Anathema Device 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (607)

• On the post: Law Enforcement Officers Crash SUV Into Local Bar, Arrest Bar Owner For Being Angry About It

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 27 Dec, 2023 @ 10:43pm

  "Teens are pretty good drivers." They really, really aren't.

• On the post: Law Enforcement Officers Crash SUV Into Local Bar, Arrest Bar Owner For Being Angry About It

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 27 Dec, 2023 @ 10:41pm

  Oy, keep my name out of your cowardly mouth, and out of this stupid argument you're whipping up, fuckface

• On the post: Substack Turns On Its ‘Nazis Welcome!’ Sign

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 27 Dec, 2023 @ 08:33pm

  It’s simply incorrect to claim such content is never moderated or deleted.

  I never said it's never moderated or deleted. However, the volume you are allowing through is clearly sufficiently high that it's proving no impediment to the pigs who are drowning your comment section.

  Almost none of that content shows for very long due to the community moderation features, and a ton of shit is caught by our existing spam filters.

  Your spam filters aren't rigorous enough then. LOOK AT THE VOLUME OF CRAP THAT MADE IT THROUGH ON THIS POST, MIKE

  I’m sorry, but it did.

  I believe you

  If I had to babysit the comments like that, I’d never have time to write.

  Yes, I appreciate that. But then you have two other possible choices - remove comments completely, or hire/ask for volunteers to help moderate.

  It’s not about me reading them. It’s about me (and others) getting practice actually responding to them and seeing what nonsense they come back with.

  Mike, I've been reading this site on and off for years. The content of the troll content changes only slightly from year to year. I doubt you are so slow that you need yet another run at the "trans women are really men/you just want kids to see porn/moderation of rightwingers is a First Amendment violation/Twitter is the town square so you can't moderate content/etc/etc/etc" trip by Koby and Hyman and Matthew and their alter egos

  And there is no evidence that “the majority of people don’t want to see them at all.” If that is the concern, those people can choose not to read the comments.

  Yes, that's an option. I was hoping you would give a damn about the experience of those readers who don't, strangely, come to your blog to see a few people who absolutely should know better, wasting brain cells smashing the garbage spewed by pigs against a wall, which only amuses the pigs and bores/distresses almost everyone else.

  If you read my comment that way, that’s on you. It is not what I said at all.

  You literally said, in your reply right here, "It’s about me (and others) getting practice actually responding to them and seeing what nonsense they come back with." You literally said that trolls comments have value for this reason. This is value that is worth more than your normal readers' experience on this site.

  We continue to modify the comment section in all sorts of ways, mostly small experiments, but have discussed larger ones as well.

  Glad to hear it. But maybe you should ask your readers how they would like things to be?

  But just because YOU think you know what everyone here wants, that is not an accurate portrayal of what we’ve seen.

  I don't KNOW what everyone wants, but I do know I'm not alone in wanting you to control the troll influx better and limiting the descent of the comment section on every troll-triggering post into a morass of "[bigoted drivel]"/"[pseudoclever rebuttal of drivel]"/"[pure personal abuse]"/[pure personal abuse]/"[pure personal abuse]"/[pure personal abuse]/etc, often seasoned heavily with homophobia and graphic sexual imagery

  So now we know that you are willing to lie and misrepresent what I’ve said.

  I have done no such thing. If I have misunderstood you, then you have yet to point out where I have done that. But I have not told any deliberate untruth, and you resorting to that claim is well beneath you.

  you are making a lot of false assumptions and repeatedly misrepresenting what I have said here.

  I've tried to read your comments and post carefully, but you appear to be assuming my motives are malign. They are not. I am frustrated by being forced to rely on a gerryrigged Javascript which I am inexperienced with and your exceedingly minimal user tools to hide the offensive nonsense, but which also means I am missing out on actually useful discussion. This Substack situation, the Twitter decline, are both topics of intense interest to me, but I can't come to Techdirt for a decent dissection of your posts because two or three trolls end up turning it into a repetitive festival of rehashed grievances. If your regular commenters actually want that, and that's who you want to serve, then you should say so.

• On the post: Substack Turns On Its ‘Nazis Welcome!’ Sign

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 27 Dec, 2023 @ 03:37pm

  "Anathema’s missing some important differences" No, I'm not. I know Mike isn't monetising the Nazis. I acknowledge the difference between hosting their posts and hosting their comments, but I also consider this a distinction without a difference in effect. What this blog doesn't offer, which one using Disqus does is that Disqus - which I acknowledge is a privacy hell hole etc - allows me to collapse conversations and block users. If Mike won't moderate from the backend, and the front end user tools are absolute shit even with a javascript plugin which doesn't do what really needs to be done, then turning comments off would be preferable to the garbage dump fire the comments on this particular post amply demonstrate.

