“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.”

  • mo_ztt ✅English
    -3•6 months ago

    Honestly? I didn’t read the Reason.com article. Someone else linked to it, I skimmed it and agreed with parts of the take that I saw, and threw a link in there as sort of an expansion of what I was saying so I wouldn’t have to keep typing the same types of arguments over and over. I just skimmed it again, from the beginning, and I have to say that broadly I agree with almost everything I see.

    Quick work with wc indicates that I’ve typed about 4500 words on this topic within this post. I typed one sentence where I linked to Reason.com, and somehow out of all the thousands of words, it seems like that one sentence is all you want to talk about. I don’t know how many times to say this before it sinks in, but it’s a lot more valid way to discuss with me, if you want to address directly what I’m saying as opposed to pointing to a certain source and saying I’m invalid because I used that source. I can assure you that the Reason.com article had 0% to do with forming these opinions in my mind.

    Additionally, I’ll say that this whole model you seem to have in mind, where I read an article on Reason.com and inhaled it like a AI language model and now I’m just parroting whatever I was exposed to, and blame for anything I’m saying attaches to the article because I was powerless to resist anything wrong in it, is kind of telling as to why you want to ban Nazi speech. The thing is, people can use judgement. I do. I read stuff and I consider it critically. I might see something with a swastika and read it, and come away somehow without having become a Nazi. I might agree with something even if I find the source reprehensible personally (as I do the Koch brothers, to whatever extent they were personally involved in this article), or I might just not care what the source is, and evaluate it on its own merits. That’s a good way to do it. Right? That’s why I genuinely just don’t care about the Reason.com article as a thing to argue about, and want to get back to discussing the facts of this actual discussion.

    • Flying SquidEnglish
      2•6 months ago

      That you broadly agree with everything you see on a website funded by Nazis, that doesn’t speak highly of you.

      Also, I said nothing about banning speech. I have been talking about not monetizing Nazis this entire time. Do not lie and put words in my mouth.