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Ask HN: Where to publish a critical work with potentially offensive content

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Re: Ask HN: Where to publish a critical work with potentially offensive content

#21

Post by braingenious »

Have you tried posting it on your existing blog?

How is your analysis of Twain so spicy that you’re expecting to both A. get autobanned by Medium and B. not be able to get the ban reversed upon appeal?

Would you care to share a snippet of your literary analysis that you think might lead to you being kicked off your platform? Otherwise, this seems like a bit of an ad for your (edgy?) blog.

Re: Ask HN: Where to publish a critical work with potentially offensive content

#22

Post by neongreen »

I run brick.do, which lets anyone publish anything. It’s basically a WYSIWYG pastebin with support for subdomains, nested pages, CSS, and JS.

All your posts are disconnected from each other unless you explicitly decide to claim authorship — that is, by default nobody can discover than posts/sites A and B are by the same author. We also don’t divulge authorship information to anyone. We’ve been threatened with lawsuits already and we didn’t care.

Our policy is that we don’t censor anything (beyond what is actually illegal in Estonia, where we are based). No algorithmic banning either. Brick aims to be a (small) piece of internet infrastructure rather than a social network.

Re: Ask HN: Where to publish a critical work with potentially offensive content

#24

Post by tarboreus »

weberer wrote: post #20

Aren't there journals for those sorts of things?

As someone trained in literary studies, I'd say the answer is technically yes, but in practice no. There are journals for these topics, but relatively fewer interested in publishing something relatively accessible from a layperson.

Re: Ask HN: Where to publish a critical work with potentially offensive content

#25

Post by dghlsakjg »

braingenious wrote: post #21

Have you tried posting it on your existing blog? How is your analysis of Twain so spicy that you’re expecting to both A. get autobanned by Medium and B. not be able to get the ban reversed upon appeal? Would you care to share a snippet of your literary analysis that you think might lead to you being kicked off your platform? Otherwise, this seems like a bit of an ad for your (edgy?) blog.

The author already explained that the issue is that he is planning on quoting offensive language from Mark Twain's Huck Finn. If you aren't familiar, the text contains gratuitous use of the n-word.

I can totally understand the worry about getting picked up by automated moderation and not being able to appeal successfully.

If Medium has an auto-ban policy on the n-word, the author could be deplatformed, or at the very least be at the mercy of a CS rep who is paid for volume of tickets solved, not for understanding the nuance of 19th century american literature.

Re: Ask HN: Where to publish a critical work with potentially offensive content

#26

Post by lmm »

> And of course in writing this there are some well known racial slurs (and some antiquated, unfamiliar ones) that will have to be quoted and referred to, which I expect would probably end up getting my account automatically banned.

> The article will be showing Huckleberry Finn and Pudd'nhead Wilson as anti-racist works, so don't suggest any actually pro-racism sites.

In today's culture wouldn't any site that permits posting racial slurs at all be considered "pro-racism", regardless of context?

Re: Ask HN: Where to publish a critical work with potentially offensive content

#29

Post by II2II »

It sounds like you are looking to self-publish, but it sounds like the article should be submitted to sites where there is some form of editorial review. This will make it more challenging to get your article published and you will probably have to compromise on how you handle sensitive issues. The latter is a good thing, since it will make readers more receptive to what is being said rather than how it is said. It also diminishes the concerns over algorithmic banning or being banned due to reviews by non-domain experts.

As for where to publish, that is a question best asked of people who are well versed in literary analysis or anti-racism. That is probably a bit off the beaten path for most of us on HN.

Re: Ask HN: Where to publish a critical work with potentially offensive content

#30

Post by tut-urut-utut »

lmm wrote: post #26

> And of course in writing this there are some well known racial slurs (and some antiquated, unfamiliar ones) that will have to be quoted and referred to, which I expect would probably end up getting my account automatically banned. > The article will be showing Huckleberry Finn and Pudd'nhead Wilson as anti-racist works, so don't suggest any actually pro-racism sites. In today's culture wouldn't any site that permit…

Then the culture of pretty much fucked up.
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