“We don’t think that censorship (including through demonetizing publications) makes the problem go away.”

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.”

  • southsamuraiEnglish
    93·
    1 year ago

    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.