More than 200 Substack authors asked the platform to explain why itās āplatforming and monetizing Nazis,ā and now they have an answer straight from co-founder Hamish McKenzie:
I just want to make it clear that we donāt like Nazis eitherāwe wish no-one held those views. But some people do hold those and other extreme views. Given that, we donāt think that censorship (including through demonetizing publications) makes the problem go awayāin fact, it makes it worse.
While McKenzie offers no evidence to back these ideas, this tracks with the companyās 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. āWeāre not going to get into specific āwould you or wonāt youā content moderation questionsā 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 āwe donāt like or condone bigotry in any form.ā
Thank you for the detailed response.
Substack can host nazis given the legal framework in the US. But why shouldnāt I speak up about their platforming of evil? Substack can do what they want, and I can tell them to fuck off. I can tell people who do business with them that I donāt approve, and Iām not going to do business with them while theyāre engaged with this nazi loving platform. Thatās just regular old freedom of speech and association.
Their speech is not more important than mine. There is no obligation for me to sit in silence when someone else is saying horrible things.
It feels like youāre arguing for free speech for the platform, but restricted speech for the audience. The platform is free to pick who can post there, but you donāt want the audience to speak back.
Youāre conflating laws and government with private stuff. The bulk of this conversation is about what can private organizations do to moderate their platforms. Legality is only tangentially related. (Also it doesnāt necessarily follow that banning nazi uniforms would ban BLM t-shirts. Germany has some heavy bans on nazi imagery and to my knowledge have not slid enthusiastically down that slope)
A web forum I used to frequent banned pro-trump and pro-ice posts. The world didnāt end. They didnāt ban BLM. It helps that it was a forum run by people, and not an inscrutable god-machine or malicious genie running the place.
Iām also not sure I understood your answer to my question. Is there a line other than ātechnically legalā that you donāt want crossed? Is the law actually a good arbiter?
I donāt think theyāve actually been trying very hard. They make a lot of money by not doing much. Googleās also internally incompetent (see: their many, many, canceled projects), Facebook is evil (see: that time they tried to make people sad to see if they could), and twitter has always had a childās understanding of free speech.
A related problem here is probably the consolidation of platforms. Twitter and Facebook as so big that banning someone from it is a bigger deal than it probably should be. But they are free to move to a more permissive platform if their content is getting them kicked out of popular places. Weāre not talking about a nationwide, government backed-by-force content ban.
Iām not sure what to do about coordinated disinformation. Platforms banning or refusing to host some of it is probably one part of the remedy, though.
Oh, yeah, you can say whatever you like.
I think youāre right that I was a little fuzzy when I talked about things that were illegal versus things I personally donāt like, yeah. You should obviously be able (legally and what-I-think-is-right wise) to say anything you like about Substack. And, they are legally able to do whatever they want with their servers, whether that involves allowing or banning or demonetizing Nazis or whatever. Most of my conversation was about what I think they should do with their servers, but itās just my opinion. And yes I think you should be able to state your opinion and I should be able to disagree with it and all that.
You asked before what I meant about the āspiritā of the first amendment. What I meant was, thereās a specific purpose why it was enshrined into law, and the same principles that led to that legal framework also produce some implications for how the operator of a communication network āshouldā treat that network, in my opinion, especially as it grows to the size of something like Facebook and starts to wield power similar to a government in terms of deciding how people should be able to communicate with each other. But yes, this is all just what I feel about it, and youāre free to disagree or say fuck Substack or organize a boycott or whatever you like.
Once it gets into, we need to pressure their advertisers and try to force them to run their servers in a more Nazi-hostile way, I really donāt like that. It is legal, yes. But itās coercive. Itās like a high-pressure salesman or a slimy romantic partner. All perfectly legal things. But I think thatās crossing a whole new line into something bad, much worse than Substack just doing something with their moderation I personally think they shouldnāt be doing.
Sure. So, I actually donāt like that type of thing (although it is, of course, legal, and Iād defend the rights of those forum operators to do it if they chose). I got banned from a few different subreddits, both left and right wing which was funny to me, because people didnāt like what I said. Thatās, honestly, pretty infuriating. Iāve also talked with conservative people who got suspended temporarily from Facebook, or had their posts taken down because they were antivax or whatever. Did I agree with those posts? Absolutely not, and I argued with them about it. Do I agree they should have had their posts removed? No. I started out thinking that yes, removing the posts is fine, and told them that more or less Facebook could do whatever they wanted because it was their network, but after having the argument a certain number of times I started to sympathize a lot more with the point of view of ādude fuck you, Iām a human being, just let me say what I want to say.ā I donāt think that simple removal of the post, or chasing people off the āmainā shared network completely, and onto a Nazis-only network like Truth Social, is the answer. Iāll say this, it definitely didnāt make them less antivax when that happened, or make it at all difficult for them to find antivax propaganda.
