Nazis are bad.

Tech assholes are largely older than they want you to think and in any event too old to be indulging in shock-your-uncool-high-school-principal charades in the "Fascism spoke the power of vitality and nearness to the fundamental spiritual sympathies of the masses to society's quotidian truths" genre.

I have been following this (perhaps more than should). A few links I'd recommend

Peter Clayborne's piece: https://anarchyemergencelove.substack.com/p/two-open-letters-and-why-i-signed

Ken White: https://popehat.substack.com/p/substack-has-a-nazi-opportunity

James Hanlon: https://jhanlon.substack.com/p/dang-it-i-didnt-see-the-nazis-at

I've appreciated Timothy Burke's writing on the topic, but it's scattered across notes. Perhaps: https://timothyburke.substack.com/p/and-now-a-word-about-your-sponsor

Plus this on moderation: https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/02/hey-elon-let-me-help-you-speed-run-the-content-moderation-learning-curve/

Those links are all from early in the debate, when it wasn't clear what was going to happen. Two more recent pieces also worth reading:

https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/one-weird-trick-for-effective-strategic

https://substack.com/@russellnohelty/note/c-46934312

I haven't read all the links but the two in 3 are terrific.

Thanks.

These are also exceptionally good:

https://theamericanbystander.substack.com/p/substack-nazis-and-the-national-lampoon

https://theamericanbystander.substack.com/p/the-piece-that-never-was

Those links are all from early in the debate, when it wasn't clear what was going to happen.

Some years ago, maybe not long after launch, there was an interview with Substack management (founders?) about how they were planning to handle moderation and, based on that, it seemed pretty likely to me that they were going to end up where they've apparently ended up. I have not been following closely recently, however.

Some years ago, maybe not long after launch, there was an interview with Substack management (founders?) about how they were planning to handle moderation . . .

There's this post from 2020

Substack holds liberal ideals on matters of the free press and free speech. We will continue to encourage a broad range of expression from viewpoints across the political spectrum. Our content guidelines will evolve over time, but the prohibitions will remain focused and with a strong presumption of protecting that freedom.

And this much discussed interview from last April

A quick note -- Chris and I are about to talk about Substack's content moderation guidelines. Like I said at the top of the show, it makes sense to me that you have looser guidelines the more you provide infrastructure, like an email service to people, and stricter guidelines the more your product looks like a consumer service. Substack has pretty loose guidelines, and I wanted to know if it would tighten those guidelines for Substack Notes, the new feature that looks like Twitter.

I want to call out that I got something wrong here -- I came up with what I thought was an easy hypothetical, about whether posts calling to kick brown people out of the country would be moderated on Substack Notes. I thought it was a gimme because, well, obviously, but also because I read Substack's content guidelines a little too loosely. Here's the relevant section, under the topic of "Hate":

"Substack cannot be used to publish content or fund initiatives that incite violence based on protected classes. Offending behavior includes credible threats of physical harm to people based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability or medical condition."

Now, I think it's debatable whether calling to kick brown people out of the country incites violence -- I think it does, but I can see the argument that, in my example, it literally does not. I wish I had used a clearer example. That's on me. But I think it's more notable that Chris didn't correct me either way and actually didn't engage the question at all, which... well, you'll see how that went. Alright. Back to the interview.

I agree, based on that, I would have guessed that we would end up somewhere close to where we did -- but there was also a real question about how much Substack would be ham-handed, argumentative, and disgruntled about the whole thing (which they were).

Casey has a post coming out tomorrow.

Comments on his discord divide between 'good for you for fighting this fight' and 'they're friendly to Nazis, how dare you act like you can get somewhere with them (and your headline implying that you did get somewhere with them is deeply misleading).'

I think it's hopeless -- because Substack seems pretty dug in. The logistical challenges of moving, and opportunity costs of giving up some Substack features, are barriers to leaving.

I think it's hopeless -- because Substack seems pretty dug in.

I do not have any confidence that substack will handle moderation in a way that seems responsible to me any time soon.

However, I do want to highlight one advantage that substack has (currently). This entire debate about substack and Nazi's prompted me to do some reading about content moderation online, which lead me to spending some time on the EFF site. I note, first, that EFF thinks that it is reasonable and appropriate to do moderation, they have contributed so a set of best practices, which substack isn't close to doing. But, also, one of their major concerns is the problems caused by ad supported business models. That was a reminder that one important thing substack has going for it is that it isn't (currently) ad-supported.

That doesn't distinguish it from other e-mail hosting services, but it does give it a big leg up compared to many sites.

