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.”

  • ZeroCool@feddit.ch
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    1 year ago

    I just want to make it clear that we don’t like Nazis either

    Actions speak louder than words. Fuck Substack and fuck any platform that offers a safe haven for nazis.

    • whofearsthenight@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      “I want you to know that I don’t like nazis. But I am fine platforming them and profiting from them. Now here is some bullshit about silencing ‘ideas.’”

  • TacoButtPlug@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Yea… Meta took the same “free peaches” approach and the entire fucking globe is now dealing with various versions of white nationalism. So like, can we actually give censorship of hate a fucking try for once? I’m willing to go down that road.

    • extracheese@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Never ever fall for that one. You can look at various regimes in the world what happens when “hate” gets censored. Demonitizing is one thing, technical implementations to “live censor hate” would be catastrophic.

      • ira@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        I’m looking. Is something supposed to stand out about Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, New Zealand, Sweden, and the UK?

  • Gamers_Mate@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    “we don’t like or condone bigotry in any form.” I mean they are litterally Condoning bigotry.

    “His response similarly doesn’t engage other questions from the Substackers Against Nazis authors, like why these policies allow it to moderate spam and newsletters from sex workers but not Nazis.”

    Doesn’t seem very consistent.

  • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    For anyone who remembers the interview the CEO did with the Verge back when they launched Notes, this isn’t surprising at all.

    You can see a transcript here. The relevant section can be found by searching all brown people are animals or more specifically just animals and reading on from there.

    I’m not sure if the video footage of the interview is still available, but it’s even worse because you can see that the CEO is completely lost when talking about the idea of moderating anything and basically shuts down because they have nothing to say all while the interview is politely berating them about how they’re obviously failing a litmus test.

    Do note that above the point where “animals” occurs is some post-hoc context provided by the interviewer (perhaps why the video is no longer easily available?) where they point out that the question they asked and the response they got wasn’t exactly as extreme as it first appeared. But they also point out that it’s still very notable despite the slightly mitigating correction and I’d agree entirely, especially if you watch(ed) the video and clocked the CEO’s demeanor and lack of any intelligent thought on the issue.

    • winterayars@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Oh yeah that’s the classic. The interviewer describes himself as one of the targets, even, and that still doesn’t make it real for this fuck.

  • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Ehhh, it’s one of those things where I agree with the principle, but the principle fails. It’s the so called tolerance paradox (which isn’t actually a paradox at all, but that’s tangential).

    On principle, no company should be in the business of deciding what is and isn’t acceptable “speech”. That’s simply not something we really want happening.

    But then there’s nazis and other outright insane bigots. But we still don’t really want companies making that call, because they’ll decide on the side of profit, period. If enough of the nazi types get enough power and money going, every single fucking company out there that isn’t owned by a single person, or very small group of people that share the same ideals, is going to be deciding that it’s the nazi bullshit that’s the only acceptable speech.

    This is something that has to come from the bottom to the top and be decided on a legal level first. We absolutely can ban nazi type bullshit if we want to. There’s plenty of room for it to be pointed at as the incitement to violence that it is. There need to be very specific, very limited definitions to govern what is and isn’t part of that

    And the limitations have to be impossible to expand without starting all the way over with the kind of stringency it takes to amend the constitution.

    That takes it out of the hands of corporations, and makes it very difficult to game. But it has to come from us, as a people first.

  • Unaware7013@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    TIL that Substack is apparently a bunch of crypto-fascists who expect people to believe they don’t support Nazis, they just give them money and a place at their table to talk about it.

  • justastranger@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    This tracks with my previous attempts at reporting that Sinfest guy. Posts hundreds of comics that blatantly break multiple official substack content guidelines and I get the effective equivalent of a promise for “action” combined with a dismissive eye roll. They completely ignored my follow-up email detailing the complete lack of action and the dozen or so new content guideline violations.

  • Cosmicomical@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Translated: McKenzie just wants the sweet money and is trying to gaslight us into thinking platforming nazis is ok.

  • kandoh@reddthat.com
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    1 year ago

    If a Nazi has a large subscription following than Substack would be directly profiting from Nazi content.

  • Chozo@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I just want to make it clear that we don’t like Nazis either—we wish no-one held those views.

    “But we’ll gladly host those views on our platform, run ads alongside them, and profit from them.”

  • ourob@discuss.tchncs.de
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    1 year ago

    (transcribed from a series of tweets) - iamragesparkle

    I was at a shitty crustpunk bar once getting an after-work beer. One of those shitholes where the bartenders clearly hate you. So the bartender and I were ignoring one another when someone sits next to me and he immediately says, “no. get out.” And the dude next to me says, “hey i’m not doing anything, i’m a paying customer.” and the bartender reaches under the counter for a bat or something and says, “out. now.” and the dude leaves, kind of yelling. And he was dressed in a punk uniform, I noticed

    Anyway, I asked what that was about and the bartender was like, “you didn’t see his vest but it was all nazi shit. Iron crosses and stuff. You get to recognize them.”

    And i was like, ohok and he continues. "you have to nip it in the bud immediately. These guys come in and it’s always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don’t want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after awhile they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too. And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh shit, this is a Nazi bar now. And it’s too late because they’re entrenched and if you try to kick them out, they cause a PROBLEM. So you have to shut them down.

    And i was like, ‘oh damn.’ and he said “yeah, you have to ignore their reasonable arguments because their end goal is to be terrible, awful people.”

    And then he went back to ignoring me. But I haven’t forgotten that at all.

  • Chaotic Entropy@feddit.uk
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    1 year ago

    Cool… so they now facilitate and directly benefit from Nazi activity. Sounds great when you put it like that.