- 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
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.
Haha yeah, all good. I enjoyed it, thank you as well. Iâll wrap up my thoughts if you donât want to go back and forth indefinitely.
It comes down to the goal of the boycott. A boycott to stop someone polluting or abusing human rights, Iâm down for. A boycott because some comedian said something someone doesnât like and they want to âdeplatformâ him, Iâm against. A boycott because Substack allows Nazis, and youâre trying to get third parties to punish Substack to make them stop, I also donât like.
Somewhat related, I think itâs great to attack Nazis directly. Something like this where youâre crippling them because they broke the law and hurt people, Iâm very in favor of. I donât like Nazis any more than anyone else does. I just think it has to be based on behavior rather than speech. Letting them speak, but not letting them hurt people, I think is going to hinder their cause a lot more than it helps it.
Okay, hereâs the crux:
I donât think that post is a hazard.
I think having an exchange of ideas which includes dangerous ones, even very dangerous ones, alongside the truth, is a good thing. I think trying to get rid of âdangerousâ ideas by banning people from talking about them does more harm than good. I think declaring that no one is allowed to say the holocaust is a lie is a hazard. I think it helps the Nazis to make that rule. I think the people who want to ban Nazis are, unintentionally, helping the Nazis quite a lot. People are talking to me in this subthread like Iâm being soft on the Nazis and Nazis are terrible, but I think letting them say what they think, having everyone see it, and having other people free to illustrate why theyâre wrong, is way harder on the Nazis than forcing them off somewhere where they can congregate in peace and no one can see them.
You might not agree, but thatâs how I see it.
Yeah, I get this. I wouldnât try to tell anyone running a forum that they have to entertain this type of debate, because itâs incredibly draining and may not fit the goal of the forum and may obscure the actual goal of the forum. I get all that and I wouldnât try to tell you to run your forum any other way.
The thing is though, that âfor me it was Tuesdayâ thing cuts both ways. You may have had this discussion a thousand times already, but for the guy that came in, it may be his very first time being exposed to certain things. I think a lot of religious people have this type of experience when they start talking with athiest people on the internet, and they may be coming from a pretty ignorant place when they start out. I had this type of experience as far as geopolitics and who the âgood guysâ are. And, Iâve heard a former white supremacist talking about having his awakening moment and leaving the KKK because of it.
The âtalk.originsâ newgroup on Usenet was this. It was a place to debate evolution versus creationism. Is that a pretty firmly settled question? Yes. Absolutely it is. Honestly, more so than gay rights (although gay rights is also settled, to me.) And yet, somehow, there are people in the world who donât agree. A lot of them argue in bad faith, a lot of them are tedious or ignorant, thereâs a ton of ground that gets covered over and over and over again. But is that a useful thing to have exist? Ab so fuckin lutely.
Does that mean that every 4chan troll arguing about the holocaust in bad faith, whoâs never going to change his mind, deserves your time and attention? On a forum thatâs not for that? Fuck no. I actually think that deliberate engineered misinformation, and the toxic and mind-change-resistant culture of debate on the modern internet, argues for a radical rethinking of whatâs a sensible way to approach âan open exchange of communicationâ so that it doesnât wind up as just the Nazis being able to spew hatred in places it doesnât belong, and public forums being soft fertile ground for disinformation pipelines. Iâve also debated with enough closed minded people on the internet that Iâm not naive about what the result of engaging with Nazis in an earnest debate is likely to be. But, a lot of the creationists on talk.origins were just as bad-faith about their conduct as modern 4chan trolls.
Hopefully that makes sense. I just donât think that the answer is that as soon as someone says one ignorant thing about, for example, gay rights, theyâre stripped of their ability to continue the conversation. Because if no one is ever willing to talk with them about it except other gay-bashers, how would you expect they would ever change their mind about it?