- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
More than 200 Substack authors asked the platform to explain why itâs âplatforming and monetizing Nazis,â and now they have an answer straight from co-founder Hamish McKenzie:
I just want to make it clear that we donât like Nazis eitherâwe wish no-one held those views. But some people do hold those and other extreme views. Given that, we donât think that censorship (including through demonetizing publications) makes the problem go awayâin fact, it makes it worse.
While McKenzie offers no evidence to back these ideas, this tracks with the companyâs 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. âWeâre not going to get into specific âwould you or wonât youâ content moderation questionsâ 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 âwe donât like or condone bigotry in any form.â
I actually prefer this type of hands-off approach. I find it offensive that people would refuse to let me see things because they deem it too âbadâ for me to deal with. I find it insulting anyone would stop me reading how to make meth or read Mein Kampf. Iâm 40yo and itâs pretty fucking difficult to offend me and to think Iâm going to be driven to commit crime just by reading is offensive.
I donât need protecting from speech/information. Iâm perfectly capable and confident in my own views to deal with bullshit of all types.
If youâre incapable of dealing with it - then donât fucking read it.
Fact is the more you clamp down on stuff like this the more you drive people into the shadows. 4chan and the darkweb become havens of âvictimhoodâ where they can spout their bullshit and create terrorists. When you prohibit information/speech you give it power.
In high school it was common for everyone to hunt for the Anarchists/Jolly Roger Cookbook. I imagine thereâs kids now who see it as a challenge to get hold of it and terrorist manuals - not because they want to blow shit up, but because itâs taboo!
Same with drugs - donât pick and eat that mushroom. Donât burn that plant. Anyone with 0.1% of curiosity will ask âwhy?â and do it because they want to know why itâs prohibited.
Porn is another example. The more you lock it down the more people will thirst for it.
Open it all up to the bright light of day. Show it up for all itâs naked stupidity.
Thatâs not really how this works. Do you also think advertising and marketing donât work?
In what way is advertising and marketing the same as Mein Kampf?
Pinching the bridge of my nose here. Nazi blog posts are marketing for nazi beliefs. Theyâre posting because they have ideas that they want you to have, too. What do you think marketing is? Ok, letâs assume youâre asking in good faith.
When you see an ad you donât typically run right out and buy it. But now youâre more aware of whatever theyâre advertising. Maybe thatâs a new car. Maybe itâs pepsi. Maybe itâs âYou should recycle.â And maybe, when itâs a literal nazi post, itâs âthe jews are the problemâ. Some people will bounce right off the ad⊠Some people will immediately click through, read the related links, blah blah. And many people who read it will sort of remember it, and now have context for the next post they see. The more ads they see for nazi beliefs (or anything, really), the more likely they are to be persuaded.
If you saw posts every day that promoted nazism as a solution for the worldâs problems, it would have an effect on you. Look how effective fox news has been at propagating right wing beliefs.
I really wish people would do this more often. Hanlons razor. âDonât attribute to malice what can so easily be attributed to ignoranceâ.
Stop assuming you know anything about my motives or beliefs. Stop assuming Iâm saying things in âbad faithâ. Iâm aware right-wing cretins on QAnon have scripts and tricks around making bad faith arguments but that shouldnât stifle us discussing things. Itâs lazy from you, annoying for me and ruins the chance for others to learn something.
Having said that - thank you for your response. When I read the first sentence I started typing a long-winded reply but then I read the rest and had to stop. Itâs now been ruminating in my head for most of the day and Iâll be honest - I hadnât thought of it like that!
Not that it should matter but my political leanings are in the bottom left quadrant of the political compass. âSocialist Libertarianâ. Iâm not a Nazi and I despise them but I donât believe in taking away peopleâs rights to protect me. Iâm capable of protecting myself. Those that arenât capable of protecting themselves (e.g. kids) have parents/guardians to protect them.
My motivation for the comment is probably spurred by recent developments in UK and EU law that are pushing draconian porn ID rules. Creating databases of adults and their porn preferences because parents are too fucking stupid to implement the adult filter on their router or ISP provider. So ALL of us have to suffer for the ignorance of parents.