• On the post: Substack Turns On Its ‘Nazis Welcome!’ Sign

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 27 Dec, 2023 @ 01:25pm

  That you have some idiots showing up does not suggest, in any way, that we are encouraging nazis.

  Allowing Nazis and nazi-adjacent pigs to post their drivel in your space without fear of being moderated off or that content deleted, absolutely encourages them. It also discourages non-Nazi content discussion. Look at the shitshow the comments on this very post has become.

  So it is not as if anyone reading the comments here believes that such content is celebrated or endorsed, quite the contrary.

  Allowing this content here without removal is enough to make this site hostile and unsafe and generally horrible to read for normal people.

  And this is a necessary result of enabling truly anonymous commenting, which we do still feel is a worthy goal. We get many great anonymous commenters, and a few awful ones.

  There is nothing stopping you putting all anonymous comments into a moderation queue and filtering them once or twice a day

  I know that you prefer Marcy’s method of handling this issue, and Marcy and I occasionally compare notes on how we handle comments. There are reasons we choose not to go with her method, which includes that it removes the true anonymity we allow, which is important, given the times we’ve had law enforcement send us demands for user info.

  I don't prefer Marcy's method, which is itself a pain in the arse for all concerned. I put it forward as one way to allow anonymous comments. I've suggested another one, which is to send all anon comments to a moderation queue first.

  Finally, as I have noted many times, these comments have been valuable to me, because the small group of idiot commenters regularly expose the kind of nonsense thinking and talking points from the nonsense-sphere early on

  Are you honestly suggesting these repetitive and frankly banally evil comments cannot be viewed on your site's backend for your private enjoyment, rather than in the front end where the majority of people who don't want to see them at all?

  Indeed, arguing with the trolls here in the comments has been amazingly useful practice for me, that I have had come in handy when arguing with actual elected officials, judges, and the like.

  So why not put an official notice on the blog that trolls are welcome here for that reason, and the rest of us can get fucked?

  None of that is true with Substack or ExTwitter, where those sites are literally taking that content and raising it up to suggest that it has equal value to actual thoughtful, reasoned commentary.

  So now we know that you like having an extremely high noise to content ratio, and why, that does suggest that the drivel spewed by trolls has a higher value for you than "actual thoughtful, reasoned commentary". Given you responded multiple times to the abusive tripe posted by the same small group of pigs, before you responded to me, I don't think I'm mischaracterising your approach.

• On the post: Substack Turns On Its ‘Nazis Welcome!’ Sign

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 26 Dec, 2023 @ 08:34pm

  Greewald is a fascist supporting homocon. His word on any subject is worthless.

• On the post: Substack Turns On Its ‘Nazis Welcome!’ Sign

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 26 Dec, 2023 @ 04:37pm

  "Substack is a fictitious entity" What on earth are you smoking?

• On the post: Substack Turns On Its ‘Nazis Welcome!’ Sign

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 26 Dec, 2023 @ 03:45pm

  No, you just force all new commenters into a moderation queue, and then you can delete their drivel before it ever gets to the front end. You can also block by IP address. It slows down the conversation, but it also bores the trolls so some of them go away.

• On the post: Substack Turns On Its ‘Nazis Welcome!’ Sign

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 26 Dec, 2023 @ 02:54pm

  "That’s because There Will Always Be Nazis." Yes, but you don't have to offer them service of any kind. Substack is not a 'county'. It's just another business like a corner shop, petrol station, or bar. If you let people into any business while wearing Nazi identifiers, that makes Nazis feel welcome, and normal people feel unwelcome. Lots of pubs in Britain forbid wearing football colours. It's not that they hate football, they just hate fights between football supporters. Businesses can do that for any reason they like. Nazis and football players and trolls are not protected classes, and anyone regardless of protection class status can be removed for being utter dicks to staff and other customers. This is not a difficult concept to understand or explain, unless your income or political beliefs insist on pretending it is difficult.

• On the post: Substack Turns On Its ‘Nazis Welcome!’ Sign

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 26 Dec, 2023 @ 02:49pm

  "How can he deal with the problem and still allow anonymous commenters?" Marcy Wheller's blog allows people use fake email addresses, but enforces them to use the same email address and user name each time they comment. You can't comment there if you don't use at least one unique, even if fake, address.

