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.”
If there are 10 nazis at a table and you decide to sit among them, there are 11 nazis sitting at that table.
Hearing some one out and not changing your viewpoint after the conversation, doesn’t make you one of them. 🙄
My viewpoint is that I dont have any obligation to “hear out” a nazi. And neither does anyone else. GTFO with this “even nazis should be given a fair shake” shit.
issuing correction on a previous post of mine, regarding the terror group ISIL. you do not, under any circumstances, 'gotta hand it to them
-Dril
There are some things not worth listening to. Not all opinions are created equal.
No, but thinking a Nazi has valuable information to offer is sus.
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:
The Paradox of Tolerance disappears if you look at tolerance, NOT as a moral standard, but as a social contract. If someone does not abide by the terms of the contract, they are not covered by it. In other words, the intolerant aren’t deserving of your tolerance.
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.
Nazi lives don’t matter.
Agreed. However, providing a platform for hate speech is no different than condoning it.
When it comes to listening to hate speech and not condoning it outrright then and there, even if you don’t explicitly support it, it does make you complicit, and it shows you’re willing to turn a blind eye to it, and that speaks negatively to your character.
Don’t be a Nazi sympathizer, don’t let them off the hook, don’t let them spread their hate and lies. You disagree with Nazism? Then don’t give it even an inch to spread. Kill it in the cradle.
But hearing them out and deciding to allow them to promote their views on your website is passive endorsement.
Or, to follow the metaphor: if you hear them out over entrees and you’re still sitting there during dessert, then you’re probably one of them.
Big difference between having a conversation and having a media company distributing propaganda.
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Out of curiosity, let’s say a man needs a place for sleep, and for get one, he decides to help out a nazi, for example by fixing their long distance radio, would you call this person a nazi,@xkforce@lemmy.world ?
Nazis don’t deserve help. They fundamentally are antisocial in their ideology. By helping them, you aid a Nazi. Why would you willingly help a Nazi?
Why couldn’t the man go to a homeless shelter, or a church, or a bus stop, or a park bench, or literally anywhere other than a Nazi’s house? Also, what does a Nazi need a long distance radio for? Maybe by fixing it and not asking questions he’s helping them coordinate with other fascists to hurt and kill people. Is that worth a place to sleep for a night? Is it worth a few bucks if you’re not homeless but actually a wealthy business owner who can do as they please?
Why couldn’t the man go to a homeless shelter, or a church, or a bus stop, or a park bench, or literally anywhere other than a Nazi’s house? No homeless shelter, church, or a bus stop, park bench wasn’t a possibility, as there was german patrols watching the town. Also, what does a Nazi need a long distance radio for? For hear the news from Germany. Long distance radio was quite popular in the 40s. You could hear radios from the other side of a continent with those. Is that worth a place to sleep for a night? If it prevents you to get arrested by the Nazis, and questioned, I would say yes.
The man I mention in my post is this guy As he was visiting the french riviera gathering intels for the british intelligence, he got in the situation I described in my previous post.
Did you bring him up because you believe Hamish MacKenzie is doing some kind of anti-Nazi spy operations nobody else knows about? Because the contexts here are so different that they’re only tangentially related.
Just an example that "If there are 10 nazis at a table… " has plenty of exceptions, like Daryl Davis with kkk members.
So do you want the saying to be “if there are 10 Nazis at a table and 1 person who isn’t a Nazi, then there are 11 Nazis at a table, unless the 1 person is actually an anti-Nazi spy, and then it’s okay, and also there are probably other exceptions”? Or do you think maybe that saying was obviously never intended to apply to that the first place?
“No no, but what if the guy is just, like, at the table because he’s Nazi- curious but kind totally didn’t kill anybody and probably wouldn’t but also the Nazis make good points about stuff so he can totally sit there, but he’s not a Nazi! See? There are exceptions!”
-that guy, probably
The very occasional exception to the saying doesn’t make the saying less applicable in this particular situation.
A lot of people died rather than help them so yes I would judge the shit out of someone that helps a nazi knowing full well what they are.
The person I mention in my previous post, is this man. As he was along the french riviera, looking for intels, he ended in this situation, that there was no vacancy in hotels, and he finally got a hotel room, by fixing the long distance radio. How do you judge the shit out of him, by curiosity ?
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Who the fuck feels safe sleeping among Nazis? That’s a good way to get robbed.
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So you think Deeyah Khan is a Nazi?
(I’d encourage anyone to watch White Right: Meeting the Enemy if you haven’t seen it.)
