Technology

59407 readers

3386 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

861

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.”

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] -2 points 11 months ago

I mean even if it made them more money to platform confirmed shitheads, it's still the wrong thing to do. Like ethically. It doesn't also have to be wrong from a business or even legal perspective.

If a company can't take that kind of stand I don't want anything to do with them.

I am actually kind of thrilled that I have substack subscriptions, including paid, that I can pull as my little protest to this platform. Luckily my paid subscriptions have both confirmed that they're ditching substack as well, so my support will follow them wherever they land.

I really hope that substack lets writers have access to their email lists, so they can easily take them with them.