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.”
I’m saying that you’re saying Substack shouldn’t be letting Nazis on their servers, and when they issue a detailed statement explaining why they’re doing that, you object to it. I never said any company should change their policy away from the policy they want to have, and you have, but you’re accusing me of trying to “force” a private company to change their policy.
There are other people in the thread who are saying “we” should start trying to coerce Substack into banning the Nazis. As far as I know, that’s not you, so I didn’t accuse you of it, but I did bring it up as an example of something else that I object to even more strongly.
My point is, hateful political speech can be banned in Germany. That was true before the Nazis. And yet, they came to power. Hateful political speech can’t be banned in the US, and yet fascists didn’t come to power here (or… not as thoroughly as it did in Germany, at least). I listed some examples from way before WW2. Does my thinking not make sense here? You don’t have to agree or anything, just trying to lay out another reason behind why I think that way.
I have blatantly told you already that I am not saying that. So now you are deliberately lying.
Bullshit. Absolute and utter bullshit. So no, your bullshit does not make sense.
What?
I’m really not trying to get into anything heated with you. I’m not the enemy of you or anything, regardless if you’re getting irritated at the conversation.
I don’t really want to play some kind of gotcha game of going back through your comments, but I want to defend myself against you saying I’m deliberately lying. You told me, for example, “you are spending a lot of time defending Substack’s right to make money from Nazis”. It’s hard for me to take that any way than that you wouldn’t defend Substack’s right to make money from Nazis… i.e. that you object to them making money from Nazis, you think they shouldn’t be allowed to monetize Nazis if they want to. Yes, I think they have that right, if they want to.
If this is, again, me being fuzzy on the difference between banning versus monetizing, then I apologize again. Can you just clarify exactly what you mean? Do you think for example that it’s okay if Substack hosts Nazi content, but doesn’t monetize it? If you tell me exactly what you think I can be careful to respect it and not misrepresent you.
What?
What protection was there for unpopular political speech in Germany before the war? I know the Nazis banned communists, in a way that the US wasn’t able to ban socialists and communists despite wanting to, before the war. Is that not an example? Can you explain a little more instead of just cursing at me? Again, I’m not trying to get heated at you. If you just get mad and start cursing at me instead of having some kind of rational disagreement I’ll go do something else.
For fuck’s sake… there is a big, BIG difference between “Substack should not be making money from Nazis” and “Substack should not allow Nazi content.” You must know this but you keep claiming I want the former. That is what is called a lie.
And yes, it is bullshit that Nazi hate speech was banned before the Nazis came to power. Utter bullshit. And calling something bullshit is not me cursing at you. But it’s interesting that you find ‘bullshit’ so hard to tolerate that you don’t want me saying it but ‘kill the Jews’ acceptable and defensible.
So, you think it’s fine if Substack hosts Nazi content but doesn’t profit from it? Just subsidizes it with free hosting? That’s surprising to me if it’s true, yes; that’s not what I thought your viewpoint was. But that’s not me “lying” deliberately or anything. Maybe I was sloppy and misunderstood or missed some explanation of yours; I’m willing to take your word for it if you tell me explicitly that you think that that’s okay.
Please be explicit, though, so I can understand. You think it’s fine if Substack hosts Nazi content but doesn’t profit from it? Just subsidizes it with free hosting?
I think you’re just confused on what I’m saying and getting mad, because what you’re getting of it doesn’t make sense.
I think you should for-real just go back and read what I actually wrote, to try to understand it, whether or not you agree. I’m obviously not saying Nazi speech specifically was banned before there were Nazis. I’m making a statement about banned political speech in general, using examples of Nazi speech once the Nazis came to be, and communism across some different time periods.
If you’re not into the idea of calming down and trying to understand what I actually wrote – again, whether or not you agree once it comes across – I’m not into the idea of spending time just yelling at each other.
I literally said that I was talking about monetization and not banning, twice now, so the only reason you could misunderstand is that you’re not actually reading my posts… which makes this quite ironic:
It is a lie that I am not calm as well. And I am not yelling. Stop lying… or whatever you claim you’re doing instead of lying. And maybe read what I write, especially the blatant statements.
I have no idea why you think you can lie over and over again and get away with it by just claiming you’re not lying.
Let me take a different tack and just ask a direct question and nothing else. Do you think it’s fine if Substack hosts Nazi content but doesn’t profit from it? Just subsidizes it with free hosting?
Are you planning to answer my question? I’m fine to just drop it if you’re not planning to, but you accused me of deliberately lying because I represented your views a certain way. It seems fair for me to ask directly, okay, what are your views then? So I can understand in what way they don’t match the way I described them?
I’m not trying to hound you about it if you just want to drop it. But I am not a liar. If you’re going to make that accusation, I’m going to ask you to back it up, and assume that it was unwarranted if you just suddenly go silent when asked clarifying questions.
No, I see no reason to answer questions of people who blatantly lie about me to my face- again, I told you twice that I was talking about monetization and not banning. Two times. Both times when you directly accused me of the opposite. So either you’re lying or you’re so willfully ignorant that you don’t even bother acknowledging people’s denial of your claim about them two times because it goes against what you’re accusing them of. And since that’s far more malicious, I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt.
But hey, if you don’t want to call it lying, you can call it gaslighting. That would also be warranted.
Also-
I literally backed it up multiple times now. Are you just a troll?
My brother in Christ you need to relax. This is not a combat. I poked you a little to get clarification because you’d been personally attacking me, not to continue the argument. My goal was just to find out what you believe and bring some clarity to your accusations, because to me they are unfair, and bringing clarity to the issue will show that.
I know you said that Substack should demonetize Nazis. I had the impression that, in addition to supporting the idea of Substack demonetizing Nazis, you would also support the idea of them taking it a step further and banning Nazis outright. Maybe that impression of mine is wrong. You seem to think that I was “lying” and trying to say that your one statement about demonetization was instead one statement about banning. I was, instead of that, just making a more general statement about what I thought you believed. Maybe wrongly. To be honest, I still don’t know for sure whether you support Substack banning Nazis (in addition to supporting them demonetizing them, which you said twice, yes), because now you’re fully refusing to clarify what you believe, just giving me full on information-free hostility.
I think the productive business of this conversation has concluded. Have a good one. You can repeat your attacks on me if you like; for my side I think the conversation so far pretty much speaks for itself.