I have a visceral hatred of any censorship and prohibition. Prohibition of certain texts pushed me and other high school kids to find ways to make bombs. 70% of university students experiment with drugs after a lifetime of prohibition from parents, teachers and government. Having said that youâre right about Fox News! I donât think itâs healthy for major platforms to pump out dangerous misinformation. Similar channels have cropped up in the UK (GBNews) and itâs been a nightmare seeing idiots taken in by the misinformation.
Which leads me to think there is a solution here: Education.
One of my best lessons in high school 25yrs ago was an English class where we read various newspaper articles and broke down the biases and language used. Another is my A-level politics class where we spent many lessons dissecting the history and realities of political ideologies.
I feel those lessons inoculated me to a great degree from the effects of bullshit throughout life.
I think weâre both right. I see your point that if we normalise these dangerous ideologies we risk acting on them. But at the same time I feel complete prohibition results in making it worse.
Ultimately, I think a balance needs to be struck and I think language, history and political education are key to making sure we donât fall for these things.
Yeah, I try to be patient with people. Sometimes theyâre trolls, but sometimes theyâre just people. And sometimes even when they are trolls, being patient gets better results, anyway. Thanks for you reply. Itâs rare for someone on the internet to admit the other personâs argument had any traction at all. Good on you.
We probably agree on things more than our initial interaction would make it look. Iâm also not a fan of government mandated âenter your ID to see porn onlineâ rules. There are many reasons thatâs a bad idea that we donât need to go into right now. But I think a key difference between that topic and the substack-with-nazis thing we started on is the involvement of government. The porn-id thing is the government forcing an action. The substack thing is all private people.
If the government, backed with all the power that comes from the state, was going to enforce what you can and cannot write on your website I would be extremely skeptical of that policy. Iâd consider it for hate-speech or literal nazism, but even then the devils are surely in the details.
The topic here though is a private organization. Substack, as a private organization, is choosing to allow nazis hang out on their platform. They could choose otherwise. They are not legally bound one way or the other, but people are 100% entitled to call them a bunch of assholes for letting the nazis in. People can cut business ties with substack, tell people who are using it that theyâre not going to engage with them, either, until the situation changes, and so on. All of that is firmly in the free speech and free association camp.
The question isnât really âIs substack breaking the law?â so much as âIs substack doing a good thing?â Moderation and choosing who can use your platform is a kind of speech. Itâs not enforced by an inscrutable god-machine or malicious genie, either. Substack would choose to just not let nazis use their platform. But maybe we already agree on this point.
The nazis could go set up their own website with their own blog. They have that freedom (in most places - Germany might be an exception). But weâre not obligated to make it easy for them.
Those sound like good classes. I mentioned somewhere else (possibly in this thread) about a class I took in college for journalism 101. We were assigned several websites to review, and had to determine which ones were legitimate and which ones werenât. That kind of skill is probably something that should be taught more widely.
Iâm glad you remember the lessons. Just donât fall prey to hubris. My mother always was pretty reasonable, but in her old age sheâs been slipping into some bad politics. She thinks sheâs too smart to be fooled like those other idiots.
I think weâre converging on agreement. I would be hesitant to back complete prohibition at the government level, but I will object if I see someone supporting nazis. Substack doesnât have to host them. They can buy their own server.
In a lot of languages advertising and propaganda are literally the same word. The only difference is whether the goal is commercial or political.
Iâm still not sure how that relates to the point I was making.
I donât want anyone to censor what Iâm allowed to see.
If youâre asking if thatâs how I feel about advertising then yes - of course. Like I said I want to be wholly responsible for what I see or donât see. I donât want people a government or corporation parenting my viewing.
The corporation already makes choices about your viewing. Unless itâs a completely unmoderated wiki, they make choices about what is allowed. There are presumably lines that substack (or anyone) are unwilling to cross. We can probably assume that they would not be okay with âlivestream of grinding up babies and puppies and snorting themâ.
If such a line exists, then I am saying nazi shit should be on the far side of the line.
If such a line does NOT exist, then I guess weâd have to have that discussion about why some things are unacceptable.
If the line is âonly what is literally illegalâ then that just punts editorial responsibility into a slower, less responsive system. Itâs a cowardly shirking of responsibility.
As to how it relates:
Thatâs false. Thatâs not how you or anyone works. You are just as vulnerable to advertising as anyone else. And even if you were the platonic ideal of Strong Rational Man, many other people arenât.
