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
Iâm still not sure how that relates to the point I was making.
I donât want anyone to censor what Iâm allowed to see.
If youâre asking if thatâs how I feel about advertising then yes - of course. Like I said I want to be wholly responsible for what I see or donât see. I donât want people a government or corporation parenting my viewing.
The corporation already makes choices about your viewing. Unless itâs a completely unmoderated wiki, they make choices about what is allowed. There are presumably lines that substack (or anyone) are unwilling to cross. We can probably assume that they would not be okay with âlivestream of grinding up babies and puppies and snorting themâ.
If such a line exists, then I am saying nazi shit should be on the far side of the line.
If such a line does NOT exist, then I guess weâd have to have that discussion about why some things are unacceptable.
If the line is âonly what is literally illegalâ then that just punts editorial responsibility into a slower, less responsive system. Itâs a cowardly shirking of responsibility.
As to how it relates:
I donât need protecting from speech/information. Iâm perfectly capable and confident in my own views to deal with bullshit of all types.
Thatâs false. Thatâs not how you or anyone works. You are just as vulnerable to advertising as anyone else. And even if you were the platonic ideal of Strong Rational Man, many other people arenât.
If we were talking about government censorship, which we were not, then thatâs a slightly different conversation. The government has more power and is fundamentally different than a private blog platform or whatever.
Censorship isnât the right word here, I would say. Censorship would make sense if this were a government that was being spoken about but itâs not.
Iâll take it from the perspective of myself, I run a Lemmy instance that is open for people to register for (after a brief application question and confirming your email address). If someone registered, and wanted to post Nazi-adjacent content I would remove it and ban them right away.
I would not be âcensoringâ your ability to see it. I would be saying âI do not want to host this content on the hardware that I am paying for and maintainâ. Sure, you could argue that the side effect is that youâre not able to see it, but my intent isnât âcensorshipâ. If you want to see red and pink diamonds (just a completely abstract example), but I did not want to host it, then as the person whoâs paying for the hardware then my want will always come first. That isnât to say that others arenât free (including yourself) to host said red and pink diamonds.
Censorship as a term makes sense for the government, because they have the power to enforce that everyone under their ruling must not host red and pink diamonds. I alone do not. Now, maybe almost every single Lemmy instance also doesnât want to host red and pink diamonds - that would still not be censorship, that would just be most instance admins happen to align the same and are executing the same rules for their own sites.
Of course, replace myself with a private business owner, and Lemmy instances with something like a News subscription website, the meaning should still be the same. Hopefully my stance makes sense, Iâm not writing this with the intent of âYouâre wrong and Iâm rightâ in the direct sense, but as a âI disagree, and hereâs whyâ.
I did see your conversation with the other person here, and I agree that government censorship is bad (such as the weird concept of having to upload your ID to view porn), but I just donât view this in the same way I suppose.
Obviously, Substack is within their rights to allow red and pink diamonds if they want, but if they didnât then that would not be censorship (in my eyes, at least).
