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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

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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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[–] RickRussell_CA 19 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I'd love to say that, but unfortunately journalists I respect, who are doing very excellent content that repudiates fascism, don't really have anywhere else to go. Radley Balko, for example, is a preeminent journalist on the topics of police brutality, law enforcement misdeeds, and failures of the criminal justice system. But WaPo didn't want to publish him any more, so where does he go?

I hope they find alternatives, but I'm not going to stop paying for journalism from people like Balko. I don't want to let white supremacists force any more epistemic closure.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago (2 children)

In the old days, one would pay a small monthly fee and then you have your own website where you could basically do anything legal that you want. Is this no longer possible?

[–] mo_ztt 14 points 11 months ago

Still 100% possible. Wordpress hosting is cheap and easy. It's getting harder and harder for that type of site to find a good audience, as the web becomes more and more siloed and the stuff within the silos becomes more tightly interconnected, but some notable people are still doing it. Cory Doctorow comes to mind.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Because Idividual websites would be punished by search engines they were made a part of a bigger one, can we make better search engine to go around this?

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

Medium?

[–] RickRussell_CA 1 points 11 months ago

No idea how the compensation structure works on Medium. But I also have no idea what their content moderation policies are either.