• On the post: Substack Turns On Its ‘Nazis Welcome!’ Sign

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 26 Dec, 2023 @ 02:47pm

  "It’s seldom that you’d ever cross a comment like that and steelman it to say it deserves our attention and merits consideration." What happens is that people extensively quote the pigs in order to mock or rebut them. But that means that as usual, dancing with the pigs gets shit all over both of you, and readers desperate to avoid the garbage gets splattered regardless. On other blogs, garbage comments get removed, as do any replies, and commenters are told not to engage with trolls. Here, the shit spills from the back yard to the nearest highway :(

• On the post: Substack Turns On Its ‘Nazis Welcome!’ Sign

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 26 Dec, 2023 @ 01:07pm

  Probably going to get myself banned but I have to point this out

  Mike, all of what you've said, what Popehat said, A.R. Moxon said, is absolutely true. Which is why I don't understand why you simply refuse to deal with your own Nazi/fascist problem right here. You have a very small number of utterly revolting, bigoted, transphobic, homophobic, and Nazi-worshipping pigs who ovrrun every comment section on your posts, and a larger number of non-Nazis regular commenters who decide the steaming pile of garbage the first group drops must be spread into the antique Persian rugs as widely and thoroughly as possible by repeatedly responding to the pigs, and quoting them at length in their replies. This means even blocking anonymous commenters doesn't spare blog readers from seeing this venomous content, and any value from your smarter commenters is lost in an ocean of pure dreck. Based on your sound logic in response to Substack, I can only conclude that if these people have been allowed to comment here for so many years, and your regulars are not officially asked to stop engaging with them in a manner which amplifies the trolling, that you are happy to host this garbage. It's left to us to conclude that the damage the pigs cause to your readers, and your reputation, is less important than taking the time and effort it would take to get this crap under control. You should put that in an official notice, and tell people visiting here that they will absolutely see Nazis and bigots running wild here, and to stop reading this blog if they find that offensive or harmful. I have to wonder why you bother writing a blog with comments enabled at all, if moderating it is too much trouble, and you don't mind what an unmoderated comment section makes you look like.

• On the post: The EU Is Now Targeting Porn Sites

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 23 Dec, 2023 @ 01:42am

  I know the days are getting colder over your way, but the size of this strawman would keep the twit building warm for a year, if they set it on fire. Of course, if they set themself on fire, they would keep themselves warm for the rest of their life.

• On the post: Pettiness Personified: Tesla Removes Disney+ From Vehicles Because Elon’s Mad At Disney

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 20 Dec, 2023 @ 03:26pm

  comment needs a "don't drink hot liquids while reading" warning!

• On the post: How the Grinch’s Intellectual Property Stole Christmas

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 12 Dec, 2023 @ 07:54pm

  Maybe the estate would be better served by going after wankers like this for making the Grinch look bad Parents furious as pastor dressed as Grinch tells kindergartners 'Santa is fake' https://www.rawstory.com/david-grisham/

  A man wearing a Grinch costume tried to spoil Christmas for children at an Albuquerque school, according to a report. The man parked himself Monday morning outside the kindergarten entrance at Osuna Elementary School, where he greeted students with a sign saying, "Santa is fake ... Jesus is real," reported KRQE-TV.

  I'm no fan of lying to children about Santa but this nut is not exactly doing the brand any favours.

• On the post: We Teamed Up With Bluesky To Tell The Supreme Court How State Social Media Laws Don’t Take Into Account User Empowerment

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 08 Dec, 2023 @ 04:49pm

  What gets me is there is literally nothing to stop the usual suspects here buying space on a server and spinning up their own blog, or mastodon or lemmy instance, where they can spew forth ad nauseum with any puerile views they have on any subject they want without the slightest hindrance. And their three imaginary friends can join them there. But no. What they want to is be irritating and inflammatory, in the hope of causing a fatal cancer in the body of public discussion. Since I bit the bullet and blocked all anonymous commenters here, the comment sections are much easier and more pleasant to read.

• On the post: Supporting Free Speech Means Supporting Victims Of SLAPP Suits, Even If You Disagree With The Speakers

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 08 Dec, 2023 @ 04:35pm

  "Maybe one day you people will let us know what those were." Oh, it's easy for proof to be found if you use the tried and tested deductio per anum method

• On the post: Investigation Exposes Yet Another Small Town That Is Little More Than A Law Enforcement Honeypot

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 03 Dec, 2023 @ 08:46pm

  "What’s needed now is for WAZE and GOOGLE Maps to build in a similar function to their GPS apps." Google Maps here in australia already shows the location of speed cameras! You don't have that?

• On the post: Elon Musk Says Only Those Who Pay Him Deserve Free Speech

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 01 Dec, 2023 @ 07:52pm

  "There is no “Freedom of speech”." The only reason people keep dinging Musk about this is that he claims there is, and Twitter should be all about it. Then he behaves as if, in fact, there isn't freedom of speech on his platform. It's the hypocrisy, not the legal issues, that he's being criticised for. (Also the fact he's a racist, transphobic antiSemite, but that's a separate point.)

• On the post: Retiree Arrested For Criticizing Local Officials Will Have Her Case Heard By The Supreme Court

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 01 Dec, 2023 @ 03:24pm

  One hopes even your SCOTUS will recognise that allowing this rubbish to stand makes the entire court system look utterly ridiculous. But the hope is not as bright as it should be, because your court system is so very often ridiculous :(

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