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Let's be Fwends #124:

Staying Positive in an Eroding World

The Ship of Theseus, hallucinated by an AI.

The part can never be well unless the whole is well.

~ Plato

Welcome to Let's be Fwends #124. In this issue, we talk about the problem with content moderation if your moral compass is missing or out of whack and have a look at the question if something like "mass media" actually still exists (and if not - what does it do to our society? this might have implications on the first topic). Then there's a much needed reminder that in times like these, optimism is the thing we must choose. We round the issue out with the question if a thing ever changes to be that thing, even if it is no longer the thing.

The Problem with Content Moderation And a Lack of Morality

Does Substack, the popular newsletter service, have a Nazi problem?

Or - more generally stated - do a new crop of cultural distribution platforms, trying to be apolitical and embracing a "free speech maximalist" ideology actually help mainstreaming far-right views?

Substack said that they will not remove newsletters openly promoting national socialist and similar ideologies unless they are inciting or calling for physical violence.

One of the issues with far right-extremists is that they are well aware that their positions are not overly popular, and if they openly state their ultimate goals, most societies would shun them. So one of their goals is to make their political views look acceptable. One tactic to do so is that of the "Nazi bar", outlined here:

These guys come in and it's always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don't want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after awhile they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too. And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh shit, this is a Nazi bar now.

Apparently, Substack is reconsidering its position, mostly relying on their language about "credible threats of physical harm" in their content moderation policy. So they will remove all of those publications, but nothing else. Which seems shortsighted, because this is exactly the mechanism described in the "nazi bar" tactic, and because National Socialism and its siblings are inherently violent. There simply is no way to be a National Socialist or fascist and not radiating credible threats of physical harm. Physical harm is what this ideology is all about.

I grew up with a saying: Fascism is not an opinion. Fascism is a crime.

And I find it disheartening and increasingly frustrating that we have to keep having this conversation in the tech industry. Maybe all those "free speech maximalists" should read Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies. And just because you're not targeted at the moment doesn't mean you're safe.

Truth is fragile. Openness is fragile. Participation is fragile. Society is fragile.

Closed-Off Ecosystems and the Digital Border Patrol

Here's a cautionary tale of what can happen if you combine a hardware company, an OS creator, a gatekeeper, a payment system and a monetising strategy into one business model: They might ask you to allow customers to sign up to your service through your mobile app so they can get their 30% cut.

Has Mass-Media Finally Died?

I've touched on the erosion of online media before, mostly focussing on the consequences of the application of GAI to content creation.

Here's another take on algorithmic curation and how your internet doesn't even look remotely like my internet.

Choose Optimism

A great reminder by Steph Ango: When in doubt (read: always, because doubt is universal), choose optimism

The Ship of Theseus on Wikipedia

The "Ship of Theseus" is an interesting thought experiment about change. Imagine a ship you want to preserve (for whatever reason) but over time, parts of it rot or break, so you need to replace them. If you keep doing that, sooner or later, you will have replaced all parts of the ship. Nothing of the original ship remains. Can you still call it the same ship?

Here's the Wikipedia entry for The Ship of Theseus, and here is the original entry from 2003. Not a single word from the original article remained.

That's it for this edition of Let's be Fwends. As always: Take care of yourself and of the people around you. 🛟