O'Donoghue, and today you better believe they would.
My Standard Reply is “U SUCK”. It’s hard to counter and I get my point across w/out spending unnecessary energy on numb skulls!
Well said. I've all but given up on writing fiction because of social media, for the reasons you state.
@Thomas, there is nothing wrong with writing for yourself, especially fiction. Stripped of narcissism and craving, I think writing could be good exercise for the soul. (I will let you know if I can strip it. :-)
Thank you Michael.
Excellent as always, Mike. Indeed, suggesting that we simply must out-argue Nazis is sort of like suggesting that Constitutional violations should be adjudicated at the ballot box.
I know a print publication that's perfect for your satirical Nazi piece...
Oh that’s RIGHT….:-)
I think their home was on Cornell.
I know. She was raised in Clayton and U-City. Left in ‘48 or so after marrying my dad, a Kansas Citian.
I almost went to Clayton High but my mom was afraid the kids were too “fast”.
My cousins lived in U-city and Clayton. They weren't particularly "fast", although one did enterprisingly import "rugs" from Afghanistan before the Soviet invasion. "Rugs".