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.”
Simply put propaganda works. If you allow people to spread hate then it grows. I don’t think you have ever been a person on the receiving side of hate where a group of people want you to cease to exist, to take your rights away, or to torture you.
In our modern world if you spread intolerance you are shunned and deplatformed. That is a big improvement compared to the past. It is not perfect either.
You mentioned people get silenced unfairly or cut short because of pushing boundaries. This weighs heavy on your thought process imagining bogey men taking away people’s freedoms.
It is ultimately a naive and impractical viewpoint though borne out of privilege and lack of experience. This whole freedom of speech movement is a red hearing for hate speech and you bought into it trying to be reasonable. There is no reasoning with them and you are simply wrong.
Simply put propaganda works.
"Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself; she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate.” -Thomas Jefferson
Professionally produced and packaged propaganda to sway public opinion is absolutely a critical modern problem. I won’t say I have the solution. I can tell you from experience interacting with people who have been victimized by propaganda that they will happily follow the propaganda-sources off the “responsible” content networks who are censoring them and onto some other network that’s still willing to host them.
Put it another way: Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube all have policies designed to combat the spread of election denial and COVID denialism, by limiting people’s ability to post it on their networks. How’s that worked?
I don’t think you have ever been a person on the receiving side of hate where a group of people want you to cease to exist, to take your rights away, or to torture you.
If you’re intending this as some sort of trump card, where you’re allowed to have an opinion on the matter and I’m not (when you have no idea what I have or haven’t been on the receiving end of), then don’t respond to this message and we can go our separate ways. If you’re interested in talking with me about it, then I’m happy to do that, and take what you say on your own merits and not come up with external reasons to dismiss it.
(Edit, since I just saw it in another comment: If you’re real into certain people being allowed to express their views when other people aren’t, here’s Edward Snowden, among other people, telling you that you’re wrong. Has he had a group of people want to take his rights away? They did promise not to torture him but I’m not sure that was a truthful statement.)
In our modern world if you spread intolerance you are shunned and deplatformed. That is a big improvement compared to the past.
Oh, good. So intolerance’s spread on the internet is getting progressively smaller over time, is it? Thank God, it seemed for a while like that was a problem.
This whole freedom of speech movement is a red hearing for hate speech and you bought into it trying to be reasonable.
Sometimes, yes. There are a bunch of conservative people in the US who use “free speech” in a very particular way as a red herring for something much different and much darker. Why do you assume that I’ve been swayed by them? I spent some time yesterday and today arguing with one of them, I actually got annoyed that he didn’t seem to want to engage with me when I was eager to tell him about how he was wrong.
I notice, also, that you haven’t spent too much time responding to what I actually said; you told me a bunch of things about me, and reasons why my views can be discounted. Like I say, if that’s the way then we don’t need to talk.
There is no reasoning with them and you are simply wrong.
Welp. Glad we cleared that up.
