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.”
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.