But again that’s my point. The amount of effort you had to put into determining whether the news source was valid was fairly high the case of the African news site. But if that was published on substack instead, the amount of effort would be the exact same, you’d still need to look up the site and see that it had no history. You’d need to look up the phrases, and see that they were copy pasted from other articles. Nothing about that site would have been any different in terms of moderation if it were substack based instead.

And like you said, in most cases it’s easy enough to spot disinfo with a google search or two, or checking the domain. But that would be true with substack too, you could to the exact same check you do for those sites for substack ones. Something like kenklippenstein.com is a unique domain, and should check out in the domain registry if you check. And if you google his name, his wikipedia article will show up and confirm he is a reputable independent journalist who posts on his substack page.

So if you’re willing to expend that effort on moderating other sites, blocking substack specifically is nonsensical imo. You’ve already admitted the amount of work you’re willing to put into verifying news sites which were previously unknown to you is fairly high, which is good. I respect the fact that you want to thoroughly investigate a site before declaring it unreliable. But if the acceptable amount of work is already such a high threshold, why is substack different?

Whether an article is on substack or not the process of checking it is the same. You can do a domain registry check, you can google the author and the name of the publication, you can copy segments from the article into google to see if they’re stolen. Nothing about the article being published on substack changes the moderation workload compared to any other site.

Like I said, my core question is what about substack specifically makes the actual process of moderation more difficult? That’s the part I don’t understand about your reasoning behind the ban. All of the examples of moderation you’ve given me so far just seem to reinforce my argument, that substack being banned is illogical, and choosing to allow it would not have a noticeable effect on moderation while allowing a wider variety of sources and independent journalists to be shared.

Exactly, so if one of those articles was posted, how would you tell it was disinformation? You’d look at the article, see the name of the outlet/website, Google it, and it would either pop up with results saying it’s a Russian disinformation campaign, or would have no results online if it was new since it was just created and hasn’t been reported on.

Now imagine the same scenario, but it’s a link to a substack based article. In order to check if it was disinfirmation, you’d look up the name of the outlet it claims to be, and it would either pop up with results about it being misninformation or have no results about it online.

In either case the effort to check if it’s disinfo is basically identical and the same amount of effort.

If instead of straight up disinfo you’re worried about too many blogs being posted that aren’t news, then all you’d need to do to check if it was news or not was just read a bit of the linked article, same as if you wanted to check if a random NYT article, for example, was an opinion piece or not.

So again, my real question is what about substack specifically makes the actual process of moderation more difficult?

If a substack article is posted it’s not too hard to verify if it’s legit, and you can even be more strict about what constitutes a valid substack link compared to what constitutes a valid “regular” news link, which I think makes sense to do. The number of substack articles posted doesn’t really seem like an issue either, since like I said barely any seem to be posted and removed each week. And either way if a substack blog is posted you either need to know and recognize the URL, which at that point you should also know whether the URL is for a blog or actual reporting that just happens to use substack, or if you don’t know the URL you need to open the link to check anyway, so why not spend maybe an extra minute to see if it’s legit first?

Again though, my point is if I wanted to push a political agenda, and do so in a way that would be time consuming to verify, I could do so by making/buying an HTML and CSS template, buying a couple domains for pretty cheap, getting chat-gpt to write me some fake articles to add content to the site, and then posting them as sources in something like Politics.

If I did that, the way to verify would be looking up the authors name, and seeing if it makes sense. Either the author won’t exist online and then you can remove it to be safe, or they will but they don’t work at “HDR News”, or “HDR News” won’t turn up in any other results because it’s made up.

There isn’t any inherent accountability to any website, it’s very easy to buy a domain and host a static site for free, and like I said, the barrier to entry is higher sure, but if someone wanted to do a disinformation campaign successfully they’d be better off pretending to be a real news website and not a blog anyway.

If instead someone posts a substack blog that’s just an opinion piece, it would be fairly easy to see that, just by opening the link and looking, the same as if someone posted a NYT opinion piece. How many news sites post editorials or opinions that you don’t want as a source too? Again, looking at the modlog those seem to be removed about as frequently as people post any substack article, opinion or otherwise.

And yeah, you can’t have a list of every single substack blog to reference/memorize, but you honestly can’t do that with websites either, since like I already said it’s not hard to buy a domain and host a misinformation news site.

The analogy you gave with “we ID anyone under 30” also doesn’t really fit. By outright banning substack its more like “We don’t serve anyone under 30.” In order to be what you said, the rule would have to be something like “substack is allowed but has a stricter standard required to be accepted as a source”, which I think would be very fair.

If this were something like tumblr, then yeah obviously it shouldn’t be accepted as a source. But since multiple reliable journalists do use substack as their host, it’s a lot less justifiable to outright ban it. All that does is lead to a bias towards corporate media which can afford web developers and hosting costs, and away from small, independent journalists that may be willing to report something that doesn’t get as much coverage, or gets biased coverage, by other, larger sources.

I mean a news site that doesn’t actually exist, full of fake articles, or just opinion pieces, or AI generated garbage, or straight up lies meant to trick people.