Like presumably everyone here, I toyed with starting my own newsletter, and never got round to it. And now here we are, and I'm free not to think about Substack Nazis at all. Sloth, rewarded!

Sloth, rewarded!

Isn't that a good feeling (I've enjoyed feeling that way every time someone complains about Facebook or Twitter).

it's debatable whether calling to kick brown people out of the country incites violence -- I think it does, but I can see the argument that, in my example, it literally does not.

The hell?

13: My feelings are captured fairly well by this note: https://substack.com/@noahberlatsky/note/c-47045733

nobody who signed that SAN letter wanted to leave substack. everyone just wanted Hamish and company to say, "oh yeah, nazis violate our TOS, we'd better get on that. Thanks for alerting us!"

Instead the substack founders grabbed a large blunt object and started to smash themselves in the face with it. it's completely unnecessary.

In the interview Chris Best's response is that he has a blanket policy of not discussing hypothetical situations. That makes some sense, but would have sounded much better if he'd said, "if you have questions about our code of conduct you can follow up later with so-and-so. "

As the first link in 3 makes says, they have done a truly terrible job of figuring out their communications strategy.

Instead the substack founders grabbed a large blunt object and started to smash themselves in the face with it. it's completely unnecessary.

But also kind of predictable?

9: Radley Balko sent a post to subscribers explaining that he would like to move as an ethical concern but worries that doing so will push his subscriber count below the point where he can continue to make a living at it if he does.

The Substack people both clearly don't want to be in the content moderation business (it's very hard to get right even with good intentions; it's also somewhere in the borderlands between "very hard" and "harrowing") and also has a bunch of executive whose politics I don't care for, as with their explicit promotion of Richard Hanania, the obvious white supremacist who they later professed to be shocked to discover was a white supremacist. I'm actually sympathetic to the first one, and if they had stayed out of the algorithmic promotion business they might have a better argument that they're essentially just an email provider with a Stripe account attached.

If people haven't read Erin Kissane's incredibly detailed history of Facebook's role in the Rohingya genocide, it's good if upsetting reading.

I would have written 16.2 last as a response to 10.2, but that would have involved research, so I didn't. And behold, snarkout did it for me. Sloth, rewarded!

The Substack people both clearly don't want to be in the content moderation busines

Maybe they shouldn't be running a content publishing business then.

As a compromise, maybe they could run a content publishing business, but be shitty at it.

Maybe they shouldn't be running a content publishing business then.

Or given a wide swath of people generous advances to prime the pump!

I'm not doing dry January but I'm not going to the bar because this would be a bad time to get covid.

Wrong thread. Sorry.

As a compromise, maybe they could run a content publishing business, but be shitty at it.

Isn't that what they're doing?

That was sort of the joke I was trying for.

Casey is out: https://www.platformer.news/p/why-platformer-is-leaving-substack

I'm old enough that I thought you were talking about baseball.

Yeah, no joy in Mudville.

Casey is out: https://www.platformer.news/p/why-platformer-is-leaving-substack

He does a good job of explaining his decision.

I'm still at the point where I don't think the current state of affairs creates an obligation to leave substack, but I also don't have a lot of trust in the leadership, and I completely understand people leaving now rather than waiting.

Thanks for all the links, NickS. I haven't had time to stay up to date and this has been a great synopsis.

It isn't lost on me that a lot of these generally excellent posts are written by people who (like me) would not be first on the list of people Nazis go after. It's hard to escape the sense that even for the most well-intentioned straight white guys, this still seems more like a bit of an academic debate rather than something that is immediately and personally endangering themselves and their loved ones.

I don't really know where to go with that observation, except to say that I am also increasingly frustrated by the lack of urgency and appreciation of the seriousness of the moment among a lot of men (and not a few women!) regarding reproductive justice.

It doesn't seem like people should have to wait until the leopards are eating THEIR faces to catch on -- and yet, so often, it does.

WE FIND THE IMPLICIT COMPARISON DEEPLY INSULTING

28.2 Substack leadership has made themselves clear, so I don't see why 'trust' is in issue. They can absolutely be trusted to cleave to their ideological commitments here, which probably align with those of their funders. They're not going to "improve" because they don't think they're doing anything wrong. They were embarrassed by Casey's short list, but then took steps to embarrass him back.

They're not going to "improve" because they don't think they're doing anything wrong.

Exactly.

And my apologies to leopards. Have a chat with actually-named-Karens; they're also feeling unfairly maligned.

Someone should find out if those substack guys maybe plagiarized their dissertations from Wikipedia.

