More than 200 Substack authors asked the platform to explain why itâs âplatforming and monetizing Nazis,â and now they have an answer straight from co-founder Hamish McKenzie:
I just want to make it clear that we donât like Nazis eitherâwe wish no-one held those views. But some people do hold those and other extreme views. Given that, we donât think that censorship (including through demonetizing publications) makes the problem go awayâin fact, it makes it worse.
While McKenzie offers no evidence to back these ideas, this tracks with the companyâs 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. âWeâre not going to get into specific âwould you or wonât youâ content moderation questionsâ 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 âwe donât like or condone bigotry in any form.â
I actually prefer this type of hands-off approach. I find it offensive that people would refuse to let me see things because they deem it too âbadâ for me to deal with. I find it insulting anyone would stop me reading how to make meth or read Mein Kampf. Iâm 40yo and itâs pretty fucking difficult to offend me and to think Iâm going to be driven to commit crime just by reading is offensive.
I donât need protecting from speech/information. Iâm perfectly capable and confident in my own views to deal with bullshit of all types.
If youâre incapable of dealing with it - then donât fucking read it.
Fact is the more you clamp down on stuff like this the more you drive people into the shadows. 4chan and the darkweb become havens of âvictimhoodâ where they can spout their bullshit and create terrorists. When you prohibit information/speech you give it power.
In high school it was common for everyone to hunt for the Anarchists/Jolly Roger Cookbook. I imagine thereâs kids now who see it as a challenge to get hold of it and terrorist manuals - not because they want to blow shit up, but because itâs taboo!
Same with drugs - donât pick and eat that mushroom. Donât burn that plant. Anyone with 0.1% of curiosity will ask âwhy?â and do it because they want to know why itâs prohibited.
Porn is another example. The more you lock it down the more people will thirst for it.
Open it all up to the bright light of day. Show it up for all itâs naked stupidity.
Thatâs not really how this works. Do you also think advertising and marketing donât work?
Pinching the bridge of my nose here. Nazi blog posts are marketing for nazi beliefs. Theyâre posting because they have ideas that they want you to have, too. What do you think marketing is? Ok, letâs assume youâre asking in good faith.
When you see an ad you donât typically run right out and buy it. But now youâre more aware of whatever theyâre advertising. Maybe thatâs a new car. Maybe itâs pepsi. Maybe itâs âYou should recycle.â And maybe, when itâs a literal nazi post, itâs âthe jews are the problemâ. Some people will bounce right off the ad⌠Some people will immediately click through, read the related links, blah blah. And many people who read it will sort of remember it, and now have context for the next post they see. The more ads they see for nazi beliefs (or anything, really), the more likely they are to be persuaded.
If you saw posts every day that promoted nazism as a solution for the worldâs problems, it would have an effect on you. Look how effective fox news has been at propagating right wing beliefs.
In a lot of languages advertising and propaganda are literally the same word. The only difference is whether the goal is commercial or political.
fascinated that you think it would somehow be harder for you to go out and find nazis if substack werenât hosting and paying them. it will always be easy to find and read Nazi content. the reason substack matters is that the platform helps THEM find YOU, or a suggestible journalist, or a suggestible politician, etc. you are not the protagonist here
Agreed. I actually had come back to this topic specifically to make this exact point, which for all the time Iâd spent on this at this point I feel like I hadnât said.
People are adults, generally speaking. Itâs weird to say that you canât have a newsletter that has a literal swastika on it, because people will be able to read it but unable to realize that what itâs saying is dangerous violence. Apparently we have to have someone âin chargeâ of making sure only the good stuff is allowed to be published, and keeping away the bad stuff, so people wonât be influenced by bad stuff. This is a weird viewpoint. Itâs one the founding fathers were not at all in agreement with.
Personally, I do think that thereâs a place for organized opposition to slick internet propaganda which pulls people down the right-wing rabbit hole, because thatâs a huge problem right now. I donât actually know what that opposition looks like, and I can definitely see a place for banning certain behaviors (bot accounts, funded troll operations, disguising the source of a message) that people might class as âfree speech,â or adding counterbalancing âfree speechâ in kind to misleading messages (Twitterâs âcommunity notesâ are actually a pretty good way of combating it for example). But simply knee-jerking that we have to find the people who are wrong, and ban them, because if we let people say wrong stuff then other people will read it and become wrong, is a very childish way to look at people who consume media on the internet.
This article is not about government censorship. This is about a private entity actively deciding to allow nazi content on their platform. Hand wringing about founding fathers belongs in some other thread where the topic is the government prohibiting content from being published.
Iâm aware of how the first amendment applies, yes. I agree with the spirit of it in addition to the letter, though. Youâre free to delete the one sentence where I talked about founding fathers, and respond to the whole rest of my message which doesnât reference them or government censorship in any way.
(Edit: Actually, I wasnât super explicit about it, but in the whole final paragraph I was thinking partly of government regulation to combat misinformation. That is, in part, what I meant by âorganized opposition.â So, I spent time in my message referring to what the government should do to limit harmful internet content, and no time at all talking about what it shouldnât do. I did throw in a passing reference to founding fathers, in reference to the spirit that I think should inform private companies who are non-governmental gatekeepers of content.)
