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Max Read
@maxread.info
12K followers 240 following 530 posts
http://maxread.substack.com
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maxread.info
we talk too much about the male loneliness crisis and not enough about the male suckerfication crisis maxread.substack.com/p/prediction...
One way of thinking about Twitter, especially in the Elon Musk era, is as the latest and most sophisticated version of the mailing lists that have powered the conservative movement, and the various scams and cons and schemes that constitute it, since the 1960s--in other words, as a huge and immediately accessible collection of suckers, waiting to have their avidity and paranoia exploited for cash. The predictions markets here are happy to play the same role with heavy X.com users as crypto scams and meme-stock hustlers did on the same site a few years ago, or as cash-for-gold ads did with Fox News viewers a decade before that, or as direct-mail get-rich-quick schemes did with Goldwater voters deep in prehistory.1 But the demand for dumb money created by the increasing annexation of our everyday social and cultural lives into casino-market hybrids like predictions markets (or, arguably, social media itself2) isn’t going to be satisfied solely by a pre-existing population of Birchite suckers. We talk a lot about the “male loneliness crisis” but in my estimation we don’t talk enough about the “male suckerfication crisis”: The process by which young men are continuously cultivated--by politicians, influencers, podcasters, sportscasters, and the very structure of social networks--as dupes and suckers, both for the enrichment and empowerment of Trumpist politicians and movements but also in service of the profits an ever-expanding roster of gambling and gambling-adjacent industries, among them app-enabled retail day-trading, crypto speculation, predictions markets, and of course, actual sports betting.
November 7, 2025 at 5:40 PM
Reposted by Max Read
archivewhisperer.bsky.social
clip to encourage click thru's:

highly recommended read and Max Read is a great account to follow. see alt text
a summary of arguments of what "Techlash" is and proponents of Techlash are a modern "moral temperance" movement. This passage explains how one argument frames why AI manipulated platforms should be exempt from section 230 and thus be liable for more accountability actions. In the conclusion Read argues that all these different frames for proposed solutions to "Big AI" should be carefully considered in order to produce effective outcomes. By drawing from history of the 19th century Temperance movement, he is suggesting that policy propsals from the Techlash movement might introduce unintended harms.
November 2, 2025 at 3:50 PM
maxread.info
This is going on now!
maxread.info Max Read @maxread.info · 5d
Going live on Substack with @lioneltrolling.bsky.social and Jay Kang at 2pm ET. We'll talk about the elections and whatever else--recording will be available to paid subscribers tomorrow.

open.substack.com/live-stream/...
LIVE SOON: Read Max X Unpopular Front w/ Jay Kang
Starting Nov 5 at 2:00 PM EST
open.substack.com
November 5, 2025 at 7:02 PM
maxread.info
Going live on Substack with @lioneltrolling.bsky.social and Jay Kang at 2pm ET. We'll talk about the elections and whatever else--recording will be available to paid subscribers tomorrow.

open.substack.com/live-stream/...
LIVE SOON: Read Max X Unpopular Front w/ Jay Kang
Starting Nov 5 at 2:00 PM EST
open.substack.com
November 5, 2025 at 2:27 PM
maxread.info
god he would have been an INCREDIBLE wide receiver if the US had annexed holland for some reason
sjbrewer.bsky.social Steve Brewer @sjbrewer.bsky.social · 6d
Tottenham Hotspur [3] - 0 FC København - M. van de Ven 64'
I can't stop moaning watching this goal
November 4, 2025 at 9:39 PM
maxread.info
realizing that cameron winter's mom is the woman who wrote the brooklyn open-marriage memoir from a couple years ago, and mentally adjusting to the fact that basically any way you slice it i am a member of her cohort and not his
November 4, 2025 at 8:46 PM
Reposted by Max Read
ibogost.com
Good (if characteristically blogstyle) Max Read on “platform temperance” and big tech as big tobacco.