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Freedom of speech doesn’t mean that you are obligated to host a platform so shitty people can use it to share shitty ideals. It simply means that you won’t get arrested on a federal level.
Websites can do whatever they want, including deciding that they don’t want to be a platform for hate speech. If people are seeking a place for this conversation genre to happen, and they want it enough, they can run their own website.
Imagine if you invited a friend of a friend over, and they were sharing nasty ideals at your Christmas party. And they brought their friends. Are you just going to sit there and let them turn your dinner into a political rally? No, you’re going to kick them out. It’s your dinner, like it is your website. If you don’t kick them out, then at some level, you’re aligning with them.
I like your example there a lot, I’m going to use that in the future when I’m trying to express that notion. In the past I’ve never been able to articulate that exact concept. So thanks!
Okay fine, I’m never clicking on a substack link again.
And after say a grace period of about 6 months to move elsewhere, I’m going to assume anyone associating with the service is at best a nazi sympathiser
Go ahead, be a Nazi bar, I’m sure their money is worth it
This is such a complicated feeling… On one hand, I agree. But on the other, we can’t specifically pinpoint what censorship is valid and what isn’t.
Edit: Obviously, I’m not considering Nazis in this thought experiment.
Edit 2: OH MY GOD PEOPLE! OF FUCKING COURSE WE SHOULD KEEP NAZIS OUT FFS! 😑
look i mean, wherever the line is, im pretty confident nazis are on the other side of it
Good point.
But on the other, we can’t specifically pinpoint what censorship is valid and what isn’t.
Yes we can. Kicking Nazis off their platform is valid censorship. Nazis lost the right to have a seat at the table in 1945.
Obviously. I’m not considering Nazis in this thought experiment.
If you’re still hand wringing over whether or not Nazis are scum of the Earth that deserve nothing more than pure vitriol and ostracisation, you might be a Nazi.
Obviously, I’m not considering Nazis in this thought experiment.
It’s indeed very difficult if not impossible to exactly and specifically pinpoint where the line is, it is however extremely easy to see when ideologies and behavior steps across it.
It is only censorship when it is the government, else it is normal people not wanting to deal with Nazis.
If you really want your white supremacists views out there just roll your own setup
It is only censorship when it is the government, else it is normal people not wanting to deal with Nazis.
Makes sense.
If you really want your white supremacists views out there just roll your own setup
sighs I’m not even gonna try to address it now.
Hey sorry Nazis are bad at figuring out how internet works
But on the other, we can’t specifically pinpoint what censorship is valid and what isn’t.
I’ve seen this come up a few times. My response has been “luckily our platforms aren’t run by an inscrutable god-machine nor an evil genie”.
For non government cases like this, we don’t need to solve the general case. We can just say “no Nazis allowed”, and "no hating on queer folks " and so on as needed. Web forums have had rules for more than 30 years and it hasn’t been a crisis.
Yeah. A baseline is needed for sure. Moderation is definitely necessary.
What a stupid argument. Imagine replacing “nazis” with “pedophiles” in her answer
Many Nazis were pedophiles.
Huh, I didn’t know that but I’m not surprised. Morally bankrupt (or straight up evil) people doing morally wrong stuff…
And they still are too. In fact for a few weeks I thought “let’s go Brandon” was a coded pedophile thing because there’s three sex offenders listed in the center of town and all three of them had “let’s go Brandon” signs for months. I was like “geeze these kid fuckers are organizing a sign campaign, and who the fuck is Brandon?”
Not that yours is so much better. Imagine replacing “nazis” with “pro-choice”, still sure the platform should remove the contents ?
A lot of the time people have this conversation from the perspective of the person who has no horse in the race. They aren’t a Nazi, nor are a target of Nazis. It ignores the people who are effected.
Imagine you are in a space and someone posts a death threat targeting you. Others rally around that as any censorship is bad censorship. Every time you use that space you get a reminder of how someone particularly wants you dead. Now imagine that becomes just a regular part of your day. Over and over and over again you are exposed to people smugly calling you less than human, a threat to society, a moraless degenerate. You get this nice cold shock whenever you see it and get to remember how vulnerable you are, how gleeful these calls to take your rights away for something you never opted into and can’t opt out of… And you are expected to take whatever anxiety is sown in you as just normal. That burden of people gleefully discussing your death just gets to be a part of your everyday. To others looking at you dealing with that burden it is treated as tolerable level of permanent unhappiness. It’s simply not supposed to be other people’s problem. You may not ask for assistance with managing those burdens because the cost of societies “tolerance” for speech has decided that you must personally pay for everyone’s unrestricted discourse.
