“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.”

  • gian @lemmy.grys.itEnglish
    313·
    11 months ago

    The issue is: Once you serve a Nazi in your bar, you become a Nazi bar.

    So if a Nazi buy [a service] then the [service offerer] is a Nazi.

    So every [service offerer] in the world is probably Nazi, since probably every [service offerer] in the world has at least a Nazi customer.

    Interesting approach, now what we should do about all these Nazi [service offerer] ?

    • affiliate@lemmy.worldEnglish
      131·
      11 months ago

      the context of the post is about knowingly serving nazis. this argument does not work in that context.

      • winterayars@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        5·
        11 months ago

        Also about allowing them to congregate on your platform. Nazi bars aren’t just Nazi bars because of who’s in them but also because of who is not in them.

      • gian @lemmy.grys.itEnglish
        11·
        11 months ago

        They are also knowingly serving many other categories, so ? They are both democrats and republican, nazis and pro-israel and whatever other “category” uses them to publish artices ?