Technology

59596 readers

3286 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

851

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

submitted 11 months ago by breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca to c/technology@lemmy.world

430 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

[–] ira@lemmy.ml 48 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I'm looking. Is something supposed to stand out about Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, New Zealand, Sweden, and the UK?

[–] HiT3k@midwest.social -1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Actually, yes. In the UK people (including Jewish people) are being arrested and jailed for speaking out against Israeli naziism and genocide as inciting "hate."

That example is literally EXACTLY why people, myself included, believe that the censoring of certain types of speech needs to remain exclusively a private enterprise.

[–] TacoButtPlug@sh.itjust.works 1 points 11 months ago

That's an interesting point. On one hand Israel is the way it is because right wing nationalism has been normalized through open and free speech in the US. But Israel is also where it is because of the conflation of the meaning of antisemitism shutting down anyone challenging it. Though, I am seeing that conflation being properly challenged more so now than ever before but it's obviously not fast enough. It's probably time to implement looking more at collective actions more than words within governmental policy writing. As in mass killings = bad. I wish humans didn't suck.

[–] extracheese@lemmy.world -1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

There is real time censorship present anywhere in europe? Nowhere near. We have "you have to act within certain time" laws when content gets flaged, that's all. You could argue forcing DNS resolvers to block certain domains is censorhip though. Look at China. Talk bad about politics in your private chats with your mates, i'm sure your censorship dream will do you and your family well! Heck even talking about Winnie poh is "hate" or was this not true?

Again, demonitize them as you want. But censorship just leads to the groups isolating more and more from the world.

Just look at the beliefs of people witch a member of cults (or religions if you want) - thousands of people which are explicitly denied via rules to gather knowledge in the internet (looking at you Mormons). I'd like to call that psychological censorship - it aims for the same goal in a way but I get way to off topic