Substack says it will not remove or demonetize Nazi content
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.”
https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/21/24011232/substack-nazi-moderation-demonetization-hamish-mckenzieOpen linkView original on lemmy.ca
Actions speak louder than words. Fuck Substack and fuck any platform that offers a safe haven for nazis.
"I want you to know that I don't like nazis. But I am fine platforming them and profiting from them. Now here is some bullshit about silencing 'ideas.'"
"I don't like Nazis... but you have to understand, they're very profitable."
If there are 10 nazis at a table and you decide to sit among them, there are 11 nazis sitting at that table.
So you think Deeyah Khan is a Nazi?
(I’d encourage anyone to watch White Right: Meeting the Enemy if you haven’t seen it.)
Out of curiosity, let's say a man needs a place for sleep, and for get one, he decides to help out a nazi, for example by fixing their long distance radio, would you call this person a nazi,@[email protected] ?
Why couldn't the man go to a homeless shelter, or a church, or a bus stop, or a park bench, or literally anywhere other than a Nazi's house? Also, what does a Nazi need a long distance radio for? Maybe by fixing it and not asking questions he's helping them coordinate with other fascists to hurt and kill people. Is that worth a place to sleep for a night? Is it worth a few bucks if you're not homeless but actually a wealthy business owner who can do as they please?
The man I mention in my post is this guy As he was visiting the french riviera gathering intels for the british intelligence, he got in the situation I described in my previous post.
Did you bring him up because you believe Hamish MacKenzie is doing some kind of anti-Nazi spy operations nobody else knows about? Because the contexts here are so different that they're only tangentially related.
Just an example that "If there are 10 nazis at a table.... " has plenty of exceptions, like Daryl Davis with kkk members.
So do you want the saying to be "if there are 10 Nazis at a table and 1 person who isn't a Nazi, then there are 11 Nazis at a table, unless the 1 person is actually an anti-Nazi spy, and then it's okay, and also there are probably other exceptions"? Or do you think maybe that saying was obviously never intended to apply to that the first place?
"No no, but what if the guy is just, like, at the table because he's Nazi- curious but kind totally didn't kill anybody and probably wouldn't but also the Nazis make good points about stuff so he can totally sit there, but he's not a Nazi! See? There are exceptions!"
-that guy, probably
The very occasional exception to the saying doesn't make the saying less applicable in this particular situation.
A lot of people died rather than help them so yes I would judge the shit out of someone that helps a nazi knowing full well what they are.
The person I mention in my previous post, is this man. As he was along the french riviera, looking for intels, he ended in this situation, that there was no vacancy in hotels, and he finally got a hotel room, by fixing the long distance radio. How do you judge the shit out of him, by curiosity ?
Nazis don’t deserve help. They fundamentally are antisocial in their ideology. By helping them, you aid a Nazi. Why would you willingly help a Nazi?
Who the fuck feels safe sleeping among Nazis? That's a good way to get robbed.
Hearing some one out and not changing your viewpoint after the conversation, doesn't make you one of them. 🙄
Thing is, we've heard out the nazis before. We don't need to do that anymore.
I like Michael Okuda's take on this:
(twitter link)
Personally, I think there's some value in allowing the Nazis to publicly self-identify, because then we know who the Nazis are. We (society) don't need to tolerate what they say just to prove that we're tolerant, but it's probably useful to know who they are, and for them to volunteer that information. Then we respond with public ridicule and name-and-shame.
Also, that doesn't require that a privately owned business (e.g. substack) should provide a platform for Nazi bullshit.
Michael Okuda is one of the great contributors to design thanks to the influences of Star Trek: The Next Generation and later shows- he was behind a lot of the look- and almost no one knows who he is. It's a real shame since, as you showed here, he's smart in other ways too.
There are some things not worth listening to. Not all opinions are created equal.
Nazi lives don't matter.
Zero tolerance for nazis. Zero.
My viewpoint is that I dont have any obligation to "hear out" a nazi. And neither does anyone else. GTFO with this "even nazis should be given a fair shake" shit.
-Dril
Agreed. However, providing a platform for hate speech is no different than condoning it.
When it comes to listening to hate speech and not condoning it outrright then and there, even if you don't explicitly support it, it does make you complicit, and it shows you're willing to turn a blind eye to it, and that speaks negatively to your character.
Don't be a Nazi sympathizer, don't let them off the hook, don't let them spread their hate and lies. You disagree with Nazism? Then don't give it even an inch to spread. Kill it in the cradle.
No, but thinking a Nazi has valuable information to offer is sus.
Big difference between having a conversation and having a media company distributing propaganda.
Freedom of speech doesn't mean that you are obligated to host a platform so shitty people can use it to share shitty ideals. It simply means that you won't get arrested on a federal level.
Websites can do whatever they want, including deciding that they don't want to be a platform for hate speech. If people are seeking a place for this conversation genre to happen, and they want it enough, they can run their own website.
Imagine if you invited a friend of a friend over, and they were sharing nasty ideals at your Christmas party. And they brought their friends. Are you just going to sit there and let them turn your dinner into a political rally? No, you're going to kick them out. It's your dinner, like it is your website. If you don't kick them out, then at some level, you're aligning with them.
I like your example there a lot, I’m going to use that in the future when I’m trying to express that notion. In the past I’ve never been able to articulate that exact concept. So thanks!
Do not tolerate the intolerant.
Yea... Meta took the same "free peaches" approach and the entire fucking globe is now dealing with various versions of white nationalism. So like, can we actually give censorship of hate a fucking try for once? I'm willing to go down that road.
Never ever fall for that one. You can look at various regimes in the world what happens when "hate" gets censored. Demonitizing is one thing, technical implementations to "live censor hate" would be catastrophic.
I'm looking. Is something supposed to stand out about Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, New Zealand, Sweden, and the UK?
Actually, yes. In the UK people (including Jewish people) are being arrested and jailed for speaking out against Israeli naziism and genocide as inciting "hate."
That example is literally EXACTLY why people, myself included, believe that the censoring of certain types of speech needs to remain exclusively a private enterprise.
That's an interesting point. On one hand Israel is the way it is because right wing nationalism has been normalized through open and free speech in the US. But Israel is also where it is because of the conflation of the meaning of antisemitism shutting down anyone challenging it. Though, I am seeing that conflation being properly challenged more so now than ever before but it's obviously not fast enough. It's probably time to implement looking more at collective actions more than words within governmental policy writing. As in mass killings = bad. I wish humans didn't suck.
There is real time censorship present anywhere in europe? Nowhere near. We have "you have to act within certain time" laws when content gets flaged, that's all. You could argue forcing DNS resolvers to block certain domains is censorhip though. Look at China. Talk bad about politics in your private chats with your mates, i'm sure your censorship dream will do you and your family well! Heck even talking about Winnie poh is "hate" or was this not true?
Again, demonitize them as you want. But censorship just leads to the groups isolating more and more from the world.
Just look at the beliefs of people witch a member of cults (or religions if you want) - thousands of people which are explicitly denied via rules to gather knowledge in the internet (looking at you Mormons). I'd like to call that psychological censorship - it aims for the same goal in a way but I get way to off topic
Your username is disgusting.
Do you not know who Dick Tracy is?
Yeah I chose it because I wanted to be a dipshit hipster edgelord 😎
I like to accuse people of blocking me because I don’t understand how Lemmy works.
Right? Me too. When replies disappear from my inbox that's when I know: "I am just a weird idiot". In addition to the refrain in my brain: I like to have people imagine sexual bodily fluids oozing from the devil's bunghole with rotting meat and maggots. Due to this, I also confirm that I am definitely cool and popular with all the other Internet hipsters"
I wanted to be a mall cop but after failing both the physical and psychological screening I decided to tell other people how they should use social media.
It’s all about making the world a better place, you know?
not everyone who doesn't want to censor nazis is a nazi. while i think hate has no place anywhere online, i agree that free speech is important. substack should definetely stop someone hateful from earning money on that platform one way or another.
They can't. That would break the illusion of being an "enlightened centrist."
I.E. votes right wing, sees themselves as slightly more moderate, but sympathizer and defender of the far right and Nazis.
Or one of the many foreign troll farms found to be pushing the "enlightened centrist" narrative.
i'm by no means any kind of centrist or right leaning and i do have very strong opinions about nazis. but free speech on the internet is a very important thing, while i also believe hate speech should be censored.
tl;dr, conflicting opinions != Nazi, dumbass.
It's not the conflicting opinions. It's your lack of commitment to your own professed opinions. You literally stated you believe hate speech should be censored. But all your arguments to this point are that they should not. Where is your consistency?
Why are you so combative? You responded to a post rebutting a desire to censor speech from a legal perspective. Being opposed to defining any speech as illegal and being a nazi sympathizer are two very different things. You do not, in fact, have to choose one.
i don't think i will, this is complicated and i don't care enough. i am not taking sides.
🤡
Won't work here, on here it is black or white, either hate Nazis and anything that even approaches it or you are one. Every other subject in the world will be grey and nuanced, and they will argue minor points to death, except for this.
If you do not support removing Nazis from the public sphere, you aren't necessarily a Nazi. But you do support Nazis. That didn't make a difference between 1939 and 1945 and it doesn't make a difference now.
