Technology

59143 readers

2324 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

858

Substack says it will not remove or demonetize Nazi content (www.theverge.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

426 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.”

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 63 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

We already knew that SS liked Nazis.

All joking aside, silencing Nazis and deplatforming them is LITERALLY fighting against them. How is allowing them to make money and market themselves on your platform doing anything to stem the tide of Nazism? Obviously they're playing culture war games and saying they're not.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah, people don't seem to realize how insidious this shit is. Unfettered capitalism is allowing these fuckers to gain credibility and giving them a soapbox under the guise of "free speech."

The desire for profit above all else, combined with the fact that the last of the people alive during (and old enough to understand) WW2 dying off, has been allowing fascism to wrap its filthy tendrils around our society once again. Preventing these people from taking power needs to be our priority, but unfortunately, constantly having to fight against this shit impedes all other progress.

Free speech is not absolute. Fascists (and particularly ones that call themselves Nazis) have no place in modern society, and they should be given no quarter because we've seen what happens if we don't root them out.

This is not just a disagreement on policy, or a mere difference of opinion. These people literally want my friends dead.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

Nazism isn't an ideology, is a direct threat of violence. Anyone around a Nazi has a right to self defense rooted in natural law. That's why is fine to punch Nazis.