What’s the difference between that and a random substack blog with the same type of content? Presumably neither would be allowed, so why is the fact that one is substack based relevant? Either way it’s full of lies or opinions, and doesn’t constitute a reliable source for a post.

And if it did have actual reporting, same question. Why does the fact that the reporting was published via substack make it not allowed? The quality of the information is the same either way.

The fact that you have a list of non-allowed sites is kind of my point. You still need to verify when a new site is posted you aren’t familiar with, or if someone is trying to post misinformation via a site like Breitbart you recognize it and remove it.

So no matter what you need to spend the effort to moderate the sources posted. Why is substack banned in that case? Even without substack being allowed you gave me a list of multiple sites you (rightfully) don’t allow, as well as a site you only just learned about and banned the other day. So why would substack change anything in that case? Looking through the mod log substack links aren’t posted very often so it wouldn’t really be that much of an increase in effort, and just gets rid of potentially valid sources of news for no real reason.

My rebuttal to that is what if he set up a news website instead? Like I said in a previous message it’s not that hard to make a fake news site. It has a higher barrier to entry sure, but not one that’s impossible, anyone with a moderate amount of web design skills or like 50 bucks and access to fiverr could probably get one built for them.

In that case you’d get an article from it posted, read it/read the about us page, probably Google the name/authors name, and see that it’s non-existent and remove it. With substack the process is really the exact same, so banning substack specifically just feels arbitrary.

Also, specific sites known for extreme bias or disinformation are already banned right? So why isn’t substack handled the same way? There aren’t that many independent journalists on Substack people would be posting, I can think of like 2 or 3 sites I’ve seen. Any opinion piece would be banned for being an opinion piece anyway, regardless of where it was posted from originally, substack or otherwise.

Plus with these substack blogs, it’s not even something you can enforce without opening the article to see its on substack anyway. The URL for the ones ran by independent journalists don’t have any reference to substack in them, so you need to open it up and look at the site, which at that point taking an extra 15 seconds to check if it’s reliable isn’t that much more effort. And if you don’t need to open it because you recognize the URL, then you should also know whether that URL is for an actual journalist or someone spreading misinformation.

Basically it just feels like substack sites aren’t a unique problem that doesn’t also exist with “regular” websites which may or may not have misinformation or extreme bias.

Yeah I don’t blame you for the specific rules in News, I feel like the main point of disagreement we had was your reasoning for not allowing substack articles doesn’t really make sense to me. But regardless, we were definitely speaking past each other somewhat, so sorry about that.

I did assume you were a News mod by mistake, so sorry about that.

My overall point though is just that News seems to be inconsistently applying a rule which isn’t even really specified anywhere, and it would be nice if it was either clarified as a rule that any substack is banned, or not having substack alone as a grounds for removal, so that in the future anyone who posts an article from a reliable source that happens to use substack can’t just have it and any conversations arbitrarily removed.

That’s not really my issue though. I don’t care about following the rules, it’s fine my post technically might have broke the current rules, so it got removed because of it, whatever. It’s just weird that substack isn’t actually listed as being banned anywhere, the closest rule is rule 6, but I don’t think that this article should be classified as: “No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed,” when it’s not any of those. That plus the fact that other substack blogs have been posted as articles with no issue, and that the article which is now up only cites Klippenstein as where they got the info from just feels inconsistent. Like if Klippenstein is considered unreliable, then fine, I’d disagree but it wouldn’t be worth fighting over. But if that was the case then why is the gizmodo article not unreliable, if it’s based on an unreliable source? And if it’s specifically substack that’s an issue, why? And if so why are other substack articles posted there and kept up, including a different article from Klippersteins substack? I really just want it clarified if substack is banned, or klipperstein is banned, or both, or neither, and not have it be entirely up to the judgement of a given mod for a given article whether to enforce it, since that could lead to biased removals.

That’s not the community I posted it to, I posted it to News, since I know it’s US specific and I don’t want to flood world news with USA stuff since that’s already way too common online.

And again, that’s very much not what I’m saying. I’m saying that I posted this article in News. It was removed for being an unreliable source. Despite this, the 2 posts I linked are both from substack, and both posted on News. Not another similar community, but lemmy.world/c/news. One of those posts is from Ken Klippenstein, same as this one, and was posted to his substack blog. It’s on a topic you guys have been very heavy handed and aggressive in moderating this past week (not to start an argument about that in this thread, just bringing up the fact that posts and comments about this topic have been under increased scrutiny by the mods). Even so, that post was left up, and this one was removed.

Given that it seems like the News mod team was fine with these other posts from substack, and that kenklippenstein.com is a very unique URL, the same as any other news org would have, the argument that it’s harder to moderate doesn’t make any sense. The only meaningful difference between this substack page and a regular news website is that one is an independent journalist, and they use substack instead of a custom website design.

Either way, any independent journalist needs to be checked by the mods when someone posts an article from them, and given that Klippstein is the only source cited in the gizmodo article about this manifesto, clearly he must be considered a reliable source, since the gizmodo article wasn’t removed.