Do you have a Meta or Substack stamp on your passport?
To be clear — what McKenzie is saying here is that Substack will continue to pay Nazis to write Nazi essays. Not just that they will host Nazi essays (at Substack's cost), but they will pay for them.
They are, in effect, hiring Nazis to compose Nazi essays.
Not exactly. Substack subscribers pay subscription fees, the content author keeps roughly 80% of the fees, and the rest goes to Substack or to offset hosting costs. The Nazi subscribers are paying the Nazi publishers, and money is flowing from the Nazi subscribers to Substack because of that operation (not away from Substack as it would be if they hired Nazis).
How is it pedantic to point out that "will pay for them" means "will get paid by them"?
There's a perfectly good argument to be made that Substack shouldn't host Nazis even if they're making money off them. But that wasn't (edit:
yourthe) message;yourthe message was, they're hiring Nazis. It's relevant whether they're materially supporting the Nazis, or being materially supported by a cut of their revenue.It wasn't my message, but it certainly made sense to me and still does. whereas your message makes sense but in a totally different way. It's basically "nuh-uh"
Hm. Fair enough. The core complaint I have with banning Nazis from being able to speak, has nothing to do with which way the money is flowing. And I fixed "your" to be "the"; I just hadn't noticed you weren't the person I was talking with before.
That's splitting hairs. Salespeople who work on commission are keeping an amount of what they make for the company, but I doubt many people would claim they aren't being paid to sell a product.
They are being paid by subscribers, not by substack. I am not on substack's side here, but that detail seems quite relevant if we're interested in painting an accurate picture of what's going on.
If they were putting Nazi content on substack and no individuals were subscribing to read it, they would be earning 0.
Substack is profiting from those same subscribers, no doubt.
Again- If you sold widgets door-to-door for a 20% commission, would you say you were being paid by the people who buy the widgets? I doubt many would.
In that case I'd be selling something made by the entity giving me commission - what people want and pay for is something made by someone other than me. In this case the people creating the content are the same people drawing the subscribers, so it's more accurate to say substack takes a cut of their subscription income than to say substack pays them.
If I stop selling widgets the company still has the exact same widgets and can get anyone else to sell them. If a renowned nazi writer (bleh) takes their content to another platform, substack no longer has that content (or the author's presence on their platform) to profit from.
Sort of like Substack's servers then?
You think the platform is the widget, I think the content is the widget. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.
“we don’t like or condone bigotry in any form.” I mean they are litterally Condoning bigotry.
"His response similarly doesn’t engage other questions from the Substackers Against Nazis authors, like why these policies allow it to moderate spam and newsletters from sex workers but not Nazis."
Doesn't seem very consistent.
Substack: Nazis are cool, but you better not be selling sex related shit! We have standards!
"We do not condone Nazi propaganda, but we are very concerned about sex work causing social degeneracy."
Substack is likely very concerned about the purity of the volk
Neat.
Interesting, I generally think of the Merriam-Webster definition:
Or perhaps even further than that: actually approving of something. Guess “condone” is a little weaker of a word than I thought. But its popularity calls for being extra careful of even overlooking wrongdoing.
Funny how words mean things
So substack is a pro-nazi platform run by Nazi enablers, got it.
🤦
Bring out the bad-faith arguments, lol.
If you let Nazis congregate at your bar, congratulations, it's a Nazi bar now.
Lemme guess, the room you wrote this comment in has an Iron Cross somewhere in it.
This would be silly even if they didn’t moderate at all but they do. They don’t allow sex workers use their service. And we aren’t talking about “Nazis” as a code word for the far right. The complaint letter cited literal Nazis with swastika logos.
Plus, how grand are his delusions of grandeur if he thinks his fucking glorified email blast manager is the one true hope for free speech? Let the Nazis self-host an open source solution (like Ghost).
What about a nazi sex worker ?
I guess exceptions could be made ...
Do they not allow sex workers to use their service? Here's a sex worker who posts on Substack.
I believe keeping the ability for sex workers to post there intact is a good reason not to ban Nazis -- basically, deciding who are "good" posters and allowing only them leads to a steadily-expanding list of "bad" categories of people who need to get banned, with sex workers as an obvious additional early target.
If you're open to reading an article from Reason.com expanding on this take, which I partially agree with, there it is.
(Edit: Restructured so that more of the argument comes directly from me, as opposed to Reason.com)
They don’t allow sexually explicit content. From their TOS:
So, a porn star could write about the industry but couldn’t use it like “OnlyFans but blog” where she had a post and included some pictures for subscribers.
Which is fine. They’re the publisher. They can decide smut is a step too far. But don’t pretend to be some free speech martyr for publishing Nazi propaganda while banning showing a tit.
... which is very different from "not allowing sex workers to use their service," and undermines the whole argument that "well they do do moderation, they just think Nazis are on the 'ok' list." I would have had a totally different response if the person I was responding to had tried to argue that since they don't allow actual porn, they should also be obligated to ban extreme viewpoints.
I'm not at all surprised that a Koch-funded publication thinks that Substack should allow Nazis to use their platform to make money.
Ad hominem. Nice. That said, I get it if you think Reason.com is a sketchy source to try to point to as an argument for anything. I restructured my message, so I'm simply stating my facts and opinions directly, so you can disagree directly if you like, instead of just jeering at the "Reason.com" part of it.
If the fact that I cited "Reason.com" as an aside is a problem, but it's not a problem the person I was replying to was calmly stating something that was highly relevant to the argument that wasn't actually true... you might be only concerned with whether something agrees with your biases, not whether it's accurate. Does that not seem like a problem to you?
The Kochs are Nazis. That's not an ad hominem, that's just a fact.
https://www.mockingbirdpaper.com/content/david-koch-industrialist-and-holocaust-denier-dies-age-79-american-politicians-scramble-new
They were even partly raised by a Nazi.
https://www.npr.org/2016/01/19/463565987/hidden-history-of-koch-brothers-traces-their-childhood-and-political-rise
And no, it doesn't seem like a problem to me to call Nazis Nazis. Because they're Nazis.
"Ad hominem" refers to ignoring the content of a message, and making your argument based on who is speaking. It doesn't mean that your statement about the speaker isn't factual, or that understanding more about who is speaking might not be relevant -- it simply refers to the idea that you should at some point address the content of the message if you're going to debate it.
In this case, I said something, you ignored the content and instead focused on the fact that I'd linked to something, and criticized the source of the thing I'd linked to. Okay, fair enough, the Koch brothers are Nazis. I don't like them either. If you want to respond to the content of my message, I've now reframed it so the stuff I'm saying is coming directly from me, so that "but Reason.com!" isn't any longer a way to dismiss it because of who is speaking.
I'm aware. And that is perfectly valid when the content of the message is defending monetizing Nazis is funded by Nazis.
You missed what I'm saying. I'm not funded by Nazis. You took my message and ignored what I was saying in favor of criticizing Reason.com. Fair enough. I was inviting you to continue the conversation, if you have an argument against the content, now that I've removed anything that could be construed as "because Reason.com says so" and simply said what I think about it.
Nazism doesn't deserve tolerance, any person who doesn't punch it in the face is equal or worse.
So they are a Nazi platform. End of.
If you run a bar, and Nazis hang out in your bar, you run a Nazi bar
Almost like some old school bronze age curse. Doomed to forever open bars and family restaurants that within months become Nazi. The bar tender has a PTSD unfocused glaze as he recalls the gradually morphing of his last 11 bars.
If only there was something you could do to the Nazis to stop them showing up at your bar
Not in this version of the curse
But it's one of their defining features - they talk a big game, but if you hit them with a bat they run away crying like the pissy little cowards they really are
Same thing goes for Zionists.
I mean yeah, but what does that have to do with anything here?
They're all over this thread defending Substack.
So they're Nazis
"Let's tolerate the people that say they want to genocide entire ethnic groups" Surely nothing bad is gonna happen /s
Yes genocide is bad, but not taking their money is worse!
Like 1930s Germany did.
How?
Oh didn’t get it! Sorry for that.
So the US government? Except instead of "tolerate" write "massively support and arm"
So let me get this straight... They don't like Nazis, but Nazis not making money is worse than Nazis making money?
Goodbye substack.
I'd love to say that, but unfortunately journalists I respect, who are doing very excellent content that repudiates fascism, don't really have anywhere else to go. Radley Balko, for example, is a preeminent journalist on the topics of police brutality, law enforcement misdeeds, and failures of the criminal justice system. But WaPo didn't want to publish him any more, so where does he go?
I hope they find alternatives, but I'm not going to stop paying for journalism from people like Balko. I don't want to let white supremacists force any more epistemic closure.
In the old days, one would pay a small monthly fee and then you have your own website where you could basically do anything legal that you want. Is this no longer possible?
Still 100% possible. Wordpress hosting is cheap and easy. It's getting harder and harder for that type of site to find a good audience, as the web becomes more and more siloed and the stuff within the silos becomes more tightly interconnected, but some notable people are still doing it. Cory Doctorow comes to mind.
Because Idividual websites would be punished by search engines they were made a part of a bigger one, can we make better search engine to go around this?
