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Substack says it will not remove or demonetize Nazi content (www.theverge.com)

submitted 11 months ago by breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca to c/technology@lemmy.world

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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.”

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[–] wagoner@infosec.pub 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Ha, one of the alternatives is Revue by Twitter for their platform, which I thought had been discontinued (article is dated 2022). But button seems to be a promising alternative that they describe.

[–] breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca 3 points 11 months ago

Yeah, Buttondown seem great. They can migrate you from Substack so people don't even need to re-subscribe which is pretty cool. They're also active on Mastodon and just added anti-Nazi terms to their ToS. They seem pretty responsive to the community in terms of adding suggested features.