Dickish of me to say, but may I once again note that I made exactly the cigarette comparison, down to the details, in 2012, a time before The Atlantic’s CMS natively supported deks or top images.
November 1, 2025 at 6:55 PM
Reposted by Max Read
scarymrolmecman.bsky.social
Interesting post: maxread.substack.com/p/platform-t...
Platform Temperance
Notes on a new wave of the Techlash
maxread.substack.com
November 1, 2025 at 5:59 PM
Reposted by Max Read
michaelcaley.bsky.social
good @maxread.info newsletter on @wertwhile.bsky.social's (also good) proposal for a new strategy in big tech regulation

the grip of Brooklyn Soccer Dads on the discourse has never been tighter
maxread.substack.com/p/platform-t...
Platform Temperance
Notes on a new wave of the Techlash
maxread.substack.com
November 1, 2025 at 12:23 PM
Reposted by Max Read
hamiltonnolan.bsky.social
"One way of thinking about the past half-decade or so of life on the internet is that we’ve all become test subjects in a grand experiment to see just how bad 'good enough' can be."

Good essay by the villain max read.
maxread.substack.com/p/platform-t...
Platform Temperance
Notes on a new wave of the Techlash
maxread.substack.com
October 31, 2025 at 8:22 PM
maxread.info
I'm going to be giving work-related advice as the NYT "Work Friend" for the next little while. Please submit questions! www.nytimes.com/2025/11/01/b...
There’s a New Work Friend in Town
www.nytimes.com
November 3, 2025 at 2:42 PM
maxread.info
this has been updated slightly since originally published to draw in some other environmental factors contributing to the discourse, and also to illustrate some of the caution i feel based on the tiktok ban/sale maxread.substack.com/p/platform-t...
This, I think, is the basic dynamic from which Platform Temperance evolves: a general, non-partisan, somewhat moralistic disgust at even the non-political outcomes of unregulated and unmoderated platforms and a dissatisfaction with both the “revealed preference” framework that justifies their persistence in Silicon Valley and the more rigidly behavioralist explanations that seem to exonerate the business model and blame externalities on bad actors. To this I would add environmental factors like: A perceived accelerating downward spiral with the advent of generative A.I., which both further debases the platforms and provides a possibly even more tractable and dangerous user experience itself; a generation of (middle-class) millennials, now raising children in a world dominated by slop and screens, coming into political power; a vaguely moralized sense of unease and distaste over the fast creep of gambling and gambling-like dynamics in financial and prediction markets; a recognition, in the wake of the reactionary turn of prominent tech executives, that Silicon Valley is not going to “fix” any of this itself; and a growing sense among liberals, Democrats, and anti-Trump Republicans that social platforms are inevitably corrosive to the liberal-democratic project. In response, Platform Temperance offers a focus on health, social welfare, and the idea of discipline and restraint in the face of unmoderated consumption--that is, temperance. Take, as a recent example of the dangers of a loose and misdirected Platform Temperance, the proposed ban and sale of TikTok. Originally spurred on by an alliance of China hawks and Israel supporters concerned about unprovable malign influence and pro-Palestine discourse enabled by the platform, the idea of a ban was nonetheless received warmly by Democrats and Platform Temperance-sympathetic liberals. Now, under Trump, the app is apparently set to be sold on the cheap to a consortium of right-wing businessmen. Platform Temperance as a political framework has a lot to offer tech skeptics, critics, and “the left” more broadly. But we should be careful and rigorous about how we develop political solutions to the affective misery so much of us feel online.
November 3, 2025 at 2:07 PM
Reposted by Max Read
maxread.info
on an emerging movement in the discourse: "platform temperance" maxread.substack.com/p/platform-t...
