#substack, by first refusing to ban nazis under the guise of being a "free speech" platform, and then turning around and saying "actually we'll ban some of the nazis", has taken the route that will piss off the most people possible
@molly0xfff what I'm not understanding is why many people are also lambasting Substack... on Twitter.
My assumption is that far-right cretins like Richard Hanania and a bunch of likely low-traffic Nazi newsletter writers have been raking in far less money on Substack than their equally-awful counterparts on Twitter (Andrew Tate, Alex Jones, etc.)... who likely have a vastly larger reach and resultant harmful impact.
While Twitter hasn't yet directly compensated many Nazi writers for their work -- to the best of my knowledge, anyway -- Substack has very much done so, signing bonuses and paycheques for which any professional writer might rightly salivate. Those bonuses are drawn from the ad revenue not just from their intended audience, but from LGBTQ+ and similar writers who have been ascribed a mere pittance in turn.
Some include Graham Linehan and Richard Spencer, who crowed happily about their payment figures.
So while they use Twitter for the larger audience, they're happy to draw subscriptions and funding in general from Substack, which gives them a great deal of leeway in return for bringing to the platform All The Nazi Eyes.
@molly0xfff One further thought to tack on: If you don’t think your company can survive without coddling Nazis, maybe it’s time to rethink your company’s mission statement.
@molly0xfff What's unfortunate is they didn't realize soon enough that if you de-platform nazis then they don't have a lot of places where they can go complain about it. Meanwhile, if you keep them on the platform, everyone else complains about it. The latter being a much louder impact to their reputation.
I'm also disappointed in Casey Newton's post on this where he literally asks his audience if Substack's pathetic response is good enough for him to keep supporting their platform. Several commenters who clearly didn't read beyond the headline said it was great news. Or maybe they just don't care.
Regardless, I'm not sharing his post for that reason. I'll wait for a news article or blog post not written on a Nazi Lite platform.
@molly0xfff They said the same about antivax misinformation. Never responded when I asked if they would refuse antivax revenue. It was as if they were really doing it for money.
@molly0xfff they also don't understand the problem of having revealed their values in the first place. Perhaps too much conditioning that they can change course later following a mistake. But, no, some mistakes reveal who you are and people will take note and move on.
These tech bros are free speech absolutists until they actually start thinking about the issue at any depth. When forced to deal with the issue in depth, they pivot to, "I will personally make all the decisions about who can speak and how much, I am just an absolutist."
@molly0xfff they're only going to allow the good, moderate nazis, rather than the ones who have fascist views about the literal existence of other peop… wait, I foresee a problem.
What seems to be the trouble? So long as they keep their dog whistles finely tuned, surely nobody will have a real problem, or at least not one which can't be easily ignored.
To be fair, they're following in the footsteps of every other social media company extant over the course of the last decade, so they're standing on the shoulders of some real giants.
Like and subscribe for more mixed and tortured metaphors.
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