Substack on Nazi Views
substack.com
substack.com
Actually, have you done that? If you haven't, you should try because in general it's an extremely difficult problem. The fact that essentially every single platform that has user-generated/-contributed content struggles with this should make it obvious that it's not easy at all.
Even the stuff you'd think would be simple (e.g. blocking profanity) is hard, but once you try to nail down things as nebulous as subject matter, it's more or less impossible to define a policy that always works. The most reliable is to have a human apply a "I know it when I see it" standard, but that obviously doesn't scale and is itself subjective.
So, if you decide to ban Nazi ideology, that seems good at first. But can someone write a historical post that outlines the ideology so we can learn about it? Seems reasonable. But what if the mere tone of the historical article seems to shine a somewhat positive light on it? What if the article says the ideology is bad overall but had some ideas that were maybe good at their core but then became distorted? It goes on and on and on - for any policy you define, there will be ways for bad stuff to slip through and there will be cases where good stuff gets censored. You may adopt the position that that's good enough, but it is quite hard to "ban one kind of content" effectively.
Yes I believe it's possible to effectively censor Nazi ideology without having an objective and universally accepted definition of that, which unambiguously covers all possible edge cases, and despite the possibility of error. We accept a system of laws despite laws being ambiguous, needing humans to recognize context and nuance to interpret. We communicate with language despite words not being defined with the rigidity of mathematical proof. We accept scientific models which fail to perfectly map the territory. To claim that efforts which are imperfect must be abandoned is absurdly defeatist, simply giving in to chaos.
We'll see! :)
Can you please share what you think Substack's content policy should be? Just your rough draft of content guidelines that would "effectively censor Nazi ideology". I'm not talking about vague platitudes but actual rules or guidelines for authors and commenters to follow.
Substack's actual content policy is here[0], and as you can read it already contains prohibitions of various kinds of content. Feel free to substitute "Nazi ideology" with "material that advocates, threatens, or shows you causing harm to yourself, other people, or animals" or "sexually exploitative content" if you like.
We're just arguing about where to draw the lines in the sand, but clearly drawing those lines is possible.
Like I pointed out at the very beginning, efforts to censor always seem to break down, and one reason for that is that it's hard to come up with coherent policies. It's easy to speak at a super high level about how things ought to be, but once you try to distill those ideas into something that has any practical value - i.e. something that can be actually used and applied - it all starts to fall apart. The result is that platform providers end up in one of 2 main camps:
1) The content does not represent us at all. We set some very broad limits, but for the most part, people can say what they say and we're just providing the platform.
2) Content has to conform to our standards, and application of those standards can and will appear to be completely arbitrary.
Neither approach is without its problems, and both approaches anger a lot of people. In general, though, if you're in the business of trying to attract creators and help them build audiences on your platform, #1 is much less bad than #2 - the latter will either limit your ability to get off the ground or will become a millstone when you do.
Only if we sacrifice innocence from even the few corners it persists in. Nor would content anarchism last if we achieved it as human nature appears to not be anarchic so culture will tend to reject it and there will always be power inequalities that will all result in censorship creeping back in. The best we can hope for is a limited amount of censorship that makes it as easy as possible to be good and happy. That raises a lot of questions about what is reasonable and what is good, but that is where the battleground will be.
You want the intellectual battleground to be around what gets censored? How does that get decided? If the majority of people want to censor the plight of an oppressed group because its convenient, will that pass?
You are willingly throwing away the idea of free information exchange because you are scared of, censorship?
"When the situation is not equal, pretending to be neutral favors the oppressors." - Jame Scholl
In your scenario you seem to be equating two ideologies that are bad because of different reasons.
Nazi content is social darwinist in the sense that they believe in a race war between nations and that it is every race's duty to enslave and extract resources from the inferior races. It is appealing because every Nazi believes that they are part of the chosen race.
I haven't seen anything near that level from any communist. The worst thing they do is hate their boss and demand a revolution which is supposed to result in some utopia. When you talk to them about Marxist Leninism most of them tell you that they don't approve of it.
There is a difference between wanting fascism as a goal and having facism as a side effect of a flawed ideology.
The communist is harmless until the revolution happens. The Nazi will be racist and violent as soon as today.
You mention that they are bad for different reasons but I think my reasons for opposing them to identical. They are fundamentally evil ideologies (Marxism and Fascism) and they also have each been implemented in a way that each resulted in the mass murder of millions (Nazis and Communists).
Edit: Forgot the article 'the' article in the last sentence.
The people who are hosting the content on their servers.
Do you have any evidence of this? Studies often suggest otherwise, e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/002210...
There are so many problems with censorship, but here are two examples:
1) At a really high level, bad ideas don't hold up well under scrutiny, and censorship literally takes away scrutiny. If you want to weaken the spread of a dumb idea, make its advocates defend it publicly. The most insane and backwards ideas can be made to sound somewhat reasonable in an echo chamber.
2) The quotes around "bad" were a nod to the shifting definition of what is bad. Censorship is appealing when the thing to censor is extreme, but it's a power that is too easily abused. You start off with noble ideas of e.g. censoring "hate" but suddenly realize that that's impossible to define well, and so just about anything can be construed as hateful and, by extension, censorable. Censorship just becomes a cudgel wielded by whoever is currently in power.
Additionally, Substack is allowing the monetization of (and thus profiting from) Nazi viewpoints. That's more than "shining a light on it".
That would not stop freedom of speech, but I can’t understand why you would pay them for their objectionable and vile views.
Does it have to be more complicated than that?
It all falls apart once you move to user-generated/-contributed content. So, for example, if you want to create a place for the best modern thinkers to come and debate how society should address the modern challenges of our time, how much do you moderate that? Your willingness to interfere with the discussion is directly at odds with your goal of becoming "the" place for this sort of thing. Authors are well aware that the audience/following they build is at least somewhat tied to the platform they use to build it, and many people - possibly some of the people you really want - are going to balk at a policy of "we can take down any post at any time for any reason". It doesn't make your policy right or wrong, it's just at odds with your cool business idea, that's all.
https://popehat.substack.com/p/substack-has-a-nazi-opportuni...
It’s a pity this is a difficult thing to handle. Moderation decisions are hard. Very hard. But being hard has never been an excuse for not doing the thing that is hard.
> 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.
while they ban porn.
If this is true, how are sex workers considered to be worse than Nazis?
I’m trying to find out if this is the reality. Apologies if it is not, but there are more than a few people commenting on it.
I do understand that this may not be the fault of Substack, but they could clear this all up by noting why they have to make an exception. Perhaps they do and I haven’t seen it?
For some reason this is often case with free speech absolutists: they are eager to be devil's advocates while banning harmless things.