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.”
Thing is, we’ve heard out the nazis before. We don’t need to do that anymore.
Exactly. It’s the paradox of tolerance.
I like Michael Okuda’s take on this:
(twitter link)
Personally, I think there’s some value in allowing the Nazis to publicly self-identify, because then we know who the Nazis are. We (society) don’t need to tolerate what they say just to prove that we’re tolerant, but it’s probably useful to know who they are, and for them to volunteer that information. Then we respond with public ridicule and name-and-shame.
Also, that doesn’t require that a privately owned business (e.g. substack) should provide a platform for Nazi bullshit.
Michael Okuda is one of the great contributors to design thanks to the influences of Star Trek: The Next Generation and later shows- he was behind a lot of the look- and almost no one knows who he is. It’s a real shame since, as you showed here, he’s smart in other ways too.