Medium?
No idea how the compensation structure works on Medium. But I also have no idea what their content moderation policies are either.
Almost as if Radley Balko's publisher deciding whether he was allowed to continue to speak anymore was a bad thing, and giving him a place where he can do it and earn a living and no one polices his content was a good thing.
(Edit: Woo hoo hoo judging by the downvotes y'all sure don't like it when it happens to one of your guys. Just to be clear, I don't really care all that much what happens to the literal Nazis. I only care a lot about this issue because I suspect that once you're done kicking off Nazis, you'll want to kick off the Joe Rogans and the Dave Chappelles and the COVID denialists and sooner or later some person will arrive with a list on which is someone you like. Like Radley Balko. And yet, somehow, that'll be totally different in your mind, not connected at all with the earlier people you were advocating for banning.)
Being a Nazi isn't a "view." It is a political movement guided by the principles of hate, violence, and genocide.
And they are saying they are cool with that.
Tolerating Naziism and allowing it to use social tools to spread its hate is what makes it worse.
We already knew that SS liked Nazis.
All joking aside, silencing Nazis and deplatforming them is LITERALLY fighting against them. How is allowing them to make money and market themselves on your platform doing anything to stem the tide of Nazism? Obviously they're playing culture war games and saying they're not.
Condone:
verb accept and allow (behavior that is considered morally wrong or offensive) to continue
coded language for "we think Nazis have a point"
...But we are happy to financially support bigotry and directly profit from it.
That's why having a bill of rights is such a dangerous thing.
Other countries have laws that allow for people to speak freely, but having "free speech" enshrined as a right, means you allow companies like this to promote hate speech but dust their hands off and claim, "We're just following the constitution" so they can profit from open racism and look clean while doing it.
It depresses me how many people think that the freedom of speech the First Amendment grants restricts anyone but the U.S. government.
Facebook just shrugs off the rampant white supremacist content on its platform with great success, you can literally put up a profile photo with an "It's OK to be white" frame, or "white power" supplied by Facebook. I guess Substack thinks that if it works for Facebook it should be fine for them.
Incidentally Reddit banned me for posting pictures of Nazis on r/beholdthemasterrace, a subreddit for mocking white supremacy, when some Nazis went and complained to Reddit admins I was doing it. Reddit also sides with Nazis, they're just quieter about it.
Okay fine, I'm never clicking on a substack link again.
And after say a grace period of about 6 months to move elsewhere, I'm going to assume anyone associating with the service is at best a nazi sympathiser
Go ahead, be a Nazi bar, I'm sure their money is worth it
This is such a complicated feeling... On one hand, I agree. But on the other, we can't specifically pinpoint what censorship is valid and what isn't.
Edit: Obviously, I'm not considering Nazis in this thought experiment.
Edit 2: OH MY GOD PEOPLE! OF FUCKING COURSE WE SHOULD KEEP NAZIS OUT FFS! 😑
look i mean, wherever the line is, im pretty confident nazis are on the other side of it
Good point.
Yes we can. Kicking Nazis off their platform is valid censorship. Nazis lost the right to have a seat at the table in 1945.
Obviously. I'm not considering Nazis in this thought experiment.
It's indeed very difficult if not impossible to exactly and specifically pinpoint where the line is, it is however extremely easy to see when ideologies and behavior steps across it.
If you're still hand wringing over whether or not Nazis are scum of the Earth that deserve nothing more than pure vitriol and ostracisation, you might be a Nazi.
Obviously, I'm not considering Nazis in this thought experiment.
I've seen this come up a few times. My response has been "luckily our platforms aren't run by an inscrutable god-machine nor an evil genie".
For non government cases like this, we don't need to solve the general case. We can just say "no Nazis allowed", and "no hating on queer folks " and so on as needed. Web forums have had rules for more than 30 years and it hasn't been a crisis.
Yeah. A baseline is needed for sure. Moderation is definitely necessary.
It is only censorship when it is the government, else it is normal people not wanting to deal with Nazis.
If you really want your white supremacists views out there just roll your own setup
Makes sense.
sighs I'm not even gonna try to address it now.
Hey sorry Nazis are bad at figuring out how internet works
Is substack used in the EU? They might want to rethink their stance then...
EU will start screaming at Substack for failure to filter out hate speech.
In four years when the EU gets to it
Nope, as far as I know only a couple of countries has explict laws againt Nazi (Germany obviously and Italy to some extend).
But in the end it will be the person to be persecuted if any crime is committed, not the medium.
Nobody in Italy think to punish or boycott a company just because the mafia is using and paying the company's products or services.
Nope. Platforms have a responsibility to not host hate-speech and other illegal content, eg. remove it. Failure to do so is prosecutable.
What does Substack plan to do with the profits that it makes from hosting Nazi content?
Advertise in hopes of luring in more of that sweet sweet nazi fascism money.
I'm just guessing here, but those Swiss bankers are still as fond of hiding nazis' ill-gotten gains for them as ever...
On one hand, Substack is in it's rights and as a journalistic organization, they are in the right.
The issue is: Once you serve a Nazi in your bar, you become a Nazi bar. This is no longer a marginalized viewpoint you can ignore. Its actively recruiting and frightening. Inaction is enabling. Substack is going to become shitty, and fast. They will lose high engagement users, first when the ones who protested pile out for another platform and then quickly when the quality dips.
Also, their cavalier attitude will change when Stripe steps in.
You can contact Stripe at the link to let them know about the company they are associating with.
How is Stripe associated with Substack? (I'm out of the loop here)
I an guessing they do their payment processingt
I was too, but sounds like the TL;DR is they're the supporting infrastructure which substack uses:
https://stripe.com/ae/customers/substack
Thanks, that definitely explains it better than simply being a payment processor.
So if a Nazi buy [a service] then the [service offerer] is a Nazi.
So every [service offerer] in the world is probably Nazi, since probably every [service offerer] in the world has at least a Nazi customer.
Interesting approach, now what we should do about all these Nazi [service offerer] ?
the context of the post is about knowingly serving nazis. this argument does not work in that context.
Also about allowing them to congregate on your platform. Nazi bars aren't just Nazi bars because of who's in them but also because of who is not in them.
yeah this is also a good point
They are also knowingly serving many other categories, so ? They are both democrats and republican, nazis and pro-israel and whatever other "category" uses them to publish artices ?
this argument is implicitly assuming nazism is “on the same level” as being democrat/republican or any other “category”. this is not the case, so this argument also doesn’t work. do you have any others?
I don't said they are on the same level.
I simply said that if you define a platform as "nazi" because they serve a nazi then you can define the same platform as "whatever" because they serve whatever.
i can define the color orange by the color of the fruit. i could also define red and blue by the color of that same fruit. not all of these definitions are equally valid
this is enablement
So they have no rules, any content is acceptable?
Anything less is "censorship" after all
They probably have to follow laws and that's it.
Seems like fine platform, imo. Just let people communicate with the same amount of freedom they would have in real life.
In real life, a restaurant can and will kick you out and ban you from the premises for wearing a swastika and saying you think minorities don't deserve to live.
Ergo, being kicked off a company's privately owned server for hate speech is EXACTLY the same amount of freedom they would have in real life.
Everyone loves censorship. Even you.
Yeah, and if people don't like what you say they can block you.
What's the problem?
The same amount of freedom, but a much easier job to make money off of your bigotry! A site not afraid to help Nazis earn money! Sounds like a fine platform!
Watch when the school shoot manifestors pop up, people post lists of addresses and names of minority groups, coordinated grey-legal attacks come from it. Plus of course the piracy, the kiddie porn, the revenge porn, the scams and grifts, the Russian misinformation.
Pretty sure most of that would be illegal and get taken down.
I'm gonna block you, by the way. It feels like you're going through my profile and replying to all of my comments in bad-faith.
Do what you got to do
Mckenzie needs to read that Reddit story about the bartender who kicked out a guy with the Third Reich eagle ensign on his shirt despite him quietly minding his own business. I really don't want Substack to "suddenly become a Nazi bar." I'm just a reader, but if I ever start a newsletter I may reconsider my platform. I am on a basic free plan for all Substack channels I read. I've thought about upgrading my subscription to some, but now I will hesitate.
No, it does not “make it worse”.
In fact, stamping out dissent and controlling people is incredibly effective. Ask any dictator.
Control is effective and necessary when it comes to people actively trying to damage society. No, I’m not supporting dictatorship or authoritarianism, just pointing out that control is effective.
Being a sect of destructive assholes doesn’t mean you should get a platform.
Money is the only vote that matters. Avoid the Nazi bar. Don't give them ad revenue or search engine relevance (for what that's worth anymore).
Free speech POV aside, Substack is running a business as a publisher of content. They sell advertising space. You know what de values your advertising space? Unsafe hateful content. Advertisers care about "brand safety" in terms of what their ads appear next to. You can't run a good advertising sales business if the advertisers don't have guarantees on brand safety.
What a stupid argument. Imagine replacing "nazis" with "pedophiles" in her answer
Many Nazis were pedophiles.