This burgeoning movement seeks to root criticism of (and response to) Big Tech in ideas of health (public, social, intellectual, and spiritual) and morality rather than size and power, positioning the rise of social media and the platform giants as something between a public-health scare and a spiritual threat, rather than (solely) a problem of political economy or market design. I see versions of this school of thought not just in speeches and op-eds from Auchincloss and Cox or blog posts from Thompson, but in Chris Hayes’ book The Siren’s Call and in the inescapable work of Jonathan Haidt. (You might broadly think of Hayes and Haidt as representing “left” and “right” tendencies of the broader movement.) Notably, all of the above-mentioned have found platforms on Klein’s podcast. Back in a January interview with Hayes, Klein offered up a kind of political vision or prediction rooted in this tendency: Thompson dubs this loose movement, or at least the version touted by Auchincloss, “touch-grass populism,” but I think this is wrong: The framework in question is distinctly not “populist” (unlike, say, the neo-Brandeisian “new antitrust” movement that has been a major focus of the “techlash” to date) so much as progressive in the original sense, a reform ideology rooted in middle-class concerns for general social welfare in the wake of sweeping technological change. At its broadest you could maybe call this budding program of restriction, restraint, and regulation “Platform Temperance.” But that name describes a broad tent, and like the progressive movements that emerged in the late 19th century, it can produce both grounded liberal-technocratic visions, and paternalistic, pseudoscientific, and ultimately harmful moral panics.
November 1, 2025 at 6:48 PM
Reposted by Max Read
will-davies.bsky.social
This by @maxread.info is really interesting on shift from a liberal-market critique of Big Tech to a (potentially far more potent) public health critique maxread.substack.com/p/platform-t...
Platform Temperance
Notes on a new wave of the Techlash
maxread.substack.com
November 2, 2025 at 2:46 PM
maxread.info
on an emerging movement in the discourse: "platform temperance" maxread.substack.com/p/platform-t...
This burgeoning movement seeks to root criticism of (and response to) Big Tech in ideas of health (public, social, intellectual, and spiritual) and morality rather than size and power, positioning the rise of social media and the platform giants as something between a public-health scare and a spiritual threat, rather than (solely) a problem of political economy or market design. I see versions of this school of thought not just in speeches and op-eds from Auchincloss and Cox or blog posts from Thompson, but in Chris Hayes’ book The Siren’s Call and in the inescapable work of Jonathan Haidt. (You might broadly think of Hayes and Haidt as representing “left” and “right” tendencies of the broader movement.) Notably, all of the above-mentioned have found platforms on Klein’s podcast. Back in a January interview with Hayes, Klein offered up a kind of political vision or prediction rooted in this tendency: Thompson dubs this loose movement, or at least the version touted by Auchincloss, “touch-grass populism,” but I think this is wrong: The framework in question is distinctly not “populist” (unlike, say, the neo-Brandeisian “new antitrust” movement that has been a major focus of the “techlash” to date) so much as progressive in the original sense, a reform ideology rooted in middle-class concerns for general social welfare in the wake of sweeping technological change. At its broadest you could maybe call this budding program of restriction, restraint, and regulation “Platform Temperance.” But that name describes a broad tent, and like the progressive movements that emerged in the late 19th century, it can produce both grounded liberal-technocratic visions, and paternalistic, pseudoscientific, and ultimately harmful moral panics.
November 1, 2025 at 6:48 PM
maxread.info
visualizations like this arent per se bad but they are basically designed to foment bitter factional fights on short text sites like this one bc they imply a ghost candidate reverse-engineered from a set of policies when most of us experience politics as a real candidate from whom positions flow
gelliottmorris.com G Elliott Morris @gelliottmorris.com · 14d
how many of these "Democratic policies" were in the 2024 Democratic Party platform document? 1? maybe 2?

compare that to the list of unpopular Republican policies, 13 of which Trump has accomplished since taking office, and most of which have been floated by admin officials as possible priorities
October 29, 2025 at 12:24 PM
maxread.info
willing daft punk alive 2027 at the sphere into existence with tens of thousands of other 40somethings across the US right now
October 27, 2025 at 5:19 PM
maxread.info
🚨 craggs byline 🚨
Ed Zitron Gets Paid to Love AI. He Also Gets Paid to Hate AI
He’s one of the loudest voices of the AI haters—even as he does PR for AI companies. Either way, Ed Zitron has your attention.
www.wired.com
October 27, 2025 at 3:20 PM
Reposted by Max Read
sambiddle.com
SCOOP: I obtained internal documents showing Amazon has been selling cloud computing and AI services to the state-owned Israeli weapons manufacturers whose bombs and missiles have ravaged Gaza.

