More than 200 Substack authors asked the platform to explain why it’s “platforming and monetizing Nazis,” and now they have an answer straight from co-founder Hamish McKenzie:
I just want to make it clear that we don’t like Nazis either—we wish no-one held those views. But some people do hold those and other extreme views. Given that, we don’t think that censorship (including through demonetizing publications) makes the problem go away—in fact, it makes it worse.
While McKenzie offers no evidence to back these ideas, this tracks with the company’s previous stance on taking a hands-off approach to moderation. In April, Substack CEO Chris Best appeared on the Decoder podcast and refused to answer moderation questions. “We’re not going to get into specific ‘would you or won’t you’ content moderation questions” over the issue of overt racism being published on the platform, Best said. McKenzie followed up later with a similar statement to the one today, saying “we don’t like or condone bigotry in any form.”
I’m 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.
Was your message based on what you read on a Nazi website? Otherwise, why did you link to it?
So no, I’m not suggesting you’re funded by Nazis. I’m suggesting that’s who you get your information from in order to make your argument, hence your linking to it.
Honestly? I didn’t read the Reason.com article. Someone else linked to it, I skimmed it and agreed with parts of the take that I saw, and threw a link in there as sort of an expansion of what I was saying so I wouldn’t have to keep typing the same types of arguments over and over. I just skimmed it again, from the beginning, and I have to say that broadly I agree with almost everything I see.
Quick work with
wcindicates that I’ve typed about 4500 words on this topic within this post. I typed one sentence where I linked to Reason.com, and somehow out of all the thousands of words, it seems like that one sentence is all you want to talk about. I don’t know how many times to say this before it sinks in, but it’s a lot more valid way to discuss with me, if you want to address directly what I’m saying as opposed to pointing to a certain source and saying I’m invalid because I used that source. I can assure you that the Reason.com article had 0% to do with forming these opinions in my mind.Additionally, I’ll say that this whole model you seem to have in mind, where I read an article on Reason.com and inhaled it like a AI language model and now I’m just parroting whatever I was exposed to, and blame for anything I’m saying attaches to the article because I was powerless to resist anything wrong in it, is kind of telling as to why you want to ban Nazi speech. The thing is, people can use judgement. I do. I read stuff and I consider it critically. I might see something with a swastika and read it, and come away somehow without having become a Nazi. I might agree with something even if I find the source reprehensible personally (as I do the Koch brothers, to whatever extent they were personally involved in this article), or I might just not care what the source is, and evaluate it on its own merits. That’s a good way to do it. Right? That’s why I genuinely just don’t care about the Reason.com article as a thing to argue about, and want to get back to discussing the facts of this actual discussion.
That you broadly agree with everything you see on a website funded by Nazis, that doesn’t speak highly of you.
Also, I said nothing about banning speech. I have been talking about not monetizing Nazis this entire time. Do not lie and put words in my mouth.