I haven't paid much attention to this, but what's the lefty position on content moderation? This seems like a genuinely hard problem. If the answer is in something that's already been linked, my apologies.

Also, what happened to Bob McManus? Did y'all do him in?

We sent him to a farm upstate where he can run free.

That was a kindness.

34.2 I was just thinking about him the other day.

34.1 No Nazis. No TERFs.

These are the Sidechannel rules -- Casey Newton's newsletter is one of those included.

1. **Sidechannel** is a place to discuss current events and culture in a friendly, collegial way. We invite you to be smart, kind, welcoming, funny, charming, incisive, prescient, skeptical: whoever you are on your best day.
2. **Sidechannel** is reserved for people who are currently paying for at least one of the newsletters it was created to support. If you grabbed an invitation link from someone else, or your paid subscription lapses, we reserve the right to remove you from the server -- though we'll give you a chance to subscribe first!
3. Share news, opinions, personal experiences, charts, data, photos, tweets, and other media. Do not share misinformation, disinformation, or spam -- including in DMs to other members.
4. Do not promote your own hustles -- or your clients' hustles -- except for in designated channels.
5. Stay on topic. Good conversations meander, but keep truly off-topic posting to the lounge.
6. Discuss subjects in good faith. Do not troll, mock, or harass other members of the community.
7. Pseudonyms are welcome, and you do not have to disclose where you work. But do not impersonate anyone.
8. Keep it safe for work. **Sidechannel** is not the place for disturbing images, racy pictures, or anything else you wouldn't want to share with your entire company.
9. Be inclusive of all people and points of view. This is particularly true for Black, Indigenous, and people of color, and people in the LBGTQ+ community. We will remove any homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic, or racist content without discussion.
10. If someone is bothering you or you would like to report a post or member who you believe is violating these rules, please contact one of the co-hosts. If the channel is managed by a particular host, start with them.
11. Final moderation decisions are subject to the whims of the newsletter writers.
12. We expect to update these rules as necessary. When we do, we'll tell you in the announcements channel.
13. Follow the spirit of these rules as well as the letter of them. Do not become an edgelord. We err on the side of removing borderline content -- and borderline users -- from the server.

37.1 same. I don't read Crooked Timber as often as I used to but when I have I've noticed that I don't see him commenting there anymore.

34, 37, 39: I pulled the trigger on banning him shortly after the 2016 election. Something about Trump being in power meant I couldn't take it anymore. There are a couple of threads discussing it that I could find if you were interested. To his credit, he wasn't a jerk about fighting the ban at all -- there was zero need to enforce.

34.1: Is there a singular lefty position on content moderation? To the extent there is, I think it's drifted over the years from "everyplace should be for unflinching examination of even the most disagreeable opinions" to "there are a whole lot of different places for talking about stuff, and there's no obligation to make space for people who want to push boundaries in every single forum."

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Drippity drip drip.

https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/burundi-shuts-border-with-rwanda-amid-spat-2024-01-11/

https://www.newtimes.co.rw/article/13672/news/africa/south-africa-opposition-party-questions-sadc-deployment-to-dr-congo
|>

My main problem with content moderation is that the moment someone says something tedious or distasteful, I grow bored and leave the thread, and so I'm literally not aware of how it deteriorated. Then when someone is frustrated with me because so-n-so has an established pattern of problematic behavior, I'm completely in the dark, and genuinely have no idea about whether so-n-so overstepped or if the complainant is reading too much in to so-n-so's comments, and figuring it out retroactively is impossible.

I have a completely different problem, which is that I have a thick skin and a well-developed capacity for dismissing interpersonal unpleasantness from anyone I'm not actually super close to IRL, and I enjoy arguing. So, it's not exactly that I disagree with people who want moderation to protect from them from abuse -- I really don't! But I don't easily empathize with it. Way back when, I was startled that anyone's feelings were actually hurt by Read, because she was so clearly to me not meaningfully qualified to pass judgment on people trying to function in our society (whether because of failure to cross cultural barriers or because she was individually a giant weirdo, I couldn't tell.) That doesn't make those people wrong, I just didn't feel it at all myself.

But whenever there's an altercation, I'm usually pretty clear on who said what to whom first, because that's when I perk up and get interested.

Isn't the lefty position on moderation that tolerating really shitty stuff drives decent people out of the space, so that the end result of infinite tolerance is homogenous shitty stuff?

I think the consensus is moderation is extremely hard (and labor-intensive) to get right while simultaneously critical to having a good community. And the synthesis is that the good communities are dying.

