“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
    9•5 months ago

    Do they not allow sex workers to use their service? Here’s a sex worker who posts on Substack.

    I believe keeping the ability for sex workers to post there intact is a good reason not to ban Nazis – basically, deciding who are “good” posters and allowing only them leads to a steadily-expanding list of “bad” categories of people who need to get banned, with sex workers as an obvious additional early target.

    If you’re open to reading an article from Reason.com expanding on this take, which I partially agree with, there it is.

    (Edit: Restructured so that more of the argument comes directly from me, as opposed to Reason.com)

    • @ShittyBeatlesFCPresEnglish
      14•5 months ago

      They don’t allow sexually explicit content. From their TOS:

      We don’t allow porn or sexually exploitative content on Substack, including any depictions of sexual acts for the sole purpose of sexual gratification.

      So, a porn star could write about the industry but couldn’t use it like “OnlyFans but blog” where she had a post and included some pictures for subscribers.

      Which is fine. They’re the publisher. They can decide smut is a step too far. But don’t pretend to be some free speech martyr for publishing Nazi propaganda while banning showing a tit.

      • mo_ztt ✅English
        1•5 months ago

        … which is very different from “not allowing sex workers to use their service,” and undermines the whole argument that “well they do do moderation, they just think Nazis are on the ‘ok’ list.” I would have had a totally different response if the person I was responding to had tried to argue that since they don’t allow actual porn, they should also be obligated to ban extreme viewpoints.

    • Flying SquidEnglish
      5•5 months ago

      I’m not at all surprised that a Koch-funded publication thinks that Substack should allow Nazis to use their platform to make money.

      • mo_ztt ✅English
        -5•5 months ago

        Ad hominem. Nice. That said, I get it if you think Reason.com is a sketchy source to try to point to as an argument for anything. I restructured my message, so I’m simply stating my facts and opinions directly, so you can disagree directly if you like, instead of just jeering at the “Reason.com” part of it.

        If the fact that I cited “Reason.com” as an aside is a problem, but it’s not a problem the person I was replying to was calmly stating something that was highly relevant to the argument that wasn’t actually true… you might be only concerned with whether something agrees with your biases, not whether it’s accurate. Does that not seem like a problem to you?

        • Flying SquidEnglish
          9•5 months ago

          The Kochs are Nazis. That’s not an ad hominem, that’s just a fact.

          David, along with his brother Chuck Koch continued their father’s rabid anti-communism and anti-semitism by founding and funding both the Reason Foundation and the Cato Institute. Both “think tanks” billed themselves as libertarian. Both published holocaust denial literature including the writings of school mates of the Koch brothers.

          https://www.mockingbirdpaper.com/content/david-koch-industrialist-and-holocaust-denier-dies-age-79-american-politicians-scramble-new

          They were even partly raised by a Nazi.

          Here again, you get this strange recurrence of a kind of little touch of Nazi Germany, because … Charles and Frederick, the oldest sons, were put in the hands of a German nanny who was described by other family members as just a fervid Nazi. She was so devout a supporter of Hitler that finally, after five years working for the family, she left of her own volition in 1940 when Hitler entered France because she wanted to celebrate with the Fuehrer.

          https://www.npr.org/2016/01/19/463565987/hidden-history-of-koch-brothers-traces-their-childhood-and-political-rise

          And no, it doesn’t seem like a problem to me to call Nazis Nazis. Because they’re Nazis.

          • mo_ztt ✅English
            -1•5 months ago

            “Ad hominem” refers to ignoring the content of a message, and making your argument based on who is speaking. It doesn’t mean that your statement about the speaker isn’t factual, or that understanding more about who is speaking might not be relevant – it simply refers to the idea that you should at some point address the content of the message if you’re going to debate it.

            In this case, I said something, you ignored the content and instead focused on the fact that I’d linked to something, and criticized the source of the thing I’d linked to. Okay, fair enough, the Koch brothers are Nazis. I don’t like them either. If you want to respond to the content of my message, I’ve now reframed it so the stuff I’m saying is coming directly from me, so that “but Reason.com!” isn’t any longer a way to dismiss it because of who is speaking.

            • Flying SquidEnglish
              4•5 months ago

              “Ad hominem” refers to ignoring the content of a message, and making your argument based on who is speaking.

              I’m aware. And that is perfectly valid when the content of the message is defending monetizing Nazis is funded by Nazis.

              • mo_ztt ✅English
                -3•5 months ago

                You missed what I’m saying. I’m not funded by Nazis. You took my message and ignored what I was saying in favor of criticizing Reason.com. Fair enough. I was inviting you to continue the conversation, if you have an argument against the content, now that I’ve removed anything that could be construed as “because Reason.com says so” and simply said what I think about it.

                • Flying SquidEnglish
                  3•5 months ago

                  Was your message based on what you read on a Nazi website? Otherwise, why did you link to it?

                  So no, I’m not suggesting you’re funded by Nazis. I’m suggesting that’s who you get your information from in order to make your argument, hence your linking to it.

                  • mo_ztt ✅English
                    -2•5 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.