Substack explains why they are paying Nazis to publish on their platform | Hacker News Reader

Substack explains why they are paying Nazis to publish on their platform

kottke.org

5 pointsburo99 comments

The explanation from Substack: "...we don't think that censorship ... makes the problem go away—in fact, it makes it worse. We believe that supporting individual rights and civil liberties while subjecting ideas to open discourse is the best way to strip bad ideas of their power."

Agree or disagree, but that is a principled position.

It's not even correct, much less principled.

It’s an explicit endorsement of a Nazi viewpoint while hiding behind “free speech” on a platform that has no obligation to allow unfettered free speech. They in fact, do not. Pornography is not allowed on their platform. Pornography is free speech.

This is no different from Musk/Twitter.

They clearly endorse a subset of free speech, again even though they're under no obligation to do so. They endorse and _actively support by monetary means_ Nazism.

It's a private platform. I absolutely despise Substack as a service and alternative source of media, but I couldn't care less about their stance on Nazism. Same goes for Twitter, honestly. Their interpretation of "Free Speech" is going to always coincide with "what makes us the most money", and eventually people will wise up and abandon those platforms.

Ironically, if you wanted to cast off the yoke of Substack and Twitter to join the Fediverse, you'd also probably inadvertently end up in a Nazi's feed. It's turtles all the way down, no matter who owns the platform.

Except Twitter under Musk is interpreting "free speech" in a way that's losing them money. Most people don't want Nazis on their platform, or laissez-faire moderation, nor do most advertisers want to be associated with them. There is only so much value for extremism to drive engagement and clicks, it isn't worth the inevitable loss in users and mindshare.

Taking a "pro-Nazi" free speech extremist stance is provably bad for business, so that can't be the motive.

>Ironically, if you wanted to cast off the yoke of Substack and Twitter to join the Fediverse, you'd also probably inadvertently end up in a Nazi's feed.

I don't know... Mastodon at least seems to do a decent job of quarantining that kind of thing. You have to go out of your way to find instances that allow that content, and those instances are cut off from the rest of the network.

> Except Twitter under Musk is interpreting "free speech" in a way that's losing them money.

Twitter under Jack Dorsey was losing them money, too. It's definitely true that most people on the platform disagree with Nazis, but where else are they gonna go? Elon's bet was that nobody would leave; so far, it feels like he's right. Seems to me like the majority of people have settled in for the long haul, and that seems to be what he wanted it for. I have never used Twitter though, someone will have to let me know if their feeds are empty now that Elon owns the site.

> I don't know... Mastodon at least seems to do a decent job of quarantining that kind of thing.

Well... it has an allow-by-default federation policy that's probably worse than whatever Twitter uses to keep the trolls out. I love Mastodon, but if you have a problem rubbing elbows with political extremists then you'll want a veeeeeeeeeery conservative federation policy.

I'm not sure I understand where this comment is coming from. If you like freedom of speech, you should be happy to have as much of it is possible on any platform, whether it's under any obligation to allow it or not, whether it allows "unfettered free speech", including obscene speech, or not.

I find it particularly confusing that you repeated twice that substack is under no obligation to allow freedom of speech. Why does this matter so much to you?

> obscene speech

Substack doesn't allow obscene speech.

> Why does this matter so much to you?

They choose not to moderate an ideology of hate. But they choose to moderate pornography.

They're explicitly not a "free speech" platform by their own policy. To say they are otherwise is simply false.

What I don't get, is why you actually care. On Substack, you read the authors you like, and don't read the ones you don't.

Do you know that quote? "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"? That applies here.

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