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.”
Sort of like Substack’s servers then?
You think the platform is the widget, I think the content is the widget. I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.
Your words:
They’re paying for the convenience of using Substack’s servers. The Nazi could be spreading their bigotry through direct email, for example, but that is not a profit-generating enterprise. Substack, however, is a profit-generating enterprise. Notice that they said they aren’t even willing to demonetize Nazi accounts. They are happy to make a profit from Nazi content. And for some reason, you think that is defensible.