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.”
Free speech POV aside, Substack is running a business as a publisher of content. They sell advertising space. You know what de values your advertising space? Unsafe hateful content. Advertisers care about “brand safety” in terms of what their ads appear next to. You can’t run a good advertising sales business if the advertisers don’t have guarantees on brand safety.
If you ever see it go ahead and screenshot it then email it them while CC some local news source. Hey, how do you feeling your roofing business being affiliated with this?