Then there’s the other half. Say I create a platform. Maybe I am running a print shop. I maintain it, run it, and think that I am doing society a service for facilitating a means to communicate. I find out someone has been printing death threats at my shop. Maybe they are even death threats towards someone I know. How would I feel knowing someone is taking the resources I manage, using the infrastructure I maintain to specifically terrorize someone? This person printing these death threats made ME complicit in spreading their death threat so that someone in the above example gets to feel unsafe as they go about their day. In fact, spreading death threats is a crime. Should I not be allowed to refuse to take their business?
We as a society have the ability to differentiate between death threats and other political discourse. Calling for a genocide of a group of people - is a death threat. It may not be directed at a singular person but lemme tell you when you are the target it feels like it might as well be calling on you by name. There is no moderation policy, even an unrestricted one, that is truly ethically neutral. Your choices about what is or isn’t allowed on your watch always effects people and the mental cost is borne by someone.
Very smart post, highly.
If it is illegal then I am sure that a judge should not have any problem to order substack to remove the posts.
You are making a case where there is somenthing illegal going on, if the law do not protect you, it is the law that is wrong, not someone doing something lawful (but morally wrong for other people)
Law is a funny beast. Lots of people do things which are illegal all the time and get away with it because you basically have to assert your right to be protected by law to sort of activate it. Like someone yelling at me that they are going to kill me while I am out in public is technically a form of assult. , I can call the authorities and get them to assist me to make sure they don’t follow through and to get them to stay the hell away from me but chances are I am not going to seek restitution in court for something that small because I would have to press charges, seek and pay for legal council, everything would need to be processed to make sure the law is being properly handled at all points of the arrest and the punishment would likely be fairly trifling for all my troubles.
Private entities already basically have the imperitive to determine what is permissible on their platforms. Freedom of speech is not practiced under the auspices of substack. They are allowed to kick you out for whatever the heck they want (some exceptions applying) because they own that space. To remove posts as threats a judge would have to go through each individual one, source it, bring the original commenter into court and go through due process with every single user to check it against their local jurisdiction’s laws for threats and the likely outcome would just be small fines and community service… Quite frankly the juice would not be worth the squeeze.
On the other hand we are absolutely allowed to have an opinion that substack letting Nazis spread hate speech on their platform under their watch is a moral failure on their part.
Pro-choice content isn’t an incitement to violence. I’m not going to pretend being pro-choice is equivalent in any sense to being a Nazi just because some people are too stupid to see the difference.
Your analogy is false but yes if you are pro-forced birth you should not profit from pro-choice groups. Personal integrity is important and while I very much don’t agree with the forced birth crowd I am willing to pretend that some of them are sincere.
Your analogy is false
And why ? Just because I pointed out a scenario that do not imply a clearly illegal situation like yours ?
but yes if you are pro-forced birth you should not profit from pro-choice groups. Personal integrity is important and while I very much don’t agree with the forced birth crowd I am willing to pretend that some of them are sincere.
You are right from a a personal perspective, I as a person must have personal integrity.
But a platform ? Should not be the duty of a platform to carry both points of view and let the reader to decide what is wrong or what is good ?Should a newspaper not talk about something because some readers don’t agree with it ? Because that is what you are saying: what I think is true and good while what they think is wrong and bad, and so they need to be removed.
If someone says it is raining outside, the newspaper’s job is to actually check whether it is raining outside NOT to say it both is and is not raining and let their “readers decide.”
Should a newspaper not talk about something because some readers don’t agree with it ?
You are arguing that newspapers should discuss NAZI ideals as if they are as valid as any other. No one decent agrees with you.
You are arguing that newspapers should discuss NAZI ideals as if they are as valid as any other. No one decent agrees with you.
Nope, I am arguing that if something is not illegal it is not up to the platform to censor it.
If that 200 authors asked a judge to command substack to remove the post, then good.
If you decide that today is good that a platform censor something, (and I agree that nazis are not that nice thing to even consider to discuss) then tomorrow you cannot protest that a platform remove something that you consider good.
Like Meta removing all the pro palestinian post/propaganda: is it acceptable that it is Meta to decide that even if it is not illegal?
Free speech is absolute, and it include even what we hate.
Free speech IS NOT freedom from social consequences. And one of those social consequences is that people are allowed to tell you to take a hike.
And I agree. But it seems that you still don’t understand how dangerous is to go after the platform instead of the authors of the messages.
