Content moderation

Substack co-founder, Hamish McKenzie, implied that his company’s business model would largely obviate the need for content moderation. “We give communities on Substack the tools to establish their own norms and set their own terms of engagement rather than have all that handed down to them by a central authority,” he wrote. But even a platform that... See more

As all of this unfolded, I spoke twice with Substack’s co-founders. And while they asked that those conversations be off the record, my understanding from our conversations — based on material they had shared with me in writing — was that in the future they would regard explicitly Nazi and pro-Holocaust material to be a violation of their existing ... See more

But until Substack makes it clear that it will take proactive steps to remove hate speech and extremism, the current size of the problem isn’t relevant. The company’s edgelord branding ensures that the fringes will continue to arrive and set up shop, and its infrastructure creates the possibility that those publications will grow quickly. That’s wh... See more

OK fine, but aren’t calls to ban Nazis a slippery slope? If Substack caves in here, there will be no end to what people like you call for them to remove.

The slippery-slope argument here is based on the fantasy that if you simply draw the right line, you will never have to revisit it. The fact is that we are constantly renegotiating the boundaries ... See more