- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
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.”
They are taking a free-speech approach, I suppose.
Ah, I see we’re using the SCOTUS definition of ‘free speech’ where money is speech.
“If we don’t publish their stuff, they’ll go somewhere else where
we don’t get their advertising revenuewe can’t check that their material doesn’t cross the lines of our standardswhich we don’t enforce because money. Therefore, not publishing them would be a violation ofincomefree speech because theybring in money from their other fanaticscouldn’t possibly post any where else and so is worse than notmaking money offpublishingand promotingthem”