And they still are too. In fact for a few weeks I thought "let's go Brandon" was a coded pedophile thing because there's three sex offenders listed in the center of town and all three of them had "let's go Brandon" signs for months. I was like "geeze these kid fuckers are organizing a sign campaign, and who the fuck is Brandon?"
Huh, I didn't know that but I'm not surprised. Morally bankrupt (or straight up evil) people doing morally wrong stuff...
Not that yours is so much better. Imagine replacing "nazis" with "pro-choice", still sure the platform should remove the contents ?
Pro-choice content isn't an incitement to violence. I'm not going to pretend being pro-choice is equivalent in any sense to being a Nazi just because some people are too stupid to see the difference.
A lot of the time people have this conversation from the perspective of the person who has no horse in the race. They aren't a Nazi, nor are a target of Nazis. It ignores the people who are effected.
Imagine you are in a space and someone posts a death threat targeting you. Others rally around that as any censorship is bad censorship. Every time you use that space you get a reminder of how someone particularly wants you dead. Now imagine that becomes just a regular part of your day. Over and over and over again you are exposed to people smugly calling you less than human, a threat to society, a moraless degenerate. You get this nice cold shock whenever you see it and get to remember how vulnerable you are, how gleeful these calls to take your rights away for something you never opted into and can't opt out of... And you are expected to take whatever anxiety is sown in you as just normal. That burden of people gleefully discussing your death just gets to be a part of your everyday. To others looking at you dealing with that burden it is treated as tolerable level of permanent unhappiness. It's simply not supposed to be other people's problem. You may not ask for assistance with managing those burdens because the cost of societies "tolerance" for speech has decided that you must personally pay for everyone's unrestricted discourse.
Then there's the other half. Say I create a platform. Maybe I am running a print shop. I maintain it, run it, and think that I am doing society a service for facilitating a means to communicate. I find out someone has been printing death threats at my shop. Maybe they are even death threats towards someone I know. How would I feel knowing someone is taking the resources I manage, using the infrastructure I maintain to specifically terrorize someone? This person printing these death threats made ME complicit in spreading their death threat so that someone in the above example gets to feel unsafe as they go about their day. In fact, spreading death threats is a crime. Should I not be allowed to refuse to take their business?
We as a society have the ability to differentiate between death threats and other political discourse. Calling for a genocide of a group of people - is a death threat. It may not be directed at a singular person but lemme tell you when you are the target it feels like it might as well be calling on you by name. There is no moderation policy, even an unrestricted one, that is truly ethically neutral. Your choices about what is or isn't allowed on your watch always effects people and the mental cost is borne by someone.
Very smart post, highly.
If it is illegal then I am sure that a judge should not have any problem to order substack to remove the posts.
You are making a case where there is somenthing illegal going on, if the law do not protect you, it is the law that is wrong, not someone doing something lawful (but morally wrong for other people)
Law is a funny beast. Lots of people do things which are illegal all the time and get away with it because you basically have to assert your right to be protected by law to sort of activate it. Like someone yelling at me that they are going to kill me while I am out in public is technically a form of assult. , I can call the authorities and get them to assist me to make sure they don't follow through and to get them to stay the hell away from me but chances are I am not going to seek restitution in court for something that small because I would have to press charges, seek and pay for legal council, everything would need to be processed to make sure the law is being properly handled at all points of the arrest and the punishment would likely be fairly trifling for all my troubles.
Private entities already basically have the imperitive to determine what is permissible on their platforms. Freedom of speech is not practiced under the auspices of substack. They are allowed to kick you out for whatever the heck they want (some exceptions applying) because they own that space. To remove posts as threats a judge would have to go through each individual one, source it, bring the original commenter into court and go through due process with every single user to check it against their local jurisdiction's laws for threats and the likely outcome would just be small fines and community service... Quite frankly the juice would not be worth the squeeze.
On the other hand we are absolutely allowed to have an opinion that substack letting Nazis spread hate speech on their platform under their watch is a moral failure on their part.
Your analogy is false but yes if you are pro-forced birth you should not profit from pro-choice groups. Personal integrity is important and while I very much don't agree with the forced birth crowd I am willing to pretend that some of them are sincere.
And why ? Just because I pointed out a scenario that do not imply a clearly illegal situation like yours ?
You are right from a a personal perspective, I as a person must have personal integrity.
But a platform ? Should not be the duty of a platform to carry both points of view and let the reader to decide what is wrong or what is good ?
Should a newspaper not talk about something because some readers don't agree with it ? Because that is what you are saying: what I think is true and good while what they think is wrong and bad, and so they need to be removed.
If someone says it is raining outside, the newspaper's job is to actually check whether it is raining outside NOT to say it both is and is not raining and let their "readers decide."
You are arguing that newspapers should discuss NAZI ideals as if they are as valid as any other. No one decent agrees with you.
Nope, I am arguing that if something is not illegal it is not up to the platform to censor it.
If that 200 authors asked a judge to command substack to remove the post, then good.
If you decide that today is good that a platform censor something, (and I agree that nazis are not that nice thing to even consider to discuss) then tomorrow you cannot protest that a platform remove something that you consider good.
Like Meta removing all the pro palestinian post/propaganda: is it acceptable that it is Meta to decide that even if it is not illegal?
Free speech is absolute, and it include even what we hate.
Free speech IS NOT freedom from social consequences. And one of those social consequences is that people are allowed to tell you to take a hike.
And I agree. But it seems that you still don't understand how dangerous is to go after the platform instead of the authors of the messages.
But let's suppose that it is correct to go after the platform, so this time the offending content is removed. Fine, good thing.
Next month 174 authors ask to remove everything about the right to have an abortion because they are offended by it and they think that it is wrong (and in some place it is even illegal), what do you think should happen?
I feel like you feel this is a clever gotcha, but I don't follow.
If substack (or most any private platform) decided not to host any pro-choice content, many people would probably say that's a shit move. Some anti-abortion people might support it, maybe. What's your point?
You shouldn't evaluate the situation with a naive "did they remove content? Any content at all?" metric. You need to consider what was removed and why.
It's also important to remember we're not talking about the government silencing or compelling speech. We're talking about private parties moderating their platform. It's important that they retain the legal right to choose what to say. And then the public can jeer and refuse to associate with them if they use their rights badly.
Another day of thanking
godthe devs for the decentralized Fediverse and Lemmy 🙏😔Here's a Wired article featuring four good alternatives to Substack.
This is plainly irresponsible.
Gen Z needs to understand the historical lesson that the Blues Brothers taught those before them. Illinois Nazis exist, and some days they demonstrate, as per their right to freedom of speech - but this is as much as an opportunity to humiliate them and openly critique the mindset as anyone else. Dark little underground communities flourish behind closed doors.
TIL that Substack is apparently a bunch of crypto-fascists who expect people to believe they don't support Nazis, they just give them money and a place at their table to talk about it.
And then people wonder why we're so scared of Facebook if the fediverse is "supposed to be open".
The answer is literally in front of you, people!
Translated: McKenzie just wants the sweet money and is trying to gaslight us into thinking platforming nazis is ok.
This tracks with my previous attempts at reporting that Sinfest guy. Posts hundreds of comics that blatantly break multiple official substack content guidelines and I get the effective equivalent of a promise for "action" combined with a dismissive eye roll. They completely ignored my follow-up email detailing the complete lack of action and the dozen or so new content guideline violations.
“Yeah they’re nazis but hey, they bring the money in. Why should I ban them?”
Jesus Christ censorship has become such a meaningless word now.
Happy Opposite Day, everyone! 🥳
I see literalnazis.com is available for cheap if anybody want to 302 that to substack.
That's a tough choice when Tucker Carlson is opening his own streaming platform.
Why just temporarily, go full 301.
Optimism.
"But we'll gladly host those views on our platform, run ads alongside them, and profit from them."
Only thing I can recommend is finding their advertisers and letting them know what they're advertising on
If a Nazi has a large subscription following than Substack would be directly profiting from Nazi content.
Are Musky and Hamish McKenzie’s friends because that sound like the same bullshit he would say. Also, hasn't deplatforming actually been shown to work?
It's the only thing that works. Shouting Nazis into silence is the best early way to deal with them. Show up to protest in huge numbers, deplatform them, force them to scurry back into the shadows.
Most importantly of all, keep them from recruiting more.
Once these efforts fail, all you're left with is violence, and violence will come, because the Nazis love it.
Cool... so they now facilitate and directly benefit from Nazi activity. Sounds great when you put it like that.
For anyone who remembers the interview the CEO did with the Verge back when they launched Notes, this isn't surprising at all.
You can see a transcript here. The relevant section can be found by searching
all brown people are animalsor more specifically justanimalsand reading on from there.I'm not sure if the video footage of the interview is still available, but it's even worse because you can see that the CEO is completely lost when talking about the idea of moderating anything and basically shuts down because they have nothing to say all while the interview is politely berating them about how they're obviously failing a litmus test.
Do note that above the point where "animals" occurs is some post-hoc context provided by the interviewer (perhaps why the video is no longer easily available?) where they point out that the question they asked and the response they got wasn't exactly as extreme as it first appeared. But they also point out that it's still very notable despite the slightly mitigating correction and I'd agree entirely, especially if you watch(ed) the video and clocked the CEO's demeanor and lack of any intelligent thought on the issue.
