- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
More than 200 Substack authors asked the platform to explain why it’s “platforming and monetizing Nazis,” and now they have an answer straight from co-founder Hamish McKenzie:
I just want to make it clear that we don’t like Nazis either—we wish no-one held those views. But some people do hold those and other extreme views. Given that, we don’t think that censorship (including through demonetizing publications) makes the problem go away—in fact, it makes it worse.
While McKenzie offers no evidence to back these ideas, this tracks with the company’s previous stance on taking a hands-off approach to moderation. In April, Substack CEO Chris Best appeared on the Decoder podcast and refused to answer moderation questions. “We’re not going to get into specific ‘would you or won’t you’ content moderation questions” over the issue of overt racism being published on the platform, Best said. McKenzie followed up later with a similar statement to the one today, saying “we don’t like or condone bigotry in any form.”
I just want to make it clear that we don’t like Nazis either
Actions speak louder than words. Fuck Substack and fuck any platform that offers a safe haven for nazis.
“I don’t like Nazis… but you have to understand, they’re very profitable.”
“I want you to know that I don’t like nazis. But I am fine platforming them and profiting from them. Now here is some bullshit about silencing ‘ideas.’”
“we don’t like or condone bigotry in any form.” I mean they are litterally Condoning bigotry.
“His response similarly doesn’t engage other questions from the Substackers Against Nazis authors, like why these policies allow it to moderate spam and newsletters from sex workers but not Nazis.”
Doesn’t seem very consistent.
Substack: Nazis are cool, but you better not be selling sex related shit! We have standards!
“We do not condone Nazi propaganda, but we are very concerned about sex work causing social degeneracy.”
Yea… Meta took the same “free peaches” approach and the entire fucking globe is now dealing with various versions of white nationalism. So like, can we actually give censorship of hate a fucking try for once? I’m willing to go down that road.
Never ever fall for that one. You can look at various regimes in the world what happens when “hate” gets censored. Demonitizing is one thing, technical implementations to “live censor hate” would be catastrophic.
I’m looking. Is something supposed to stand out about Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, New Zealand, Sweden, and the UK?
Good for them. I’m all for allowing people make their own choices about what kind of content they want to see instead of a corporation/government deciding for them.
I can’t think of a single thing we’ve succesfully gotten rid of by banning it. I however can think of several examples where it has had an opposite effect.
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wow that’s terrible, that they’d circlejerk each other instead of having a mass audience to post propaganda to. I can’t imagine a worse outcome
Gen Z needs to understand the historical lesson that the Blues Brothers taught those before them. Illinois Nazis exist, and some days they demonstrate, as per their right to freedom of speech - but this is as much as an opportunity to humiliate them and openly critique the mindset as anyone else. Dark little underground communities flourish behind closed doors.
So they have no rules, any content is acceptable?
Anything less is “censorship” after all
TIL that Substack is apparently a bunch of crypto-fascists who expect people to believe they don’t support Nazis, they just give them money and a place at their table to talk about it.
Ehhh, it’s one of those things where I agree with the principle, but the principle fails. It’s the so called tolerance paradox (which isn’t actually a paradox at all, but that’s tangential).
On principle, no company should be in the business of deciding what is and isn’t acceptable “speech”. That’s simply not something we really want happening.
But then there’s nazis and other outright insane bigots. But we still don’t really want companies making that call, because they’ll decide on the side of profit, period. If enough of the nazi types get enough power and money going, every single fucking company out there that isn’t owned by a single person, or very small group of people that share the same ideals, is going to be deciding that it’s the nazi bullshit that’s the only acceptable speech.
This is something that has to come from the bottom to the top and be decided on a legal level first. We absolutely can ban nazi type bullshit if we want to. There’s plenty of room for it to be pointed at as the incitement to violence that it is. There need to be very specific, very limited definitions to govern what is and isn’t part of that
And the limitations have to be impossible to expand without starting all the way over with the kind of stringency it takes to amend the constitution.
That takes it out of the hands of corporations, and makes it very difficult to game. But it has to come from us, as a people first.
This tracks with my previous attempts at reporting that Sinfest guy. Posts hundreds of comics that blatantly break multiple official substack content guidelines and I get the effective equivalent of a promise for “action” combined with a dismissive eye roll. They completely ignored my follow-up email detailing the complete lack of action and the dozen or so new content guideline violations.
Translated: McKenzie just wants the sweet money and is trying to gaslight us into thinking platforming nazis is ok.
I just want to make it clear that we don’t like Nazis either—we wish no-one held those views.
“But we’ll gladly host those views on our platform, run ads alongside them, and profit from them.”
Cool… so they now facilitate and directly benefit from Nazi activity. Sounds great when you put it like that.
I want them to explain how it makes things worse.
“We would make less money, and that’s worse than more money.”
Techbros tolerate Nazis.
You can run your own blog with WordPress. It even Federates.