Thatās different from actual Nazi posts, of course. Just saying some of my experience with this. I actually donāt like a lot of lemmy.world culture thatās developing now because it is starting to become this sort of monoculture, where only a particular variety of views are allowed. Like it really irks me that pro-police or conservative viewpoints get shit on so relentlessly that it basically chases those people away. I liked that reddit had both /r/protectandserve and /r/badcopnodonut. Itās fine. Let people talk, and donāt start yelling at them that they have the āwrongā view (although of course you can always tell them why you think theyāre wrong). I have plenty of āwrongā views from the POV of the Lemmy hivemind, so maybe Iām more invested in it as an issue because of that.
Fair question. I mean, at the end of the day each server operator can do what they like. Some people will say that Nazis or MAGA people are so frequently trolls that they just donāt want to deal with them. Some people donāt want porn. Some people want to run a forum thatās explicitly pro-conservative and just get tired of left-wing people coming in and jeering at them. All those things sound fine to me (what-I-like wise as well as legally). I donāt think itās my business to tell people where to draw that type of line.
To me, though, that principle āI may not agree with what you say, but Iāll defend to the death your right to say itā is super important. If you start saying only certain viewpoints are welcome, and dismiss the others not with open debate but with loud jeering or technical restrictions, it hurts the discourse on your server. Of course youāre legally allowed to restrict peopleās access however you like. But to me, I would draw the line by disallowing illegal things or things that hurt the discourse (because of trolling or brigading or deceptive bot posts or whatever). But if someoneās just coming in and saying something you think is absolutely dead wrong (e.g. that the holocaust didnāt happen), I donāt think itās your place to remove or ban them. I think you should allow that.
Does that better answer the question? Thatās just my take on it. Iāve never been a modern Lemmy-instance operator, so maybe seeing it first hand and dealing with child porn from angry MAGA people or bomb threats from Nazis and things like that would make me less sympathetic.
I can only say what Iāve observed in terms of restrictions on Facebook posts from people I know, or Youtube creators I know who got demonetized or otherwise chased off Youtube. All of that, I think sucks. I agree, itās kind of heavy-handed and brainless the way theyāre doing it. I think thatās an additional issue in addition to the fact of censoring the ability of people to post being the wrong approach in the first place.
I think one of the core issues is that a huge for-profit company running a huge content network, where they donāt have bandwidth to put much attention into moderation and where most of the architecture of the network is designed to extract revenue from it, is just wrong from start to finish. Thatās why Iām here right now as opposed to Facebook or wherever. When I talk about free speech issues Iām mostly talking about it in terms of things like Lemmy or Substack. But yeah, maybe youāre right that issues of profit motive and moderation bandwidth mean that we canāt draw much of any conclusion by looking at how things played out on the big networks.
Thank you for your detailed reply, again.
Why do you find people using their limited economic power coercive? You say you like boycotts. Telling Tide that you saw their advertisement on a nazi blog so youāre not going to buy Tide until thatās remedied is a boycott.
You also have to account for the audience. While that person may have gotten mad and gone off to a right extremist website, removing their āHolocaust is a lie check out these posts [nazi propaganda link 1, 2, 3]ā post up is a hazard. Many more people read forums than contribute, typically.
There are some points of view that are so hashed out, it is unlikely to be worth our time to debate them again. Nazi ideology, for example, was pretty firmly settled as bad. The forum I mentioned before had a clear āWe are not going to debate if gay people have rightsā rule. Someone might want to make an argument that they donāt, but the belief that they do is so axiomatic for the locale itās not worth entertaining the ādebateā. I do not think it hurts the discourse on your server to disallow some topics like that. I say this with the assumption that the people running the forum are human, and itās not a shitty algorithm trying to parse it, or some underpaid intern who barely speaks the language. There is a hypothetical bad case where an imaginary server prescribes the exact beliefs that are OK and enforces that with moderation powers, but thatās spherical friction-less cow levels removed from my lived experience. Maybe Iāve just been lucky where Iāve spent time on the internet. But also, if a forum sucks you can usually just leave. (Another argument for why the megalith sites like facebook and twitter arenāt great.)
