“We don’t think that censorship (including through demonetizing publications) makes the problem go away.”

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.”

  • maegul (he/they)English
    12•11 months 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.