If we were talking about government censorship, which we were not, then thatâs a slightly different conversation. The government has more power and is fundamentally different than a private blog platform or whatever.
Censorship isnât the right word here, I would say. Censorship would make sense if this were a government that was being spoken about but itâs not.
Iâll 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 âcensoringâ your ability to see it. I would be saying âI do not want to host this content on the hardware that I am paying for and maintainâ. Sure, you could argue that the side effect is that youâre not able to see it, but my intent isnât âcensorshipâ. 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 whoâs paying for the hardware then my want will always come first. That isnât to say that others arenât 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 doesnât 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, Iâm not writing this with the intent of âYouâre wrong and Iâm rightâ in the direct sense, but as a âI disagree, and hereâs whyâ.
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 donât 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 didnât then that would not be censorship (in my eyes, at least).
this ainât about you
Exposure
fascinated that you think it would somehow be harder for you to go out and find nazis if substack werenât hosting and paying them. it will always be easy to find and read Nazi content. the reason substack matters is that the platform helps THEM find YOU, or a suggestible journalist, or a suggestible politician, etc. you are not the protagonist here
Substack bans pornography but allows Nazis.
Agreed. I actually had come back to this topic specifically to make this exact point, which for all the time Iâd spent on this at this point I feel like I hadnât said.
People are adults, generally speaking. Itâs weird to say that you canât have a newsletter that has a literal swastika on it, because people will be able to read it but unable to realize that what itâs saying is dangerous violence. Apparently we have to have someone âin chargeâ of making sure only the good stuff is allowed to be published, and keeping away the bad stuff, so people wonât be influenced by bad stuff. This is a weird viewpoint. Itâs one the founding fathers were not at all in agreement with.
Personally, I do think that thereâs a place for organized opposition to slick internet propaganda which pulls people down the right-wing rabbit hole, because thatâs a huge problem right now. I donât actually know what that opposition looks like, and I can definitely see a place for banning certain behaviors (bot accounts, funded troll operations, disguising the source of a message) that people might class as âfree speech,â or adding counterbalancing âfree speechâ in kind to misleading messages (Twitterâs âcommunity notesâ are actually a pretty good way of combating it for example). But simply knee-jerking that we have to find the people who are wrong, and ban them, because if we let people say wrong stuff then other people will read it and become wrong, is a very childish way to look at people who consume media on the internet.
This article is not about government censorship. This is about a private entity actively deciding to allow nazi content on their platform. Hand wringing about founding fathers belongs in some other thread where the topic is the government prohibiting content from being published.
Iâm aware of how the first amendment applies, yes. I agree with the spirit of it in addition to the letter, though. Youâre free to delete the one sentence where I talked about founding fathers, and respond to the whole rest of my message which doesnât reference them or government censorship in any way.
(Edit: Actually, I wasnât super explicit about it, but in the whole final paragraph I was thinking partly of government regulation to combat misinformation. That is, in part, what I meant by âorganized opposition.â So, I spent time in my message referring to what the government should do to limit harmful internet content, and no time at all talking about what it shouldnât do. I did throw in a passing reference to founding fathers, in reference to the spirit that I think should inform private companies who are non-governmental gatekeepers of content.)
Fine.
How is âcanâtâ happening, here? Itâs not the government. Are you arguing against private entities having editorial freedom? Should private entities not be in charge of their own publications and platforms? And if they do choose to publish nazi stuff, shouldnât the rest of us be free to say âFuck off, nazi scumâ ?
As I said to someone else, there is presumably a line thatâs too much to cross. Is it âlive stream of grinding up live babies and puppies and snorting themâ? If there is no line, I donât even know where to begin. Thatâs a whole other conversation. If there is a line, I think nazi content should be on the far side of it. Donât you? And if the line is something like âwhateverâs technically legalâ, well thatâs just punting responsibility to a slower, less responsive, ruleset run by the government.
Platforms taking some responsibility for what they allow would go a long way without requiring a heavy handed government solution. Substack could just say ânah, weâre not letting nazis post stuff.â
But if a platform is making a lot of money with nazi content, theyâre probably going to be reluctant to deal with it. So if you still donât want heavy government involvement (which can be a reasonable position, probably), you fall back to individuals saying âFuck you. Iâm not going to use your service while you serve nazis.â
But then you have several related problems. Something thatâs a hugely dominant player in a market is hard to avoid. YouTube doesnât have a lot of major competitors, for example, and is pretty ubiquitous. AWS is basically impossible to avoid. And on top of that, many people are apathetic or too busy trying to survive to spend a lot of time curating things.