I get that, but I’m saying on lemmy.world/c/news there is a post by a moderator of another news community on your instance which is from a substack blog (another independent journalist, so I actually like the article being posted, I’m just mentioning it as an example). Obviously the rules differ between communities, but if a very similar community is fine with something, and so is the mod, and so are your mod team since you left it up for almost a day by now, then it seems odd to have that rule at all. And like I mentioned earlier, there is also a post from Ken Klippenstein’s substack that was posted a day ago now, and that one was also fine. I get that moderators can miss things, but this wasn’t a small post, and given it was on a subject you guys have been extremely aggressive (to put it lightly) in moderating, it seems likely that you guys saw it and made a decision that it was fine.

Like I said, I get why random blogs are banned, the point of a news community should be posting factual information from reliable sources. But you need to check each source anyway, at least the first time you see a specific URL, and since this substack page is only by Klippenstein, and has a very recognizable url, it shouldn’t be any more effort to moderate than any other news website. If all substack pages followed the url scheme of blogname.substack.com or something I’d get it more, since then it’s less of an independent page, but that’s not how it works.

The anarchist library is pretty good if you’re interested in anarchist theory.

The FAQ is a great starting point, I’d recommend jumping around though, it’s easier to get specific answers than reading straight through imo.

The librarian picks would also probably be a good place to look, one of the recommendations there is Emma Goldman who is great.

But like I said, News currently has multiple recent posts from multiple different substack blogs. One of which was posted by FlyingSquid, a moderator of the WorldNews community.

If the blog is private, from a unique URL, and is run by an independent journalist or group of journalists, how is that any more effort than checking any other type of website? I could steal a HTML/CSS template for a news site right now, whip up a site where I post misinformation, and buy a domain for like 10 bucks, and you’d have to go through a lot more effort to verify it as legit than it would take to open the substack blog, click about, and copy the name into your search engine.

If an article is by something like apnews then yeah it doesn’t take much effort to check, but if it’s by some other random page, like a lot of the posted articles are, you’d need to check it at least once before you knew it was fine, so what specifically about substack makes it a problem?

I can definitely see why someone not as well versed in anarchist history could believe that, or if they specifically meant against the insurance industry. Either way though, I think it’s important for people to know about that history of violence that led to meaningful social reforms. So many Americans think that workers rights, civil rights, and everything short of the abolishment rebranding of slavery was won through voting or peaceful protests.

Too many people believe that somehow a state has some divine morality granted to it, and justice can only happen within the confines of said state. No moral act can be carried out without the government sanctioning it, and any miscarriage of justice by the state is an abnormality.

There may be a monopoly on violence held by states against their people, but this doesn’t give them some inherent right to be the ultimate arbiters of justice. Something being legal does not make it moral, and just because an act is illegal doesn’t make it immoral.

That one has a few things about it that make it suspect. No way to definitively say it’s fake obviously, but stuff like the drive to the Aquarium, which would presumably be from Maryland to California, so like 40 hours straight worth of driving, being done by someone who had a bad back seems at least kinda unlikely. Like I said it’s not impossible it came from him, but I’d treat it as unlikely personally.

I mean .world 100% sucks lol, and people should definitely move off it, but I’d also like people to move off .ml or any other general purpose instance since centralization on any one instance can cause issues imo. I’m considering switching off of .ee for the same reason. I think it makes more sense to have specific instances for specific things, so that the admins of one instance can have more domain specific knowledge ideally.

.world specifically does seem like they can’t go more than a few weeks without some kind of drama though lol.

I mean at this point it’s whatever, but I did post it in News originally. It got removed for not being a “reputable news source” based on the modlog, but the current post about it in the same community is from Gizmodo, which is fine, but the only source they have for the manifesto is literally this link.

I get that it’s on a substack, but just because a journalist publishes using substack and not some other web template (even though the site is their own URL, and the author is an independent journalist who worked at several fairly well known news orgs) doesn’t mean it’s not reputable. It just feels very arbitrary.

Also you guys clearly don’t seem to ban substack, since there are multiple posts currently up that have been posted a day ago in one case, and 16 hours ago in the other, one of which is literally also from ken klippenstein. So why is it fine sometimes but not othertimes? I don’t necessarily have an issue with a broad ban of any substack link (even though I personally think that would be kinda dumb), but that fact that it’s so inconsistently enforced isn’t good.

I think the backpain part is true, according to people who know him it was a surfing accident. His reddit account also talks about chronic pain and complications from that, like brainfog.

I think it’s also the fact that there tends to be a ton of specific labels for different leftist subgroups too, stuff like anarcho-mutualism is similar but not the same as syndicalism, or blanket libertarian socialism, etc. That and the fact that most people will self identify as one of the moderate labels like conservative or centrist or liberal, and do so in spite of their beliefs, not because of them. People who reflect enough on their ideas and desired policies will tend to be a bit more consistent about them and the labels they use to describe them.

Definitely yeah, stuff like the political compass have been awful for nuance in discussions.