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Substack says it will not remove or demonetize Nazi content (www.theverge.com)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/technology

422 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.”

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

On one hand, Substack is in it's rights and as a journalistic organization, they are in the right.

The issue is: Once you serve a Nazi in your bar, you become a Nazi bar. This is no longer a marginalized viewpoint you can ignore. Its actively recruiting and frightening. Inaction is enabling. Substack is going to become shitty, and fast. They will lose high engagement users, first when the ones who protested pile out for another platform and then quickly when the quality dips.

Also, their cavalier attitude will change when Stripe steps in.

[–] nukeworker10 26 points 11 months ago

You can contact Stripe at the link to let them know about the company they are associating with.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (2 children)

How is Stripe associated with Substack? (I'm out of the loop here)

[–] kameecoding 4 points 11 months ago

I an guessing they do their payment processingt

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I was too, but sounds like the TL;DR is they're the supporting infrastructure which substack uses:

Substack’s team built its service on Stripe’s infrastructure, which bypassed significant investment in engineering. By leaning on Stripe’s expertise, Substack could scale quickly and focus its energy on fulfilling its promise to writers. The company offers better services because it can continue to lean on Stripe and direct extra bandwidth toward customers.

https://stripe.com/ae/customers/substack

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Thanks, that definitely explains it better than simply being a payment processor.

[+] [email protected] -11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The issue is: Once you serve a Nazi in your bar, you become a Nazi bar.

So if a Nazi buy [a service] then the [service offerer] is a Nazi.

So every [service offerer] in the world is probably Nazi, since probably every [service offerer] in the world has at least a Nazi customer.

Interesting approach, now what we should do about all these Nazi [service offerer] ?

[–] affiliate 13 points 11 months ago (2 children)

the context of the post is about knowingly serving nazis. this argument does not work in that context.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Also about allowing them to congregate on your platform. Nazi bars aren't just Nazi bars because of who's in them but also because of who is not in them.

[–] affiliate 1 points 11 months ago

yeah this is also a good point

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

They are also knowingly serving many other categories, so ? They are both democrats and republican, nazis and pro-israel and whatever other "category" uses them to publish artices ?

[–] affiliate 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

this argument is implicitly assuming nazism is “on the same level” as being democrat/republican or any other “category”. this is not the case, so this argument also doesn’t work. do you have any others?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I don't said they are on the same level.
I simply said that if you define a platform as "nazi" because they serve a nazi then you can define the same platform as "whatever" because they serve whatever.

[–] affiliate 3 points 11 months ago

i can define the color orange by the color of the fruit. i could also define red and blue by the color of that same fruit. not all of these definitions are equally valid