What even is the spirit of it?
Yes, absolutely. Lemmy.world should be able to ban Nazis if they want to, as should Substack. Personally, I think it would be better in some cases if people didnât. Although, thereâs so much overlap between Nazis and general-toxic-behavior users that I wouldnât really fault them for banning Nazis outright even if they theoretically supported the Nazisâ right to free speech.
Notably though, I think Substack should also be free to not ban Nazis, and no one should give them shit for it. In particular, they definitely shouldnât be talking about trying to get their Stripe account cancelled, or pressuring their advertisers, as Iâve seen other posters here advocate for (although I think the thing about advertisers is just a result of pure confusion on the posterâs part about how Substack even makes income).
In this particular case, I think allowing the Nazis to speak is the âright answer,â so I definitely donât advocate for interfering in anything Substack wants to do with their private servers. But no, I also donât think anyone who doesnât want to host Nazis should have to, and itâs a pretty good and reasonable question.
Let me say it this way: If what youâre doing or saying would be illegal, even if you werenât a Nazi, it should be illegal. It shouldnât suddenly become illegal to say if youâre wearing a Nazi uniform. Threatening violence? Illegal. Threatening violence as part of your Nazi political platform? Illegal. Wearing a Nazi uniform, saying that white people are superior and the holocaust didnât happen? Legal as long as youâre not doing some other illegal thing, even though historically thatâs adjacent to clearly-illegal behavior.
I realize there can be a good faith difference of opinion on that, but you asked me what I thought; thatâs what I think. If itâs illegal to wear a Nazi uniform, or platforms kick you off for wearing one, then it can be illegal to wear a BLM shirt, and platforms can kick you off for saying #blacklivesmatter. Neither is acceptable. To me.
Probably the closest I can come to agreeing with you is on something like Patriot Front. Technically, is it legal to gather up and march around cities in threatening fashion, with the implication that youâll attack anyone who tries to stop you? Sure. Is it dangerous? Fuck yes. Should it be legal? Um⊠maybe. I donât know. Am I happy that people attacked them and chased them out of Philadelphia, even though attacking them was interfering with their free speech? Yes. I put that in a much more dangerous category than someone hosting a web site that says the holocaust didnât happen.
Would it go a long way, though?
Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter have been trying to take responsibility for antivax stuff and election denialism for years now, and banned it in some cases and tried to limit its reach with simple blacklisting. Has that approach worked?
Nazi stuff is unpopular because itâs abhorrent and people can see that when they read it. I genuinely donât think that allowing Nazi speech on Substack is a step towards wider acceptance of Naziism. I donât think there are all these people who might have been Nazis but theyâre prevented by not being able to read it on Substack. I do think allowing Nazi stuff on Substack would be a step towards exposing the wider community to the actual reality of Naziism, and exposing the Nazis to a community which can openly disagree with them instead of quarantining them in a place where they can only talk to each other.
I do think responsibility by the platforms is an important thing. I talked about that in terms of combatting organized disinformation, which is usually a lot more sophisticated and a lot more subtle than Nazi newsletters. I just donât think banning the content is a good answer. Also, I suspect that the same people who want the Nazis off Substack also want lots of other non-Nazi content to be âforbiddenâ in the same way that, e.g. Dave Chappelle or Joe Rogan should be âforbiddenâ from their chosen platforms. Maybe Iâm wrong about that, but thatâs part of why I make a big deal about the Nazi content.
Thank you for the detailed response.
Substack can host nazis given the legal framework in the US. But why shouldnât I speak up about their platforming of evil? Substack can do what they want, and I can tell them to fuck off. I can tell people who do business with them that I donât approve, and Iâm not going to do business with them while theyâre engaged with this nazi loving platform. Thatâs just regular old freedom of speech and association.
Their speech is not more important than mine. There is no obligation for me to sit in silence when someone else is saying horrible things.
It feels like youâre arguing for free speech for the platform, but restricted speech for the audience. The platform is free to pick who can post there, but you donât want the audience to speak back.
