Substack co-founder: "What if we kissed at the Nazi bar?"

Basically: “If we don’t platform the nazis, where will all the hard earned nazi money go?”

What fucking data do they show that deplatforming and demonetizing makes extremist views worse?

we don't think that censorship (including through demonetizing publications) makes the problem go away—in fact, it makes it worse

Last I remember, actively demonetizing fringe views like Alex Jones damn near killed their reach. And quarantining on Reddit completely nuked organic reach which was, for a long time, how crazy shit was reaching people.

history shows that censorship is most potently used by the powerful to silence the powerless

In what fucking world do the powerful care about the powerless nazis. What fucking world. Didn’t we fucking fight a world war about this. It’s really fucking cliche to say but holy fuck why the fuck would the powerful ever care about censoring the powerless nazis.

I think it’s important to engage with and understand a range of views even if—especially if—you disagree with them

Shit dude the owner of Substack is not engaging with my view that he’s a fucking witless dishcloth. Kinda hypocritical amirite

I learned from my grandfather that bullets were the answer to Nazis.

I'm not a traditionalist, but I don't think there's any moral reason to let confirmed Nazis speak freely, or spend a lot of time not full of bullets.

Yes, there's plenty of legal reasons. But anyone claiming moral reasons is full of shit.

Loved the Verge summary. From the subheader:

Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie’s plan to ‘strip bad ideas of their power’ is to profit from disseminating them as widely as possible.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/21/24011232/substack-nazi-moderation-demonetization-hamish-mckenzie

Note that Substack quite deliberately went out and hired on the furthest-right voices it thought it could get away with, and paid them massive advances. One reason for Substack's present financial woes is that a lot of these guys didn't work out. Our good friend Scooter is one who did, for example. In fact, he was the first to reveal that Substack was recruiting and paying these guys massive advances, while they were still telling the rest of the world that you could just sign up and make a newsletter and money would rain from the skies without mentioning that all Substack's big successes were being funded and promoted by Substack.

Substack was founded by a chud and funded by chuds, and this is well known. Nobody ever really had an excuse.

I don't need to read Substack to understand how these people think. I just need to picture the worst people I went to high school with.

We are still trying to figure out the best way to handle extremism on the internet. But of all the ways we’ve tried so far, Substack is working the best.

All of this is contemptible but for some reason this quote he pulls is the worst bit to me. It's so pompous and so arrogant for a tech bro to describe his Nazi funding company as "a way of handling extremism on the internet." Not even something his company does. Just his company, existing

this is from 2021: Substack handing buckets of cash to big-name transphobes.

https://doyles.substack.com/p/in-queers-we-trust-all-others-pay

Scott Alexander talked in 2020 about how Substack offered him enough money to quit his highly-paid psychiatrist job and write coy race science there instead:

https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/09/11/update-on-my-situation/

why were all these people still there in 2023

Food, housing, clothes, education, healthcare and leisure? You don't deserve them for just being born.

A Substack account, though? That is your inalienable God-given right as an existing human being.

I just want to make it clear that we don’t like Nazis either—we wish no-one held those views. But

I think it’s important to engage with and understand a range of views even if—especially if—you disagree with them. Hanania is an influential voice for some in U.S. politics—his recent book, for instance, was published by HarperCollins—and there is value in knowing his arguments.

"Wait wait hold on guys, this abhorrent fascist genocidal white supremacist transphobic sexist holocaust denying Nazi was published by Harper Collins. Harper. Collins. That means there is value in hearing his perspective on my podcast!"

"I just want to make it clear that we don’t like Nazis either—we wish no-one held those views."

Hamish's "nazis are not my favorite" T-shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by the T-shirt

We are committed to upholding and protecting freedom of expression, even when it hurts. As @Ted Gioia has noted, history shows that censorship is most potently used by the powerful to silence the powerless

oh no, where these wittle powerless nazis will go? they are only backed by the likes of Thiel and Malofeev

Organizations who try to silence and censor writers are the ones who have a real Nazi problem.

you see, the real nazis were antifa all along

As Elle said in her letter: “We are still trying to figure out the best way to handle extremism on the internet. But of all the ways we’ve tried so far, Substack is working the best.”

We have investigated ourselves and found no problems. Any further criticism will be dismissed

Katie Notopoulos writes about the economic incentives for substack to keep Nazis:

https://www.businessinsider.com/substack-nazi-problem-free-speech-money-analysis-2023-12?r=US&IR=T

Also links to a post signed by a bunch of prominent substackers who are just fine with the policy as it stands. Contains the usual suspects of Bari Weiss, Edward Snowden, Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger: https://substack.com/home/post/p-139757629

Good to have on hand if you find any of them linked so they can be avoided