So we disagree on this point. I donāt see any good coming from platforming holocaust deniers or homophobes or whatever. If Iām running a bar, I donāt need to let the nazis have their meetup in the back booth. Thatās just going to draw more nazis, and probably scare off the regular people. Likewise, if Iām running a forum, I donāt need to let them have their little soapbox in my figurative bar.
Iāve also never run a forum. I expect thereās a big āfor me it was tuesdayā experience. For the guy who wants to debate if queer couples really need to get married, itās the first time heās ever waded into this topic. For the moderation team, itās tuesday, and the fourth time this has come up this week. I expect dealing with the worst sorts of people would take the shine off anyoneās idealism.
This sub-thread is very long and Iām starting to lose focus. I donāt think we agree on everything, but I appreciate that youāve been civil.
Haha yeah, all good. I enjoyed it, thank you as well. Iāll wrap up my thoughts if you donāt want to go back and forth indefinitely.
It comes down to the goal of the boycott. A boycott to stop someone polluting or abusing human rights, Iām down for. A boycott because some comedian said something someone doesnāt like and they want to ādeplatformā him, Iām against. A boycott because Substack allows Nazis, and youāre trying to get third parties to punish Substack to make them stop, I also donāt like.
Somewhat related, I think itās great to attack Nazis directly. Something like this where youāre crippling them because they broke the law and hurt people, Iām very in favor of. I donāt like Nazis any more than anyone else does. I just think it has to be based on behavior rather than speech. Letting them speak, but not letting them hurt people, I think is going to hinder their cause a lot more than it helps it.
Okay, hereās the crux:
I donāt think that post is a hazard.
I think having an exchange of ideas which includes dangerous ones, even very dangerous ones, alongside the truth, is a good thing. I think trying to get rid of ādangerousā ideas by banning people from talking about them does more harm than good. I think declaring that no one is allowed to say the holocaust is a lie is a hazard. I think it helps the Nazis to make that rule. I think the people who want to ban Nazis are, unintentionally, helping the Nazis quite a lot. People are talking to me in this subthread like Iām being soft on the Nazis and Nazis are terrible, but I think letting them say what they think, having everyone see it, and having other people free to illustrate why theyāre wrong, is way harder on the Nazis than forcing them off somewhere where they can congregate in peace and no one can see them.
You might not agree, but thatās how I see it.
Yeah, I get this. I wouldnāt try to tell anyone running a forum that they have to entertain this type of debate, because itās incredibly draining and may not fit the goal of the forum and may obscure the actual goal of the forum. I get all that and I wouldnāt try to tell you to run your forum any other way.
The thing is though, that āfor me it was Tuesdayā thing cuts both ways. You may have had this discussion a thousand times already, but for the guy that came in, it may be his very first time being exposed to certain things. I think a lot of religious people have this type of experience when they start talking with athiest people on the internet, and they may be coming from a pretty ignorant place when they start out. I had this type of experience as far as geopolitics and who the āgood guysā are. And, Iāve heard a former white supremacist talking about having his awakening moment and leaving the KKK because of it.
The ātalk.originsā newgroup on Usenet was this. It was a place to debate evolution versus creationism. Is that a pretty firmly settled question? Yes. Absolutely it is. Honestly, more so than gay rights (although gay rights is also settled, to me.) And yet, somehow, there are people in the world who donāt agree. A lot of them argue in bad faith, a lot of them are tedious or ignorant, thereās a ton of ground that gets covered over and over and over again. But is that a useful thing to have exist? Ab so fuckin lutely.
Does that mean that every 4chan troll arguing about the holocaust in bad faith, whoās never going to change his mind, deserves your time and attention? On a forum thatās not for that? Fuck no. I actually think that deliberate engineered misinformation, and the toxic and mind-change-resistant culture of debate on the modern internet, argues for a radical rethinking of whatās a sensible way to approach āan open exchange of communicationā so that it doesnāt wind up as just the Nazis being able to spew hatred in places it doesnāt belong, and public forums being soft fertile ground for disinformation pipelines. Iāve also debated with enough closed minded people on the internet that Iām not naive about what the result of engaging with Nazis in an earnest debate is likely to be. But, a lot of the creationists on talk.origins were just as bad-faith about their conduct as modern 4chan trolls.
Hopefully that makes sense. I just donāt think that the answer is that as soon as someone says one ignorant thing about, for example, gay rights, theyāre stripped of their ability to continue the conversation. Because if no one is ever willing to talk with them about it except other gay-bashers, how would you expect they would ever change their mind about it?