Oh yeah that's the classic. The interviewer describes himself as one of the targets, even, and that still doesn't make it real for this fuck.
Yea I’m guessing it’s pretty obvious that it’s simply their shameless business model or they’ve made promises to someone in exchange for money to platform Nazis in the name of free speech.
Have fun watching your website devolve into 4chan levels of degeneracy.
I want them to explain how it makes things worse.
This is the first time I heard of the platform and I intend to keep it that way
Now I'm curious if anybody adds something about LGBTQ on there, if that's promptly removed.
Submitted for good faith discussion: Substack shouldn’t decide what we read. The reason it caught my attention is that it's co-signed by Edward Snowden and Richard Dawkins, who evidently both have blogs there I never knew about.
I'm not sure how many of the people who decide to comment on these stories actually read up about them first, but I did, such as by actually reading the Atlantic article linked. I would personally feel very uncomfortable about voluntarily sharing a space with someone who unironically writes a post called "Vaccines Are Jew Witchcraftery". However, the Atlantic article also notes:
Structurally this is where a comment would usually have a conclusion to reinforce a position, but I don't personally know what I support doing here.
IDGAF if it feeds into the narrative. It also shuts down a recruitment pipeline. It reduces their reach. It makes the next generation less likely to continue the ideology. De-platforming is a powerful tool that should be reserved for only the most crucial fights, but the fight against Nazi is one of those fights.
The Nazis were already full-blown conspiracy theorists. EVERYTHING is spun to feed into their narrative. That ship has sailed.
A platform operator needs to AT MINIMUM demonetize the content and censure it, and is likely only being responsible if they ban it outright. If you aren't prepared to wade into the fraught, complex world of content moderation, don't run a content platform.
This reminds me of this comic:
Money talks
Money talks, fascism walks.
And people will still argue with you if you try to explain to them that there is no such thing as "grassroots fascism."
They are right but it could hurt their bottom line if the non-nazis leave
Ehhh, it's one of those things where I agree with the principle, but the principle fails. It's the so called tolerance paradox (which isn't actually a paradox at all, but that's tangential).
On principle, no company should be in the business of deciding what is and isn't acceptable "speech". That's simply not something we really want happening.
But then there's nazis and other outright insane bigots. But we still don't really want companies making that call, because they'll decide on the side of profit, period. If enough of the nazi types get enough power and money going, every single fucking company out there that isn't owned by a single person, or very small group of people that share the same ideals, is going to be deciding that it's the nazi bullshit that's the only acceptable speech.
This is something that has to come from the bottom to the top and be decided on a legal level first. We absolutely can ban nazi type bullshit if we want to. There's plenty of room for it to be pointed at as the incitement to violence that it is. There need to be very specific, very limited definitions to govern what is and isn't part of that
And the limitations have to be impossible to expand without starting all the way over with the kind of stringency it takes to amend the constitution.
That takes it out of the hands of corporations, and makes it very difficult to game. But it has to come from us, as a people first.
(transcribed from a series of tweets) - iamragesparkle
I was at a shitty crustpunk bar once getting an after-work beer. One of those shitholes where the bartenders clearly hate you. So the bartender and I were ignoring one another when someone sits next to me and he immediately says, "no. get out." And the dude next to me says, "hey i'm not doing anything, i'm a paying customer." and the bartender reaches under the counter for a bat or something and says, "out. now." and the dude leaves, kind of yelling. And he was dressed in a punk uniform, I noticed
Anyway, I asked what that was about and the bartender was like, "you didn't see his vest but it was all nazi shit. Iron crosses and stuff. You get to recognize them."
And i was like, ohok and he continues. "you have to nip it in the bud immediately. These guys come in and it's always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don't want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after awhile they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too. And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh shit, this is a Nazi bar now. And it's too late because they're entrenched and if you try to kick them out, they cause a PROBLEM. So you have to shut them down.
And i was like, 'oh damn.' and he said "yeah, you have to ignore their reasonable arguments because their end goal is to be terrible, awful people."
And then he went back to ignoring me. But I haven't forgotten that at all.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
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.
In a 2020 letter from Substack leaders, including Best and McKenzie, the company wrote, “We just disagree with those who would seek to tightly constrain the bounds of acceptable discourse.”
The Atlantic also pointed out an episode of McKenzie’s podcast with a guest, Richard Hanania, who has published racist views under a pseudonym.
McKenzie does, however, cite another Substack author who describes its approach to extremism as one that is “working the best.” What it’s being compared to, or by what measure, is left up to the reader’s interpretation.
The original article contains 365 words, the summary contains 157 words. Saved 57%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Techbros tolerate Nazis.
You can run your own blog with WordPress. It even Federates.
Monetization of such content is questionable for sure, but I'm affirmative about what he says about the propagation of such extreme views. Simply being unaware about such things won't make them go away. People should know who they are and why they are so we can deal with them better. There's alot we can do better but can't do because of limited awareness and our own negative attitude to deal with them.
Honestly? Unless I'm missing something, this sounds fine.
The internet I grew up on had Nazis, racists, Art Bell, UFO people, software pirates, and pornographers. The ACLU defended KKK rallies. Some of the people who were allowed a platform, that "everyone hated" and a lot of people wanted to censor, were people like Noam Chomsky who I liked hearing from.
I think there's a difference between "moderation" meaning "we're going to prevent Nazis from ruining our platform for people who don't want to hear from them" -- which, to me, sounds fine and in fact necessary in the current political climate -- and "moderation" meaning "if you hold the wrong sort of views you're not allowed to express them on my platform." The Nazi bar analogy, and defederating with toxic Lemmy instances, refers to the first situation. If I understand Substack's platform properly, it's the second: Only the people who want to follow the Nazis can see the Nazis. No? Am I wrong in that?
I'm fully in agreement with McKenzie that not allowing "wrong" views to be expressed and legitimately debated makes it harder to combat them, not easier. They're not gonna just evaporate because "everyone agrees they're bad" except the people who don't.
I realize this is probably a pretty unpopular view.
Substack is not just allowing Nazis to use their product.
Substack is not just paying the hosting costs for Nazi essays.
They are paying the authors of those Nazi essays.
That goes way beyond "not censoring" Nazis.
It is active, monetary support.
Substack is a venue where you can make money by writing Nazi essays.
I don't really understand Substack or fully grasp the issues involved; I'm just gonna say how I see it. I looked over their monetization page, and it kind of looks like the way it works is that the Nazi's readers (other Nazis, presumably) can sign up for a subscription, and Substack I assume takes a cut, and the rest goes to the Nazi. So it kind of sounds like the Nazis are paying each other, with a cut of that going to Substack. Do I have that right? It sounds like the Nazis (in the aggregate) are paying Substack. Nobody at Substack is raising money and using it to subsidize any Nazis. The Nazis are subsidizing hosting for random other publishers who don't have subscriptions. I think.
Irregardless of all that, I just have this general dislike of "demonitization" and the modern ethos of publishing on the internet. The demonitization on Youtube is totally weird. You can't say "suicide" or refer to sexual abuse or have gunshot sounds or say "fuck" in the first thirty seconds, except sometimes you can, and some content which is clearly harmful is allowed, and other stuff gets randomly taken away. Everyone lives under the constant threat of saying the wrong thing and suddenly getting, essentially, fired. One extremely popular Youtuber I liked left because he couldn't say what he wanted. John Stewart got "demonetized" from Apple+ just recently because he said something about China. The whole thing is stupid. Just let people say stuff. If it's illegal, take it down and prosecute them. If it's not, then let them say it. Yes I know the letter of the first amendment only applies to the government. I'm just saying I like the spirit, too. This culture's developed of policing what people can and can't say to a degree I find really off putting.
I get how we got here. You don't want people saying not to take the COVID vaccine or that the election was stolen, and producing real harm in the real world. But the landscape we've wound up at is stupid. Just let people be Nazis if they're Nazis. They're going to be Nazis, whether you allow them to or not. In fact, letting them participate in an open forum of ideas makes it more likely that they'll reform than chasing them away to a Nazi-only forum. If they're being toxic to other users, or doing something illegal in addition (which, to be fair, Nazis often are), then prosecute them for that behavior, not for being Nazis.
One of the really earthshattering moments for me on the early internet was reading posts from people who were "the enemy" in a shooting war that at the time I thought my country was "the good guys" of. It really blew my mind once I realized that Hamas is allowed to be on the internet, and North Korea, and Israel and The Daily Stormer and Hugo Chavez and Noam Chomsky. They're all allowed to have their web site. The modern internet is becoming more and more siloed, so that "I'm allowed to run a web server if I want" is less and less a determiner of whether that culture can continue. For better or worse, we're more than a little dependent now on whether big corporations who run the infrastructure want to let that chaotic "the bad guys are allowed to be here too" nature continue. They don't seem like they want to, and I don't like that.
Again, maybe this is an unpopular view, but that's how I see it.
Simply put propaganda works. If you allow people to spread hate then it grows. I don't think you have ever been a person on the receiving side of hate where a group of people want you to cease to exist, to take your rights away, or to torture you.