Youâre conflating laws and government with private stuff. The bulk of this conversation is about what can private organizations do to moderate their platforms. Legality is only tangentially related. (Also it doesnât necessarily follow that banning nazi uniforms would ban BLM t-shirts. Germany has some heavy bans on nazi imagery and to my knowledge have not slid enthusiastically down that slope)
A web forum I used to frequent banned pro-trump and pro-ice posts. The world didnât end. They didnât ban BLM. It helps that it was a forum run by people, and not an inscrutable god-machine or malicious genie running the place.
Iâm also not sure I understood your answer to my question. Is there a line other than âtechnically legalâ that you donât want crossed? Is the law actually a good arbiter?
I donât think theyâve actually been trying very hard. They make a lot of money by not doing much. Googleâs also internally incompetent (see: their many, many, canceled projects), Facebook is evil (see: that time they tried to make people sad to see if they could), and twitter has always had a childâs understanding of free speech.
A related problem here is probably the consolidation of platforms. Twitter and Facebook as so big that banning someone from it is a bigger deal than it probably should be. But they are free to move to a more permissive platform if their content is getting them kicked out of popular places. Weâre not talking about a nationwide, government backed-by-force content ban.
Iâm not sure what to do about coordinated disinformation. Platforms banning or refusing to host some of it is probably one part of the remedy, though.
Oh, yeah, you can say whatever you like.
I think youâre right that I was a little fuzzy when I talked about things that were illegal versus things I personally donât like, yeah. You should obviously be able (legally and what-I-think-is-right wise) to say anything you like about Substack. And, they are legally able to do whatever they want with their servers, whether that involves allowing or banning or demonetizing Nazis or whatever. Most of my conversation was about what I think they should do with their servers, but itâs just my opinion. And yes I think you should be able to state your opinion and I should be able to disagree with it and all that.
You asked before what I meant about the âspiritâ of the first amendment. What I meant was, thereâs a specific purpose why it was enshrined into law, and the same principles that led to that legal framework also produce some implications for how the operator of a communication network âshouldâ treat that network, in my opinion, especially as it grows to the size of something like Facebook and starts to wield power similar to a government in terms of deciding how people should be able to communicate with each other. But yes, this is all just what I feel about it, and youâre free to disagree or say fuck Substack or organize a boycott or whatever you like.
Once it gets into, we need to pressure their advertisers and try to force them to run their servers in a more Nazi-hostile way, I really donât like that. It is legal, yes. But itâs coercive. Itâs like a high-pressure salesman or a slimy romantic partner. All perfectly legal things. But I think thatâs crossing a whole new line into something bad, much worse than Substack just doing something with their moderation I personally think they shouldnât be doing.
Sure. So, I actually donât like that type of thing (although it is, of course, legal, and Iâd defend the rights of those forum operators to do it if they chose). I got banned from a few different subreddits, both left and right wing which was funny to me, because people didnât like what I said. Thatâs, honestly, pretty infuriating. Iâve also talked with conservative people who got suspended temporarily from Facebook, or had their posts taken down because they were antivax or whatever. Did I agree with those posts? Absolutely not, and I argued with them about it. Do I agree they should have had their posts removed? No. I started out thinking that yes, removing the posts is fine, and told them that more or less Facebook could do whatever they wanted because it was their network, but after having the argument a certain number of times I started to sympathize a lot more with the point of view of âdude fuck you, Iâm a human being, just let me say what I want to say.â I donât think that simple removal of the post, or chasing people off the âmainâ shared network completely, and onto a Nazis-only network like Truth Social, is the answer. Iâll say this, it definitely didnât make them less antivax when that happened, or make it at all difficult for them to find antivax propaganda.
Thatâs different from actual Nazi posts, of course. Just saying some of my experience with this. I actually donât like a lot of lemmy.world culture thatâs developing now because it is starting to become this sort of monoculture, where only a particular variety of views are allowed. Like it really irks me that pro-police or conservative viewpoints get shit on so relentlessly that it basically chases those people away. I liked that reddit had both /r/protectandserve and /r/badcopnodonut. Itâs fine. Let people talk, and donât start yelling at them that they have the âwrongâ view (although of course you can always tell them why you think theyâre wrong). I have plenty of âwrongâ views from the POV of the Lemmy hivemind, so maybe Iâm more invested in it as an issue because of that.
