“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.”

  • RussAEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    Censorship isn’t the right word here, I would say. Censorship would make sense if this were a government that was being spoken about but it’s not.

    I’ll take it from the perspective of myself, I run a Lemmy instance that is open for people to register for (after a brief application question and confirming your email address). If someone registered, and wanted to post Nazi-adjacent content I would remove it and ban them right away.

    I would not be “censoring” your ability to see it. I would be saying “I do not want to host this content on the hardware that I am paying for and maintain”. Sure, you could argue that the side effect is that you’re not able to see it, but my intent isn’t “censorship”. If you want to see red and pink diamonds (just a completely abstract example), but I did not want to host it, then as the person who’s paying for the hardware then my want will always come first. That isn’t to say that others aren’t free (including yourself) to host said red and pink diamonds.

    Censorship as a term makes sense for the government, because they have the power to enforce that everyone under their ruling must not host red and pink diamonds. I alone do not. Now, maybe almost every single Lemmy instance also doesn’t want to host red and pink diamonds - that would still not be censorship, that would just be most instance admins happen to align the same and are executing the same rules for their own sites.

    Of course, replace myself with a private business owner, and Lemmy instances with something like a News subscription website, the meaning should still be the same. Hopefully my stance makes sense, I’m not writing this with the intent of “You’re wrong and I’m right” in the direct sense, but as a “I disagree, and here’s why”.

    I did see your conversation with the other person here, and I agree that government censorship is bad (such as the weird concept of having to upload your ID to view porn), but I just don’t view this in the same way I suppose.

    Obviously, Substack is within their rights to allow red and pink diamonds if they want, but if they didn’t then that would not be censorship (in my eyes, at least).