“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.”

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldEnglish
      336·
      11 months ago

      Ah, I see we’re using the SCOTUS definition of ‘free speech’ where money is speech.

    • sbmc29@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      11 months ago

      It’s 2023 and we have all the world’s knowledge at our fingertips but somehow people still have no idea what free speech is…

    • AlbertSpangler@lemmings.worldEnglish
      2·
      11 months ago

      “If we don’t publish their stuff, they’ll go somewhere else where we don’t get their advertising revenue we can’t check that their material doesn’t cross the lines of our standards which we don’t enforce because money. Therefore, not publishing them would be a violation of income free speech because they bring in money from their other fanatics couldn’t possibly post any where else and so is worse than not making money off publishing and promoting them”