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Substack's response to Substackers against Nazis sucks
Last week I signed on to an open letter directed to Substack’s management seeking answers to questions many are raising about the company’s platforming and monetizing of Nazis. Today one of Substack’s founders, and the person who has essentially been the platform’s public face, Hamish McKenzie, posted a response. To say it was disappointing is a massive understatement. McKenzie:
Hi everyone. Chris, Jairaj, and I wanted to let you know that we’ve heard and have been listening to all the views being expressed about how Substack should think about the presence of fringe voices on the platform (and particularly, in this case, Nazi views).
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.
We believe that supporting individual rights and civil liberties while subjecting ideas to open discourse is the best way to strip bad ideas of their power. We are committed to upholding and protecting freedom of expression, even when it hurts.
He goes on but you get the idea. Needless to say, I think this is a shitty response.
There is no “protecting freedom of expression” issue here. Substack is not the government. Substack is a private business and it’s free to decide who and what it does and does not wish to platform without imperiling anyone’s rights. Indeed, it already does so with newsletters written by sex workers. That’s their choice. So too is this.
Deciding not to platform Nazis, white supremacists and the like would not be censorship. It would simply be a business deciding not serve and profit from Nazis, white supremacists and the like. In contrast, deciding to publish them and, going further, arguing that doing so is virtuous, is a pretty clear signal that you simply don’t understand the threat posed by Nazism, white supremacy and the like and you’re ignorant of the strategies they pursue to advance their agenda. Or that you do know it and you simply don’t care because your 10% cut of their revenues is just as good as the 10% they get from me and other writers who publish on Substack.
Again, this is not a matter of anyone’s legal rights and to the extent anyone claims it is is lying to you. It is, however, a matter of the sorts of folks with whom one chooses to associate. Both on Substack’s part and on the part of those who publish on this platform. Substack has now spoken. Now it’s time for the rest of us to speak.
For me, it seems pretty simple.
If I frequented a bar and noticed that Nazis and extremists started showing up and then, in response to customer complaints, the bar’s owner said “I don't like Nazis either, but they like beer too,” I'd start going to another bar. Changing where I publish this newsletter is not something I can do as quickly as walking out of a bar, but it’s something I can do. Unlike a lot of Substackers, this newsletter is my full time job and sole source of income. It pays my mortgage, puts food on my table, and pays my kids’ college tuition. As such, it may take some time for me to leave Substack as, to do so, it I have to research alternatives and determine whether or not they will work for me.
But it’s gonna happen sooner rather than later. Substack has made it pretty clear what it stands for. And it’s nothing I can stand with.
Craig Calcaterra
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