> Substack is, just as a reminder, a political project made by extremists with a goal of normalizing a radical, hateful agenda by co-opting well-intentioned creators' work in service of cross-promoting attacks on the vulnerable. You don't have to take my word for it; Substack's CEO explicitly said they won't ban someone who is explicitly spouting hate, and when confronted with the rampant white supremacist propaganda that they are profiting from on their site, they took down... four of the Nazis. Four.
I understand that content moderation online is a nuanced topic, but… my impression of the Substack stance was that it boiled down to "one of our main values is free speech, and while we understand the desire for content moderation, we're going to lean towards letting people use our platform even if we disagree with what they're writing". Characterizing this as a "radical, hateful agenda" seems like… a stretch? Maybe I'm missing something here.
At first I thought that substack was part of the Thiel/Musk enterprise or some other messed up billionaire club of political engineering, but not much was offered. Say "Substak is . . . a political project made by extremists . . ." Can't see any evidence of it here.
The other angle I could see is Substack is algo'ing neo-nazi content to folks. But I can't go to cancel mode just for hosting. I can see that getting reductive - who's the hypersaler, who provided the electrons, who's sold them the servers . . . there is no end. It really needs to end with reader.
There's this continued idea to deplatform far-right bigots trying to make money online. Some will woefully let them speak their bile, but stop them at trying to make money. For example, you can't, if you're a nazi, start a Patreon.
You sure we absolutely need a newsletter website that is in a business arrangement with people who want to kill people based on the colour of their skin?
Not just letting them on the platform, allowing them to make money off off their bigotry.
Who do you think I am, Uncle Sam? Holding each others to standards of who we allow on our platforms has nothing to do with freedom of speech in the US constitution. The US constitution does not force anyone, even the government, to provide a platform.
> my impression of the Substack stance was that it boiled down to "one of our main values is free speech, and while we understand the desire for content moderation, we're going to lean towards letting people use our platform even if we disagree with what they're writing".
You have a bar, and you let anyone come in and say whatever they want, because you like free speech. At first it's just a normal bar. Then the local Nazi gang finds out about it, they show up and start saying Nazi shit to everyone. Everyone else stops coming because they don't want to hear Nazi shit, so, it's a Nazi bar now. The only people there are Nazis or people who don't mind drinking with Nazis. You say you aren't a Nazi, but you own the Nazi bar.
> Everyone else stops coming because they don't want to hear Nazi shit, so, it's a Nazi bar now.
There's plenty of non-Nazi writers enjoying a good amount of success on Substack, though? Or at least, as a casual Substack user, I'm not sure I've been exposed to any Nazi content…? So I'm not sure if this analogy holds up that well in this case.
I mean yeah, that's one way to spin it. But it's interesting to observe the dynamics in the work force and how that benefits some smaller companies that were having a hard time hiring before.
China bans platforms because they give access to information that embarrasses those in power. The US, here, is planning to ban a platform because it's a propaganda vector, and because its popularity has gotten to a point where we - as a society - at a serious risk of propaganda campaigns. All the information on TikTok is still available elsewhere - but we mitigate the opportunity for the Chinese Communist Party to mold what information is serviced to our constituents, and how that information is shaped.
Has the denial rate for all companies gone down? Or could it be that companies that were getting the most denials have submitted less petitions for H-1B workers?
Sponsoring an employee on an H-1B has become significantly harder in the past few years, especially because of the odds of the lottery decreasing year over year. Another theory could just be that with the increased cost and uncertainty of attempting to sponsor an employee on an H-1B, many companies are resorting to alternatives, clearing the field for companies that have a more genuine need for H-1B workers.
Because Santa Monica's housing element is currently out of compliance, the city will have very limited options to veto or block those projects. The decision to approve or reject those projects will fall to the State of California.
From reading the excerpt of the book Paris Marx quotes [0], Musk's criticism of the California HSR project seems focused on its cost & effectiveness (i.e. that the bullet train would be too slow, especially considering modern tech that's now available).