In our modern world if you spread intolerance you are shunned and deplatformed. That is a big improvement compared to the past. It is not perfect either.
You mentioned people get silenced unfairly or cut short because of pushing boundaries. This weighs heavy on your thought process imagining bogey men taking away people's freedoms.
It is ultimately a naive and impractical viewpoint though borne out of privilege and lack of experience. This whole freedom of speech movement is a red hearing for hate speech and you bought into it trying to be reasonable. There is no reasoning with them and you are simply wrong.
"Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself; she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate.” -Thomas Jefferson
Professionally produced and packaged propaganda to sway public opinion is absolutely a critical modern problem. I won't say I have the solution. I can tell you from experience interacting with people who have been victimized by propaganda that they will happily follow the propaganda-sources off the "responsible" content networks who are censoring them and onto some other network that's still willing to host them.
Put it another way: Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube all have policies designed to combat the spread of election denial and COVID denialism, by limiting people's ability to post it on their networks. How's that worked?
If you're intending this as some sort of trump card, where you're allowed to have an opinion on the matter and I'm not (when you have no idea what I have or haven't been on the receiving end of), then don't respond to this message and we can go our separate ways. If you're interested in talking with me about it, then I'm happy to do that, and take what you say on your own merits and not come up with external reasons to dismiss it.
(Edit, since I just saw it in another comment: If you're real into certain people being allowed to express their views when other people aren't, here's Edward Snowden, among other people, telling you that you're wrong. Has he had a group of people want to take his rights away? They did promise not to torture him but I'm not sure that was a truthful statement.)
Oh, good. So intolerance's spread on the internet is getting progressively smaller over time, is it? Thank God, it seemed for a while like that was a problem.
Sometimes, yes. There are a bunch of conservative people in the US who use "free speech" in a very particular way as a red herring for something much different and much darker. Why do you assume that I've been swayed by them? I spent some time yesterday and today arguing with one of them, I actually got annoyed that he didn't seem to want to engage with me when I was eager to tell him about how he was wrong.
I notice, also, that you haven't spent too much time responding to what I actually said; you told me a bunch of things about me, and reasons why my views can be discounted. Like I say, if that's the way then we don't need to talk.
Welp. Glad we cleared that up.
Let's take the Web out of the equation.
Let's imagine this is all being done using the old-school printing press.
Let's say Substack is a magazine publisher.
If you publish a Nazi magazine, that Nazis pay you to subscribe to ...
... and you pay the Nazi authors of the Nazi articles in your Nazi magazine ...
... then you're a material supporter of Nazism.
Happy to.
With you so far.
Sounds good. The situation's a little different because the publisher exercises editorial control over what they're publishing, can get sued if it crosses certain lines, and so on, whereas literally any random person can publish stuff on Substack with some legal and technical differences. But it's a pretty close analogy.
With you.
This is where it breaks down for me. This would be something like Substack Pro, where Substack really is subsidizing and organizing the make the Nazi content happen, instead of just hosting it like a Lemmy instance hosts a community. If they were giving Substack Pro to Nazis, then yes, I'd have a problem with that. That would fit very well with what you're describing.
I would describe this part of the analogy as applying a little more sensibly to something like, Substack is the print shop that typesets the material for the Nazi magazine on behalf of the Nazi that wants to publish it. The Nazi is organizing their subscribers. The Nazi is putting out the content. The print shop is taking a cut, and willing to do business with Nazis. Are they free to say no? Absolutely. Actually in that analogy I'd probably refuse to typeset the magazine as well, for what it's worth. Are they also free, though, to say, no, this is a free speech issue and we believe the KKK is allowed to have rallies and the Nazis are allowed to publish magazines? Sure. That to me would be a sensible thing to say. I don't like Nazis any more than you do. But I do think they should be allowed to publish magazines, yes, and I think that applies to making it actually possible for them to publish, and not just the government telling them they have permission, but the system they're placed within making it impossible for it to actually happen.
In financial flow terms, the Nazi subscribers are supporting Substack through the 10% cut that Substack takes. No money is flowing out of the Substack account to the Nazis without having first flowed in from other Nazis, and Substack keeps some of it. Right? That's why I think the print shop analogy is a little more fitting in this case.
Oh, well that makes it okay then. It's Substack earning money from Nazis.
Where out of my message did you get that I was talking like it was harmless opinions? I get it that my tone was casual and I can apologize about that. Let me take it a little more seriously, then:
I have a decent amount of Jewish ancestry and a Jewish name. I'm not practicing or anything. My parents had a friend who had the numbers tattooed on her arm.
Part of the reason I'm so casual about literal modern Nazis is that the modern threat of extremism isn't specific to Jewish people. Hispanic people are probably more at risk; under Trump, ICE detention centers became temporarily something that any informed person would describe as for-real concentration camps. I think if it does start to happen in a big way in the US, it will probably start with trans and Hispanic people and continue from there.
But every single one of us, Jewish or LGBT or Hispanic or just Democrat-supporting, is at risk under a second Trump presidency or whatever the next iteration after Trump is. That's not some abstract "I know your struggle" type of statement; I literally believe that Nazi-type violence and mass incarceration of "the enemy" are on the table according to a much wider swathe of the US populace than official-Nazi supporters.
Okay, let me ask you, then. I have Facebook friends who make posts about getting themselves amped up for civil war if "the Democrats" keep it up. I would describe that as an atrocity. Dead is dead. A Jew in a concentration camp is just as dead as a Democrat who got shot by his neighbor because they got radicalized and decided today was the day (which has already happened, it's just on a tiny scale at this stage).
Most of the way I talk about this issue is colored by that. I do take the threat of extremism seriously, because it's already alive and well here, and growing. I think that figuring out what to do about the form in which it's most likely to become a horrifying reality is fairly important. If Jews wind up going into modern-day concentration camps, they won't be the first. They'll be an afterthought, long after Trump's political enemies and big segments of Hispanic (and maybe arab) people have gone in. If you're serious about the threat to Jewish people and want me to take it seriously (which is fair), can I ask you to be serious about the threat to all the rest of us?
What is your solution to the people who want to write "shoot the Democrats because they stole the election and took away your country"? People who say that every day and platforms that give them voice? My feeling on it is the same as what I said to you about Nazis. But what, according to you, should we do that will work? I am more concerned about that, as a present-day urgent issue, than about "put the Jews into gas chambers" propaganda, although that's clearly also horrifying.
This might blow your mind a little bit: depilatform them. Hatespeech is hatescppech, a call to violence is a call to violence. Neither is protected by your first amendment, and both should be completely and utterly illegal.
This isn't some difficult mystery to figure out. There's no catch 22 or irreconcilable conflict of rights going on here. Its pretty cut and dry. Anyone whether they're a traditional nazi, neo nazi, maga nazi does not have the right to call for peoples deaths or for violence against them.
Germany has had restriction on Nazis for a long time now. And hasn't had issues with censoring non-nazi speech. So why can't your country?
And also, if you allow for Nazi speech, how far do you take it? do you let them draw up plans and organise gangs to hunt down undesirables? Only intervening when the physical violence actually starts?
If you do not work to prevent atrocities, and turn a blind eye to those trying to commit them then you are in fact tacitly complicit in those atrocities.
A lot of the thinking on things like free speech by the founding fathers was that it wasn't like a "grant" of something the government is letting you do. It's an acknowledgement of some simple physical realities of what thinking beings are going to do whether you "let them" or not. Nazis are going to talk to other Nazis. If you come into their Nazi place saying "whoa whoa whoa you can't say that!", they're not going to just suddenly go, oh, my bad, you're right, we won't say that anymore. You might hate that the KKK is "allowed to exist" when their whole thing is violence, torture, basically organized evil. But, the government isn't "allowing them to exist" in the same way it might let someone have a driver's license. It's more just that people good or bad are going to do certain things, and the government is acknowledging the reality.
I would actually put some other things in this list, sex work and drugs among them. For pretty much exactly the same reasons. I think as a matter of the fundamentals of law, they should be sort of in a "can't be illegal" list, because it's so weird and invasive to people's liberty to even try.
The US had robust protections on speech by the KKK and the American Nazi party, before during and after World War 2. In Germany, before and after the war, it's legal for the government to allow and forbid particular political parties, as they currently do with the Nazis. Fair enough. Which country was it that actually had a holocaust again? Why didn't the Nazis do it in the US, where they had such robust protections on their ability to speak and organize?
So you can punish speech advocating for violence. It's a tricky thing, because people will just speak in code, which is now happening all over the place. (I see that on Facebook -- people will say, I can't really say what I want to have happen, but we all know what the answer is. Things like that.) But yes, if someone says we have to kill the Jews, I think that should be illegal, whether or not they're a Nazi. Talking to an associate to plan a robbery is illegal, publishing a newsletter planning a new holocaust is illegal. Saying the holocaust is a lie, I think should be legal. Saying Hitler was right, I think should be legal. That's where I would draw the line.
