c/politics on lemmy.world Moderators dismiss Erin Reed, the most prominent trans rights journalist in the United States, as a random anonymous personal blogger.
I made an admittedly editorialized post, but that is allowed. There is no rule against editorializing titles. The link was to this excellent story by Erin Reed:
https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/iowa-dem-josh-turek-releases-anti
The story documents the efforts of Democrat-in-Name-Only Josh Turek to graft Republican anti-trans policies and bigotry into the Democratic party. The (supposed) automoderator flagged the post and removed it for being a "substack post." However, it was likely a manual removal as I would expect automoderator to work quickly, while this was up for hours.
The rule cited was:
"Social Media adjacent hosts like Substack are allowed, but ONLY if they tie back to a company/subsidiary. No personal or friend group blogs and no self-promotion. Articles should be worth reading."
This article clearly meets this requirement. Erin in the Morning is an entire journalistic operation with multiple employees. I'm sure they're incorporated in some form. Erin Reed is the most prominent trans rights journalist in the US, probably in the world. She's nationally famous, has won numerous national journalism awards, and has a Wikipedia page. She frequently appears on national media and speaks at events of all kinds. She is one of the most prominent transgender people in the United States.
But apparently if you're trans, to c/politics, regardless of what you accomplish, you can never be a real journalist, only a blogger. Real journalism is for cis people only.
17 replies
PTB. We all know why it's getting removed, the mods want to protect transphobic Dems against legitimate criticism.
not familiar enough to judge whether 'blogger' is unfair but in any case she does appear to be a slopmonger as detailed here: https://theneedlenews.com/2026/09/erin-reeds-ai-journalism-career/
JL has been calling CMS like substack "blogs" for a while now, and removing any link using them. It's an absurd statement, but at least he's being consistent(ly wrong).
They have a point on the world comm but none at all on the politics comm side. Then again the rules are written to basically make everything up to the mods decision
I’ve had a fair few issues with that comm. I was at least able to get them to allow journalist org substacks whereas previously it had been a flat ban on everything sub stack.
Erin in the Morning, being one of if not the most prominent trans journalist with all the breaking stories is simply not allowed and other organisations rarely cover what she does so so-much news is never heard.
I’ve mostly taken to sharing her articles on ![email protected] or ![email protected]
/c/politics is a hive of scum and pedantry, with a healthy dose of hypocrisy. If you say:
...while allowing articles that are blatant AI summaries from trash rags like the DailyBeast and Business Insider simply because they're tied to a company, you're not fostering political discussion. You're advancing a corporate agenda.
I think that's somewhat fair.
What rule would you suggest to keep out random blogs but include the ones of significance?
I wouldn't. I'd let the community decide via voting. You don't engender discussion by silencing speakers because they don't meet your requirements of legitimacy. If there's a question of legitimacy or bad faith discussion, identify it, talk about it, and downvote the hell out of it if needed.
But don't remove it. Once you do, you're no longer curating a discussion. You're promoting an agenda.
Rejecting a voice out of hand because of whom its coming from is blatant censorship, and a tacit admission that your ideas can't compete with theirs in the arena of public discourse.
Jordanlund has a personal crusade against substack and anything that is slightly critical of the dnc or dems. Sadly it is absolutely no surprise he removed both that and the video link earlier in the day.
Becareful when confronting this mod as they both have the full support of lemmy world AND will immediately insult you for questioning them or the rules
Tldr jordanlund so always prb
I don't know what video link you're referring to, but literally the first five words in their rules are:
So... no shit?
They don't know or follow their comms rules most of the time so it's irrelevant.
Jordan is always a ptb
Okay, so you're just admitting you objectively don't care if OP violated the rules of the comm they were posting in and are only here to air unrelated grievances about the mod.
They clearly know and follow the rule about posting links to articles only, because every time I see and report a non-article, it's consistently removed shortly thereafter. I'm looking back through the comm's front page, and it's all articles.
It's the first rule of the first rule and is crystal clear.
Because they absolutely don't. Search their name and it becomes obvious. Hell ask them questions on the rules when they bring it up and they will say something they removed is okay then work backwards until they make up reasons outside the rules that make it okay to remove.
Hell they've gotten angry with me that I dared ask them to follow their own no blogs rule
You've done how many edits to explain why it was fine for Jordan to remove out of nowhere while also blaming op of this post for not discussing with the comm. And as said before anything involving Jordan mod actions is them being an absolute power tripping bastard
Edit 2: Regardless of Rule 2, YDI for the flagrant Rule 1 violation for titles.
I don't think this comm has an acronym for this, but:
I saw this post just a few minutes before you posted this (and upvoted it? I forget). So the fact your post here is multiple paragraphs long tells me that as soon as it was pulled, you rushed here instead of trying to dispute it with the mods, immediately assuming transphobic bad faith was the reason your post (which at best toes the line of Rule 2) was removed.Edit: I made a mistake here and confused this with the same article posted in another comm. Although it still doesn't seem like you tried to message the mods before this for clarification or to try and appeal, which is the main point – namely that you're assuming transphobic bad faith without at least trying to talk with them first given your post at best toes the line.At worst, YDI because it's against a stated rule, and at best (assuming this is worked on by a broader editorial team), you're not giving them a chance to reconsider and instead assuming the absolute worst of them.
Edit: Scrolling back to the beginning of this year, I see two authors: "Erin Reed" and "S. Baum (They/Them)". I was able to find contributors before that, but it's pretty clear the Substack in the last year is just a couple of people writing without a broader editorial team or other entity behind them. And there's literally zero evidence EITM is incorporated; you just said surely it must be.
If I had to enforce Rule 2, I would've removed this for being a personal Substack blog – even though I don't agree with the rule. (And would instead predicate the rule on reliability.)
This isn't about "is this a good rule". I liked the article, found it informative, and wished it stayed up.
Edit 2: Also, OP, there definitely is a rule against what you did to the title:
The original title is:
There's nothing ambiguous about this headline; nothing about it needs changing to "add context" or "be more descriptive" short of maybe clarifying that he's running for Senate.
Your title is:
So you completely changed the original headline, increased its length by over 50%, and did so in order to fit in an outright lie and then editorialize to fuck and back. YDI for the Rule 1 violation alone.
One of their campaign ads is look how much I vote with Republicans
https://turek4iowa.com/news/new-josh-turek-for-iowa-releases-new-ad-prove-it/
So they're running as what dems want to be and blue maga keep trying to say they aren't
the screenshot says "3 hours ago", so 3 hours must've past between removal and this post
Oh, my bad. I must've seen it in another similar comm then. I'll edit my comment to reflect that. Good catch.