Another way to frame his comments would be to say that Musk wanted to suggest a better alternative to the HSR project. I'm not sure which framing is the more accurate (not that well versed on trains), but seems valuable to point out ; I'm not convinced by the framing that Musk unveiled Hyperloop because he secretly wanted _no train at all_.
I'm inclined to split the difference. He had legitimate criticisms and for the most part his ultimate goals seem beneficial, but at the same time he's self-interested and seems happy to ensure he's the one making the buck in the process.
I don't know how seriously anyone can take any of his criticisms, considering the lack of foresight into the physical possibilities of the things that he actually suggests. It's nonsense
Maintaining the vacuum of the hyperloop would have used more energy than it would have saved from friction and reducing air friction would not have gained any noticeable speed over a well designed bullet train
Plus have you seen the weird top heavy transportation thing he suggested lately? It's entirely absurd
And he's pushing stuff like the Boring Tunnel that's in Las Vegas which is such a downgrade from trains. They can transport a few thousand people per hour, but also still suffer from traffic congestion, orders of magnitude worse than rail systems overseas, or something like MTA in NYC. No one should be paying attention to his suggestions for public transportation.
I'm referring to the physical impossibility of the things he suggests. Barely anybody seems to notice how entirely unfeasible his ideas are.
That's besides the fact that he makes wild claims about his car tech while they have numerous quality control issues and never live up to those claims.
He's just a profiteer and I don't know why anyone listens to him
Besides the benefits or drawbacks of the 4-day workweek on its merits, it's worth remembering that behind the headlines such as "$COUNTRY tests $SOCIAL_CHANGE", it's usually some entity in $COUNTRY on a mission rather than an organization that's representative of the opinions of its population. Same thing has been happening with Scandinavian countries too – there's always a rotating cast of Sweden, Finland and Norway making such headlines. Usually, though, it's a smaller organization or a government agency that wouldn't have the power or influence to turn this pilot into transformative social change.
Minor nitpick - Finland is not a part of Scandinavia, which is a cultural/historical/linguistic concept, and is generally understood to mean Denmark, Sweden, Norway. If you want to include Finland, which is quite different linguistically historically, and to a lesser extent culturally , the correct term is Nordics.
As for the main point in your comment, yes and no. In Finland for instance, the UBI pilot was an official government pilot, thus it could be turned into official policy.
FWIW the app for my ING bank account in the Netherlands allowed me to move up the slider allows me to move up the slider for daily transfers up to 50k euros. A little scary, but thought it could be handy if I need to move money around one day. Probably a different regulatory context, though.
My dad loves to tell this story about him going to engineering school in France in the 70's. He was suggested to stay away from CS or software by his guidance counselors - the reasoning? "We'll soon enough have programs able to write themselves - studying to be a software engineer is a dead end".
I'm not sure that some common engineering problems now being solved doesn't just mean that we can now redistribute that workforce on other unsolved problems, or to build new products on-top of those solutions.
I had a similar experience in France in the early 2000s. I went to the unemployment office (ANPE) to ask for a training and they told me that software was a dead end and that it wasn't possible to get training. So I did my own research, found a training organization and went back to the unemployment office giving them the exact reference of the training I wanted. The exact same person then reluctantly pulled a drawer of her desk and gave me an application form. That training kick-started my career in software.
Another thing that was commonly said over the 2000s period is that all software jobs would be quickly outsourced to India. That didn't happen either. Some big companies obviously tried that (and some still do) but a lot of them eventually realized that software wasn't something you could just specify and outsource to a team far away, with a different time zone, culture and language and expect to magically get working software as a result. In the meantime, I think that demand for software in India has also grown. I laughed at loud when in the early 2010s I received an email from an Indian recruitment agent offering me to come work in India.
I understand that content moderation online is a nuanced topic, but… my impression of the Substack stance was that it boiled down to "one of our main values is free speech, and while we understand the desire for content moderation, we're going to lean towards letting people use our platform even if we disagree with what they're writing". Characterizing this as a "radical, hateful agenda" seems like… a stretch? Maybe I'm missing something here.