But let’s suppose that it is correct to go after the platform, so this time the offending content is removed. Fine, good thing.
Next month 174 authors ask to remove everything about the right to have an abortion because they are offended by it and they think that it is wrong (and in some place it is even illegal), what do you think should happen?
I feel like you feel this is a clever gotcha, but I don’t follow.
If substack (or most any private platform) decided not to host any pro-choice content, many people would probably say that’s a shit move. Some anti-abortion people might support it, maybe. What’s your point?
You shouldn’t evaluate the situation with a naive “did they remove content? Any content at all?” metric. You need to consider what was removed and why.
It’s also important to remember we’re not talking about the government silencing or compelling speech. We’re talking about private parties moderating their platform. It’s important that they retain the legal right to choose what to say. And then the public can jeer and refuse to associate with them if they use their rights badly.
Translated: McKenzie just wants the sweet money and is trying to gaslight us into thinking platforming nazis is ok.
Facebook just shrugs off the rampant white supremacist content on its platform with great success, you can literally put up a profile photo with an “It’s OK to be white” frame, or “white power” supplied by Facebook. I guess Substack thinks that if it works for Facebook it should be fine for them.
Incidentally Reddit banned me for posting pictures of Nazis on r/beholdthemasterrace, a subreddit for mocking white supremacy, when some Nazis went and complained to Reddit admins I was doing it. Reddit also sides with Nazis, they’re just quieter about it.
On one hand, Substack is in it’s rights and as a journalistic organization, they are in the right.
The issue is: Once you serve a Nazi in your bar, you become a Nazi bar. This is no longer a marginalized viewpoint you can ignore. Its actively recruiting and frightening. Inaction is enabling. Substack is going to become shitty, and fast. They will lose high engagement users, first when the ones who protested pile out for another platform and then quickly when the quality dips.
Also, their cavalier attitude will change when Stripe steps in.
You can contact Stripe at the link to let them know about the company they are associating with.
How is Stripe associated with Substack? (I’m out of the loop here)
I was too, but sounds like the TL;DR is they’re the supporting infrastructure which substack uses:
Substack’s team built its service on Stripe’s infrastructure, which bypassed significant investment in engineering. By leaning on Stripe’s expertise, Substack could scale quickly and focus its energy on fulfilling its promise to writers. The company offers better services because it can continue to lean on Stripe and direct extra bandwidth toward customers.
Thanks, that definitely explains it better than simply being a payment processor.
I an guessing they do their payment processingt
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] ?
the context of the post is about knowingly serving nazis. this argument does not work in that context.
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 ?
this argument is implicitly assuming nazism is “on the same level” as being democrat/republican or any other “category”. this is not the case, so this argument also doesn’t work. do you have any others?
I don’t said they are on the same level.
I simply said that if you define a platform as “nazi” because they serve a nazi then you can define the same platform as “whatever” because they serve whatever.i can define the color orange by the color of the fruit. i could also define red and blue by the color of that same fruit. not all of these definitions are equally valid
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.
yeah this is also a good point
I see literalnazis.com is available for cheap if anybody want to 302 that to substack.
That’s a tough choice when Tucker Carlson is opening his own streaming platform.
Why just temporarily, go full 301.
Optimism.
Is substack used in the EU? They might want to rethink their stance then…
EU will start screaming at Substack for failure to filter out hate speech.
In four years when the EU gets to it
Nope, as far as I know only a couple of countries has explict laws againt Nazi (Germany obviously and Italy to some extend).
But in the end it will be the person to be persecuted if any crime is committed, not the medium.
Nobody in Italy think to punish or boycott a company just because the mafia is using and paying the company’s products or services.Nope. Platforms have a responsibility to not host hate-speech and other illegal content, eg. remove it. Failure to do so is prosecutable.
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Nazism doesn’t deserve tolerance, any person who doesn’t punch it in the face is equal or worse.
No, it does not “make it worse”.
In fact, stamping out dissent and controlling people is incredibly effective. Ask any dictator.
Control is effective and necessary when it comes to people actively trying to damage society. No, I’m not supporting dictatorship or authoritarianism, just pointing out that control is effective.
Being a sect of destructive assholes doesn’t mean you should get a platform.
Tolerating Naziism and allowing it to use social tools to spread its hate is what makes it worse.
we don’t think that censorship (including through demonetizing publications) makes the problem go away—in fact, it makes it worse.
Happy Opposite Day, everyone! 🥳
Now I’m curious if anybody adds something about LGBTQ on there, if that’s promptly removed.