It sounds -- tell me if I'm wrong -- like you think that I just don't care about hate speech, or I don't see why it might be a problem, or it's not worth worrying about. Absolutely it's a problem. On all this urgency you're expressing, I 100% agree with you. I am saying that banning it makes that problem worse. Basically, my opposition to banning hate speech is because I don't want it to "win." The original internet (like Usenet era), the one I talked about way up there in my original comment, didn't have anywhere near the level of embittered extremism that we see now. I think that's because everyone was on the same network. Someone could go on and say "Hitler was right" and people pile on to tell that person why they were wrong. But you could say whatever you wanted. It's like people who go to college and get less racist because they're thrown into this big multicultural situation. There will still be racist people, yes. But things will be much worse, and people will be a lot less honest with you about their racist views, if the instant some person says something racist the college administation tells them they're not welcome on campus anymore and they have to find a new society to be a part of that isn't so multicultural. They get isolated and fester and find like-minded people to fester with. Which is what's happening now on the internet.
I am sorry for talking so long; this is just important to me. The one last thing I'll say -- one main reason I'm so concerned about this is that I have a feeling that it won't stop at Nazis; that as soon as Nazis are deplatformed they'll start coming for the Joe Rogans and the Dave Chappelles on Substack, someone who is far from calling from a holocaust, but just has said something that someone decided isn't allowed. Literal Nazis tend to call for genuine crimes, and tend to not attract as many followers as the kill-the-Democrats-oho-I-didn't-mean-it-literally-wink crowd, so they're easier to deal with. My main concerns are, please don't try to censor the non-Nazis, and please what the fuck do we do about the new brand of extremists. I can't literally agree with you that we should deplatform all my Facebook friends who call for violence in coded ways. I won't claim to know what's the right thing to do about this new type of propaganda but that doesn't seem like the answer.
That is incredibly flawed reasoning you can use to justify literally anything. People have a tendency to murder each other, should we just acknowledge thats the reality and not bother trying to stop it?
This is not a good faith argument. Nazis weren't outlawed in Germany until after the holocaust and you know that. They were able to come to power BECAUSE they enjoyed protections at the time. and US Nazis had a lot of influence in the US. Jews in the US were subject to much the same treatment as they were in pre-war Europe. American Nazis were effective in minimising US contributions to the war before Pearl Harbour. And thats not even to mention groups like the KKK and the Jim Crow era that came about because of them.
This is exactly the problem I have with Liberals. Its almost as if you only care about your own plausible deniability. "I didnt know he was planning on murdering Jews, all he did was say Hitler was right and shouldnt have been stopped (which is perfectly acceptable) I couldnt have known he would kill all those Jews, so my conscience is clean for putting in no effort to stop them"
Like seriously, if there was a prominent Nazi in your community saying shit like that. And someone you know personally came to you, saying they were scared the Nazi is going to hurt them, what would you do? Give them a nice long lecture on how the founding fathers wanted people to be able to be Nazis so they just have to deal with it? If then the next day, that Nazi killed them after you did nothing, would it weigh on your conscience at all? Or would your enlightened take of free speech keep it clean and let you hold your head high?
You can say this all you want, but if you dont take action and just turn a blind eye to it, then it does not matter in the slightest what you think. If you're walking down the street and you see someone being beaten and you think to yourself "wow, violently beating someone is a problem" then carry on walking, are you any different than someone that enjoys seeing it?
Literally completely the opposite of reality. and you can clearly see that with places that allow these shitheads to congregate. Do you think twitter has become a place of enlightenment and de-radicalisation since Musk took over and went on his freedom of speech circle jerk? or do you think its gotten worse? Or how about 4Chan? Is that a bastion of mulitculturalism and understanding because they allow nazis? Because the PAINFULLY obvious reality is: If you allow nazis to communicate, find each other, spread their ideas and radicalise people who arent nazis, then OF FUCKING COURSE you just end up with more Nazis, that are better organised and have like minded people that can vindicate them, back them up and make them feel like theyre in the right. Like its such an obvious outcome that im struggling to believe you dont get and are acting in good faith. Like you talk about universities making people less racist, then say how bad it would be if the expelled Nazis, WHICH IS WHAT THEY CURRENTLY DO, and it WHY they are places that make people less racist, because theres no Nazis there to influence them and groom them to be massive racists.
I mean 1. thats a classic slippery slope fallacy, and 2. If they came for Rogan it would be for his misinformation, rather than hatespeech, which is a whole different kettle of fish.
I had a long day, so I don't have time to do much more than some quick responses:
Humans naturally tend to talk to one another and communicate. Any amount of obstacles you try to put between them, they'll find ways around unless you put way more effort in than is reasonable or safe into stopping them. With some rare exceptions, you should just let them communicate. It's better. I don't feel the same way about murder.
The US has strong protections for abhorrent-to-the-majority political speech. It's one of its notably unique features, and was virtually un-heard-of in other governments as of the early 20th century. Once the Nazis were in the majority in Germany, of course their speech was going to be protected, but I'm saying that their rights as a minority party, before they came into power, weren't formally protected by law in Germany in the same way they were in the US. There was no German ACLU making sure that they couldn't get in trouble for having rallies. And yet, somehow, they made it work and took control in Germany. And yet, somehow, in the US where they were allowed to have rallies and publish newspapers and etc before during and after the German Nazis lost the war, they were never able to take over. That leads me to think that them having a platform or not isn't as critical a factor in their spread as it sounds like you're saying it is.
My family was Jewish, earlier than pre-war, in Europe. It depended on your specific part of Europe, but as a general rule, this isn't even close to accurate. That's why we came to the US. This is a pretty good high level summary.
I hate Nazis. I'm not saying all this because I want Naziism to grow in the US. I'm saying it because I consider Nazi speech so abhorrent that giving it a good airing will turn people against it more than it will attract people to it. I don't think people are as simple-minded as "I saw Nazi stuff" -> "am Nazi now". I have a hard time believing your summary of how it works on college campuses if you don't kick out the Nazis. Who are some examples of students who've been kicked out of their colleges because they were Nazis? Thus protecting the rest of them? I just have trouble believing that it happens the way you're describing.
I'll say this -- the one person I know who comes to mind offhand who's interacted with a real IRL neo-Nazi, it was in Germany, not in the US.
On 4chan, you kind of have a point. 4chan has specific features (primarily anonymity) that are attractive to Nazis and encourage their spread. Twitter has full-throated support for Nazis built into it from the founder. I think those factors are important too, not just the failure to kick out Nazis. I do think there's a good case to be made there to contrast different ways of designing networks so that they won't form breeding grounds for Nazis. My personal belief is that something like "Substack with Nazis" would be very, very different from 4chan and modern Twitter. My evidence? Substack today is Substack with Nazis, and it's very very different from 4chan and modern Twitter.
Letting them communicate is different to giving them a soapbox and a club house. Which is why even the 1st amendment rights you hold in such high regard as exception protection for hate speech, doesnt force private companies to allow it.
Why though?
The Nazis were allowed to hold rallies and publish newspapers in Germany too. Thats how they became so powerful, and how they became powerful in the US too, that is until the bombing of pearl harbour and the government raiding the headquarters of The German American Bund and arresting their leaders. After which American Nazi's lost all their influence. funny that. And then they've never been able to gain power in any country that has taken a strong stance against them. And you can use communism as an example too, communists were never able to gain influence in the west and especially America, despite how popular the idea was because of the active effort that went into stopping them.
I agree, thats why im not against talking about Nazis and the things they do and why its so abhorrent, but nazis dont convert people by just showing them a swastika and thinking it will hypnotise them, they have deceptive propaganda and sophisticated methods of bringing people over to their side. Like if you've ever hear the idea of a "pipeline" you'll know what im talking about. They will take people (young white men) and prey on the problems they have, giving them "solutions" to them that put the blame on others and vindicate their existing belief's to get them to go along with it and then start to tell them that their life's problems are because of [The Enemy] and convince them to direct all their frustrations on them. and slowly radicalise them, until theyre fully on board with being nazis.
Well I wouldnt know any off the top of my head, but a quick google shows plenty of results
https://news.sky.com/story/warwick-students-expelled-and-fined-after-racist-messages-11402539#:~:text=The%20Midlands%20university%20expels%20three,declaring%20love%20for%20Adolf%20Hitler.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/11/23/a-self-proclaimed-nazi-is-banned-from-his-college-campus-in-florida-but-allowed-to-remain-a-student/
and again to use communism as a counter example, universities are where many people become socialist/communist because the organise there and can get the word out. If Nazis were allowed to do the same you would have much higher rates of kids becoming nazis.
Can you show any examples of universities that allow nazis to enrol and form clubs and organise?
But the point is it wouldnt be better than a "substack without nazis". Like not every board on 4 chan is overrun with nazis, not every section of twitter is controlled by chuds. There are "good' parts to each website, just like substack. But if they removed nazis from their site entirely then all 3 would only get better.
Like your core argument is that its better to let them shout their propaganda as it will actually hinder them right?
Then can you name a single website or hell even a physical publication or space or anything of the sort that went from "Nazis arent tolerated" to "Nazis are tolerated" and actually got better? That helped people de-radicalise instead of just serving Nazi propaganda, giving them money and helping them recruit?