theintercept.com/2025/10/24/a...
As Israel Bombed Gaza, Amazon Did Business With Its Bomb-Makers
The Intercept has learned that Amazon sold cloud services to Israeli weapons firms at the height of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.
theintercept.com
October 24, 2025 at 3:09 PM
maxread.info
something about so funny about watching wemby highlights like ... why didn't they simply make the really tall guys good at basketball before ??
October 23, 2025 at 1:09 PM
maxread.info
going live with @lioneltrolling.bsky.social open.substack.com/live-stream/...
LIVE NOW: Read Max x Unpopular Front
Max Read on Substack
open.substack.com
October 22, 2025 at 6:00 PM
maxread.info
"anti-patriotic gun-owning veteran psychedelic-taking small-business owner" is actually an extremely common Maine Type and it won't hurt Platner unless he lets it

www.cnn.com/2025/10/16/p...
In another Reddit post that year, Platner reflected on his life after his military service, saying he was “a vegetable growing, psychedelics taking socialist these days. After the war, I’ve pretty much stopped believing in any of the patriotic nonsense that got me there in the first place, and am a firm believer that the best thing a person can do is help their neighbors and live a loving life.” “Still got the guns though,” he added. “I don’t trust the fascists to act politely.” In his interview with CNN, Platner wanted to assure voters: “I’m not a communist. I’m not a socialist. I own a small business. I’m a Marine Corps veteran.”
October 16, 2025 at 12:46 PM
maxread.info
as i tired to suggest in my post last week, chatgpt's absurd growth and the culture/incentives of silicon valley have cursed the company (and investors) to chase facebook-type revenues--and, worse facebook-type revenue models

maxread.substack.com/p/can-openai...
This is a fantastic amount of money, and in other industries, or for other companies, the quickly growing revenue and falling costs might be enough. But this is Silicon Valley, and ChatGPT is the fastest-growing app of all time. This week Altman said that it has 800 million weekly active users, which probably puts it in spitting distance of Facebook for size--and yet Meta brought in $164 billion last year. In a strange sense, had ChatGPT grown more slowly, OpenAI might have trundled along as a straightforward subscription business with the expectation that eventually the revenue from its subscriptions would outpace the cost of providing its services. But in our universe, where Altman and his investors are seeing 800 million people hit the website every week--99.75 percent of whom aren’t paying for a subscription--different business models become attractive as well. Like, say, Meta’s: Why not build your model into a social feed, against which you can sell advertisements? (Certainly, Meta itself has had this same idea, hence “Vibes.”)
October 15, 2025 at 3:14 PM
maxread.info
i think this is true, though id add is that everything is becoming “tv” without an FCC or union labor, two key institutional checks on the otherwise maximal corrosiveness of tv. (though of course reality TV and cable has meant that TV has also mostly become TV without an FCC or union labor)
Everything Is Television
A theory of culture and attention
www.derekthompson.org
October 10, 2025 at 1:02 PM
maxread.info
whole other post to be written about the cars in the first 1/2 of obaa--the taurus, the olds wagon, plus smith's '68 mustang (same year as bullitt's), gorgeous and certainly the only pantheon Classic--pta lingers on it, and having smith change it to a swagless 2013 for the chase is a cool choice
zeets.bsky.social Zito @zeets.bsky.social · Oct 8
I will have to disagree, Max! Those cars are wonderful but the best one was the 1968 Shelby GT 500. I almost had to support the Christmas Adventurer’s Club. As a Detroiter, I clutched my chest when it came on screen. It was so pretty.
October 8, 2025 at 11:52 PM