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.”
The critique is free and open. That’s what we’re doing right now. We’re critiquing and saying “belief systems that are based on hate shouldn’t be given a platform to spread.” That’s is the result of the open critique.
As for ‘everyone believing that the other party is intolerant’, I’m sure we can imagine some subtle examples where its hard to tell who, if anyone, is at fault - but that isn’t what we’re discussing here. We’re talking about Nazis - they are openly intolerant and hateful. That’s pretty much their main thing. They aren’t trying to hide their intolerance. So surely we can put away the subtle hypotheticals and just agree to shun the Nazis.