Again, it doesn't matter what you think. Because you're completely unwilling to actually do anything about it. and its the same with any issue, its all well and good if you're against homelessness, but if you dont give to charities or vote to build homeless shelters etc. Then what does it matter? You can justify it by saying "But letting people see homeless people on the streets is actually a good thing because it will air the issue out and let people come to their own conclusions about homelessness being bad." if you want, but that doesnt change anything.
Im non binary, and have many trans friends. People used to not give a shit until the right organised together to hate us. Now because of your glorious free speech they have been given a pass to be awful disgusting human being and spread their hate and ive lost 3 friends in 5 years to suicide because of it, because of things you think should be not only protected by law, but actively given a platform, advertised and monetised by companies like sub stack. Is the lives of those people a good trade for you? are you just going to ignore this question like ignored all the other questions that would have uncomfortable answers for you?
I can ALMOST see his point... If you push them underground, you push them to find a space where nobody will challenge them, and they can grow stronger in that echo chamber.
Allowing them to be exposed to the light of day and fresh air makes their evil apparent to all and searchable.
And besides, "Punch a Nazi Day" just isn't the same without Nazis. :)
The problem being we basically know that's not how it works.
If you push them underground, the main result is fewer Nazis. Intentionally platforming them helps them maintain a facade of normalcy that makes it WAY easier to recruit people into the organizations and further radicalize them. Not to mention the simple amplification effect of having a platform.
The idea that the underground Nazis are going to be a more distilled, pure, volatile form of Nazi SOUNDS theoretically sensible. But if that's your argument, the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate it actually happens. And even if it sometimes does, if there's only 10 of them it barely matters.
The simplest solution, to shut down the recruitment pipeline, is also the correct choice for a platform operator to make.
Thanks for putting it into words. I couldn't quite put my finger on what specifically felt wrong about this reasoning but you're on point.
Nazis gotta work too
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 "bad" for me to deal with. I find it insulting anyone would stop me reading how to make meth or read Mein Kampf. I'm 40yo and it's pretty fucking difficult to offend me and to think I'm going to be driven to commit crime just by reading is offensive.
I don't need protecting from speech/information. I'm perfectly capable and confident in my own views to deal with bullshit of all types.
If you're incapable of dealing with it - then don't 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 'victimhood' 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 there's 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 it's taboo!
Same with drugs - don't pick and eat that mushroom. Don't burn that plant. Anyone with 0.1% of curiosity will ask "why?" and do it because they want to know why it's 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 it's naked stupidity.
OK? But I'm going to think Substack is a hardened Nazi supporter whan I all of a sudden don't see Antifa openly talking about their plans for disposing of their Nazi opposition on their platform, which would be appropriate discussion in said situation. I'm also guessing that their coffers are now open to any and all well known terrorist organizations. Maybe we shouldn't of given corporations any power at all, they have proven time and time again to have absolutely no morals.
And I'm going right back to sleep, so if anyone wants to argue about free speech I'll give my opinion on that now. I draw the line at helping sick individuals try to organize the genocide of most of the people on this planet. I'm all fine for a mentally ill person (Nazi) to be yelling their propaganda from their soapbox in the town square, but letting and even helping the Nazis openly spread their well documented genocidal hate is too far for me.
Edit: I'm a little confused about the fast downvotes?
Maybe mentioning that Antifa (you know the opposite of Nazis) should be equally represented if your platform supports Nazis is considered a bad thing here on Lemmy, but that don't make much sense.
Maybe it's just the corporates paving the way for Facebooks infiltration and organized downfall of all their competition?
Maybe it's just the Nazis.
Then again it's probably just me having asd and speaking directly without a filter.
Don't worry though the Nazis have plans for people like me.
Or maybe it's that you have no problem with Nazis using Substack, ostensibly a fundraising platform for writers, to earn money through Substack.
That's the thing though, I do have a problem with Substack using their platform to support Nazis.
Edit: Maybe I'm ignorant of what Substack hosts already?
Are they already hosting other terrorist organizations?
Edit 2: I think I have been looking past my free speech statement, I just realized this is the first time I've actually advocated for a corporation censoring anyone's speech, that is definitely making me feel a little weird.
My dilemma here is I'm too old, I still remember my grandfather and many other WW2 Veterans telling me their stories, I don't want that to happen ever again, and right now I feel like I truly don't know what to do for the first time in my life.
So this subject is way bigger then Substack.
Don't fall victim to the paradox of tolerance. Tolerating intolerance leads to the end of tolerance. Nazis move outside of the social contract, and are therefore not to be tolerated.
Good for them. I'm all for allowing people make their own choices about what kind of content they want to see instead of a corporation/government deciding for them.
I can't think of a single thing we've succesfully gotten rid of by banning it. I however can think of several examples where it has had an opposite effect.
Nazi Germany. We banned the fuck out of them and it worked out great until people started to forget why.
I totally agree.
If I don't want to see something, I should be able to block it myself.
I don't want other people deciding what I should and should not see. That's patronizing.
if the nazis come into power, you will not be able to “decide not to see them”
I don't think preemptive fascism is the solution. The world many people seem to be advocating for here doesn't honestly seem that much different from one led by nazies. They just replace jews and gays with other groups of people they don't like.
you’re conflating fascism with the actions necessary to stop fascism. you may want to read up on the “paradox of tolerance”. here’s the first sentence from the wikipedia page:
That logic is in conflict with itself. It's literally advocating for intolerance to get rid of intolerance.
People are against nazies but meanwhile advocate we treat other groups they dont like the way nazies would treat jews. Be that millionaires/billionaires, capitalists, republicans or whatever. "Eat the rich"
I can't get behind that. Daylight is the best disinfectant. I want nazies to be allowed to announce publicly that they're nazies.
Maybe you should read the whole page. Maybe then you'd learn why so many of us are against a fundraising platform which allows Nazi writers to earn money.
this is why it’s called “the paradox of tolerance” my guy. did you even read the name?
this is a bad faith representation of his argument. also, in this case, “people” is Karl Popper, a renowned philosopher with countless awards for his work on political science and philosophy. maybe you would understand his argument better if you actually read it.
"The paradox of tolerance" as originally stated is not "in conflict with itself", it is pointing out a conflict that exists within the idea of "tolerance as a moral good". The point is that "tolerance" will eventually give way to "intolerance"... one way or another. So: pick your side wisely.
I think there are problems with the concept as it is started (others have proposed some in this post) but it's trying to address the conflict.
If you think curating what is allowed on a website is fascism, no one should listen to you at all because you clearly are talking about things you don't understand.
This is the absolute stupidest take I have ever seen. Read a goddamned book (or, actually understand what Nazis stand for) before you comment on things.....
"Censorship and murdering entire classes of people are the same thing"
It all depends on the nature and goals of the platform.
It's one thing to create a platform for positivity and brave new world (in a good sense). It's good we have those, and this probably should be the approach of mainstream media.
It's another to create a truly free speech platform. You can't claim free speech and then ideologically ban someone, even if that's someone bad. And you should have such venues - for among 9 terrible ideas (like Nazism) lies one that is underappreciated and misunderstood, and wrongly considered to be bad. Feminism was considered to be bad. LGBT people were considered to be bad etc. etc. And if you start banning some ideas, it leaves you with carte blanche to ban everyone you don't like, including people who actually promote healthy and positive ideas and values, but are misunderstood.
Only leaving the first option means starting a circlejerk where no good new idea has a chance to flourish.
As per Nazis, homophobes and other people with terrible ideas - you really can't overcome it by just pulling it under the rug. We need to develop patience and advance our rhetorics to counter those, and to quickly seed that grain of truth from which all their misconceptions get to shatter. That's literally the only way to combat ideology - by exposing how deeply wrong and flawed it is, and providing arguments.
Will there be people with no reason following such ideologies out of spite and emotion? Sure. But by stepping against them on an equal footing, we can show the rest how stupid their arguments are, rven on a dedicated free speech platform.
Because Nazism is not bad simply because we decided it to be so. It is a faulty ideology meant to distract people from real sources of their struggle while expending millions of lives in the process.
It removes critical understanding of economic processes by the masses, fooling them into believing the issues are caused by some nation and not their own elites - something that is well-researched and obvious to almost every other modern individual.
In order to retain people's decisiveness amongst deep economic crisis directly caused by application of such ideology (due to rampant expropriation, paranoid protectionism, economic mismanagement and removal of active economic participants), Nazi government always needs to wage a war - this way it can blame its faults on its enemies. And war inevitably comes with millions of deaths, deaths directly attributed to the ideology cause it can't run without them.
Finally, it's an ideology based on hate to a group with an immutable property - it ignores the differences all of us have and tries to attribute a certain property to an entire nation - something we know isn't true - and then exterminate people based on what is known to be wrong association.
No matter how you look at it, under any rational look, Nazism is just plain stupid, and in its stupidity it produces extreme and unnecessary suffering.
With all that being said, again, I don't think we should make platforms like Substack mainstream and we should moderate general-topic places to exclude Nazis and other harmful actors. But we sure as hell need them to be present.
Because the only thing worse than Nazis allowed to influence us is the tyranny of subjective good.
Welp. On my way to Substack and peek in over there.
I don't think anyone here is shocked that you want to help Nazis make money.