Substack, Tibet, trolls, AI bots and the thought police

A meandering discourse on online safety, free speech, Tibet and the future of Substack.

The Dome - Posted by @CB

The CEO of Substack

Chris Best

, recently posted this image on his Stack. I’m not sure what he was thinking. Perhaps he was reflecting on Substack as a hermetically sealed dome for good writing. A safe-haven for free speech and new thought. This started me thinking about Tibet.

The forbidding geography surrounding the Tibetan plateau once provided a natural barrier from foreign invasion. From those pesky outsiders, or the Injis as they call us. This unique geography formed a sacred dome within which it was able to incubate and produce a unique flourishing of  Buddhist philosophy and culture. Don’t get me wrong, it was no Shangri-La. That’s a western fiction. But it did generate enduring cultural treasures for humanity.

Then the Chinese came.

My brief flirtation with social media

I like the idea of a safe space for writing. I once had a brief flirtation with Facebook, until some friends there had a falling out. Publicly. Compromising photos were posted. They wanted us all to take sides and jump into the ring. They were quite persistent, I even got emails. It all seemed like a perplexing mess to me at the time. Couldn’t they see what they were doing? Didn’t they understand what Facebook was? Were their brains malfunctioning?

In my younger years I was often afflicted with this sense of naivety that falsely assumed people understood the things that seemed so obvious to me. As

Ma Mu

put it hilariously in his insightful post, you need to look out for stupid people. And we should always include ourselves in that group, just to be sure.

Turning away

So I left Facebook. That was over 15 years ago. I’ve never Twittered, Instagrammed. I’m not Linked in. Zero social media. I know too much about these systems to be taken in. Just like the owners of these social media sites aren’t either. People have poured their lives into these spaces only to be exploited and turn these innovators into billionaires. And often greedy for more.

When I was a teenager and looked at a computer game, I never wanted to play with it. I always wanted to know how it worked, how the engineers made it. So it was with trepidation and a generous serving of skepticism that I entered the world of Substack. It was a request from a friend that led me here, you can read about it in my previous offering Zen and the art of Substack.

Guardians of the realm

There is a beautiful ritual that Tibetan monks perform before a Great Tantric Initiation is performed. You might have seen it. They create intricate sand mandalas representing the realm of the Tantric Deity. A realm that you enter as the initiation progresses. These mandalas contain several archetypal figures within them. You usually have the main deity or deities positioned centrally with an entourage of supporting deities surrounding them. On the edges of the mandala you find the Dharmapalas, the protectors of the realm.

These terrible demonic looking figures were often misunderstood by Christian missionaries when they unsuccessfully tried to convert Tibetan Buddhists in the 17^th and 18^th centuries. The Dharmapalas were not evidence of devil worship but represented pagan deities that were subdued and converted by Buddhist yogis and then recruited to protect the Buddhist teachings from future corruption. They act like vicious guard dogs to keep the space safe.  

Image by Colonel Warden at English Wikipedia., CC BY-SA 3.0

Is Substack safe?

I am an expat living in a country that has before my eyes become authoritarian. It happened gradually, creeping up on us. The western press has commented how dissent of any form is ridiculed daily and quickly stamped out. Journalists are routinely thrown into jails without charge or due process. Dissent has effectively been criminalized. I am nervous even broaching this topic hence my reticence to give specific details. It is not a safe space for free speech. As I follow world news, similar rights, to question authority, to speak out, and to protest are gradually being eroded in more western realms. As forests burn, the culture wars are heating up.  

First Impressions

My first impression of Substack is that it seems relatively free of the nastiness associated with Social media. Writers are seemingly engaged in a supportive environment. Of course there are a few trolls. Living under bridges.

Tom Cox

had a run in with one yesterday, an experience he described delicately, one that ‘changed the flavor of his day’. I offered a salving balm from

Gurwinder

:

An online stranger doesn't know you; all they have are a few vague impressions of you, too meager to form anything but a phantasm. So when they attack "you", they're really just attacking their own imagination, and there is no need to take it personally.

If we run into a crazy person on the street in real life, talking to themselves and randomly shouting out at strangers, we would probably cross the road and give them a wide berth. That would be that. Online we don’t get the visual cues about who we are dealing with. Maybe they are disturbed, or just stupid as Mu Mu reminds us. The ‘block user functionality’ on Substack acts like a Dharmapala banishing intruders from our mandala. Keeping it safe.

Capitalism and the commodification of art and the artist

As I described in my last post, the AI bots are coming for your Substack I was curious to see if anyone even cares. As responses flow in I will collate them and report back soon. Most writers followed me in framing the threat of AI bots crawling through their writing as a potential attack on their property. The idea that someone could steal my writing and repurpose it for commercial purposes is of course scandalous and deserves at least a semblance of outrage. I made that point clearly in the post. Of course we should protect our brand and our precious work from these greedy pirates. This is part of the capitalist worldview. It feels right and natural. We have been well conditioned. Today I want to offer a slightly different angle to this threat.

We live in different realms

When I first arrived on Substack I looked around, aimlessly window shopping. The algorithm initially presents you with the popular writers. The more interesting ones are hidden from view. I did find The Elysian, written by

Elle Griffin

with the tagline ‘Thinking through a better future’. Take a look. Beautifully constructed. I loved the neo-romantic aesthetic and told her so. She quickly responded with thanks.

Then her article ‘There are already utopian countries ‘ showed up in my in box. Oh dear. She paints Nordic countries as modern day Utopias citing their high GDPs and wealth redistribution through taxation. As a European I am part of the consensus that accepts higher levels of taxation to provide a social safety net and create a more pleasant environment for all. But I also know these countries are not Utopian. She completely ignores the realpolitik and any examination of  the historic causes for their wealth. We can hardly call Sweden’s ‘terrorist-like’ epidemic of violence utopian can we? But that is not my point. I like what Elle is exploring.

Witch hunts and thought police

Until fairly recently the Nordic countries have been considered the most Socialist members of Western Europe, or as Elle puts it Social Democratic. She tells us that the word ‘Socialist’ is often derided in the US. This of course is a hangover from the post World War II onset of McCarthyism, when left wing thinkers were rooted out for their perceived ideological failings. Witch hunts by the thought police wearing federal uniforms.

What has this got to do with Substack?

Elle has the freedom to use the word Socialist in her writings without any blow-back. President Harry Truman won’t be knocking on her door to screen her for “loyalty”. She can relax. At least for now. The AI bots scraping her words will probably allow others to produce similar essays to clog up Google’s search results with. Let those billionaires exploit her property some might say. But AI can also be put to much more sinister use. As writers you need to be aware of this and think deeply about it. Interacting with

Nick Potkalitsky

, he reminded me that:

‘machines have already engulfed us ... [they] have ridiculously accurate data composites of us somewhere in the private clouds.’

Big data companies such as Google have been watching us and recording our behavior for years. They profile us and feed us advertising tailored to our needs. They know what we want. They make money selling that information to advertisers. These companies regularly share this data with governmental agencies across the world when requested. They have incredibly detailed pictures of us based simply on mouse clicks and search terms. When they start crawling our writings, they will begin to know what we think. In the USA you are safe for now. It wasn’t always the case. I am staying in my rabbit hole.

Tibet and my Substack

At the end of a Great Tantric Initiation, in a dramatic gesture reflecting the impermanence of all phenomena, the beautifully constructed sand mandala is swept away revealing the empty floor beneath it. I’m not sure I will stay in this space. I’m hanging around for a bit and am happy to make friends. If my Substack is swept away one day, you’ll know what happened.