Fair question. I mean, at the end of the day each server operator can do what they like. Some people will say that Nazis or MAGA people are so frequently trolls that they just donât want to deal with them. Some people donât want porn. Some people want to run a forum thatâs explicitly pro-conservative and just get tired of left-wing people coming in and jeering at them. All those things sound fine to me (what-I-like wise as well as legally). I donât think itâs my business to tell people where to draw that type of line.
To me, though, that principle âI may not agree with what you say, but Iâll defend to the death your right to say itâ is super important. If you start saying only certain viewpoints are welcome, and dismiss the others not with open debate but with loud jeering or technical restrictions, it hurts the discourse on your server. Of course youâre legally allowed to restrict peopleâs access however you like. But to me, I would draw the line by disallowing illegal things or things that hurt the discourse (because of trolling or brigading or deceptive bot posts or whatever). But if someoneâs just coming in and saying something you think is absolutely dead wrong (e.g. that the holocaust didnât happen), I donât think itâs your place to remove or ban them. I think you should allow that.
Does that better answer the question? Thatâs just my take on it. Iâve never been a modern Lemmy-instance operator, so maybe seeing it first hand and dealing with child porn from angry MAGA people or bomb threats from Nazis and things like that would make me less sympathetic.
I can only say what Iâve observed in terms of restrictions on Facebook posts from people I know, or Youtube creators I know who got demonetized or otherwise chased off Youtube. All of that, I think sucks. I agree, itâs kind of heavy-handed and brainless the way theyâre doing it. I think thatâs an additional issue in addition to the fact of censoring the ability of people to post being the wrong approach in the first place.
I think one of the core issues is that a huge for-profit company running a huge content network, where they donât have bandwidth to put much attention into moderation and where most of the architecture of the network is designed to extract revenue from it, is just wrong from start to finish. Thatâs why Iâm here right now as opposed to Facebook or wherever. When I talk about free speech issues Iâm mostly talking about it in terms of things like Lemmy or Substack. But yeah, maybe youâre right that issues of profit motive and moderation bandwidth mean that we canât draw much of any conclusion by looking at how things played out on the big networks.
Thank you for your detailed reply, again.
Why do you find people using their limited economic power coercive? You say you like boycotts. Telling Tide that you saw their advertisement on a nazi blog so youâre not going to buy Tide until thatâs remedied is a boycott.
You also have to account for the audience. While that person may have gotten mad and gone off to a right extremist website, removing their âHolocaust is a lie check out these posts [nazi propaganda link 1, 2, 3]â post up is a hazard. Many more people read forums than contribute, typically.
There are some points of view that are so hashed out, it is unlikely to be worth our time to debate them again. Nazi ideology, for example, was pretty firmly settled as bad. The forum I mentioned before had a clear âWe are not going to debate if gay people have rightsâ rule. Someone might want to make an argument that they donât, but the belief that they do is so axiomatic for the locale itâs not worth entertaining the âdebateâ. I do not think it hurts the discourse on your server to disallow some topics like that. I say this with the assumption that the people running the forum are human, and itâs not a shitty algorithm trying to parse it, or some underpaid intern who barely speaks the language. There is a hypothetical bad case where an imaginary server prescribes the exact beliefs that are OK and enforces that with moderation powers, but thatâs spherical friction-less cow levels removed from my lived experience. Maybe Iâve just been lucky where Iâve spent time on the internet. But also, if a forum sucks you can usually just leave. (Another argument for why the megalith sites like facebook and twitter arenât great.)
So we disagree on this point. I donât see any good coming from platforming holocaust deniers or homophobes or whatever. If Iâm running a bar, I donât need to let the nazis have their meetup in the back booth. Thatâs just going to draw more nazis, and probably scare off the regular people. Likewise, if Iâm running a forum, I donât need to let them have their little soapbox in my figurative bar.
Iâve also never run a forum. I expect thereâs a big âfor me it was tuesdayâ experience. For the guy who wants to debate if queer couples really need to get married, itâs the first time heâs ever waded into this topic. For the moderation team, itâs tuesday, and the fourth time this has come up this week. I expect dealing with the worst sorts of people would take the shine off anyoneâs idealism.
This sub-thread is very long and Iâm starting to lose focus. I donât think we agree on everything, but I appreciate that youâve been civil.