Yeah, I think 45 and 46 are the current left (but probably not full lefty) position. We started out thinking that people would self-regulate, then that we could starve trolls of attention, but finally came around realizing that it's about deciding who your audience is. (A bit like the bartender and bat nazi sympathizer story - if you benignly neglect moderation, you're subject to takeover by the people who get moderated everywhere else.)

Looks like Ken White is leaving substack. That probably was noted upthread or linked upthread or whatever. If so, sorry!

46.last: I do think that moderation which is protective to a level meeting current lefty standards may not be compatible with what I think of as a vibrantly entertaining place for discussing controversial issues. However, there's no moral requirement that other people should suffer because I want to be entertained.

That's why cock fighting is great.

And there's always the Unfogged Reading Group for those who don't agree.

And there's always the Unfogged Reading Group for those who don't agree.

Surely that's too severe a punishment.

I think the consensus is moderation is extremely hard (and labor-intensive) to get right while simultaneously critical to having a good community. And the synthesis is that the good communities are dying.

I think this is correct, and I also think that there are going to be different standards for different contexts. I would be happy in spaces that used the rules Charley quoted in 38, but I definitely think that should be an opt-in set of rules, not the default expection for everywhere online.

And there's always the Unfogged Reading Group for those who don't agree.

Surely Montaigne and Heidegger are relevant to this discussion.

Montaigne had better cock jokes than Heidegger

52 Those are rules for decent people looking to have decent interaction. Obviously, you can't make decency compulsory everywhere, but owners of spaces can insist on it for their space. And if it's a shared space, folks sharing it can ask that decent rules be adopted, and if they aren't, can make decisions. And if you approach Substack and say 'well it's either me or Richard Spencer' and they say 'nice knowing you' well you know where you are.

I think the principles you've linked above go farther with due process for trolls/harassers than I think is necessary. Only in an exceptional case* are people behaving indecently in some doubt about that fact. Due process and appeals just give trolls new chances to poke fingers in the eyes of the normal folks.

* I think I was basically absent as the read thing blew up, and don't really remember what started it and how it escalated. I had lunch with her well before any of that, and she seemed well enough conversant on American norms to not be surprised at reactions, but maybe I misread her.

It's hard to escape the sense that even for the most well-intentioned straight white guys, this still seems more like a bit of an academic debate rather than something that is immediately and personally endangering themselves and their loved ones.

That is true; it also certainly reflects my own biases in what I'm reading and what I've selected as summaries. But this argument does feel like it's played out differently than the discussion about anti-trans writers on substack. I wasn't paying close attention to substack at that time, but at least two of the writers who left said that they had been targeted for harassment from other substack writers. In this case people have talked about their experience being targeted by extremists, but they haven't specifically said that they are being targeted by people on substack. For example, Noah Berltasky, "I've been targeted by fascists; I've gotten death threats. Opening your platform to fascists and Nazis puts people at risk. There are enough of them, and enough people to who will defend them and work with them, that they can in fact cause a lot of damage. They haven't hurt you yet, and great, but that doesn't mean you'll always be immune, and it's cold comfort for people who are targets."

He presents the concern about Substack as being concerned about what's likely to happen, not necessarily something that's happened yet.

Similarly, this piece from someone covering hate groups in New Zealand, is mostly presented as a warning -- we see the problem on other sites and we don't want that to happen on substack.

I was disappointed to read your response to the "Substackers against Nazis" letter

"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."

This isn't correct, and history has shown this. 'No Platform for Fascists' has not always been seen as a radical left-wing position, but the standard policy of all mainstream media outlets. The far-right has utilised the internet since it's early days to get around the gatekeeping of mainstream media (I'd highly recommend the work of sociologist Jessie Daniels to learn more about this) and in recent years, with social media and recommendation algorithms, they've found a new audience. The consequence has been the growth of far-right political parties the world over, and a 320% increase in far-right terror attacks, among them the massacre in Christchurch.

Note that Parker Molloy feels like there's some merit to the argument that the platform design of Substack does work well in some ways:

For the most part, I agree with this basic point. Writers can limit who can comment on their posts, and unlike other platforms, you're not fed "recommendations" at the bottom of articles to check out other people's work that the author you've actually subscribed to hasn't approved.

This was one of the big issues I had with Medium. People would sign up to my blog there, and sprinkled throughout the experience would be "related stories" that would often be anti-trans or just horrible, generally. When deciding where to launch The Present Age back in 2021, this played a huge role. I'd been concerned about the amount of anti-trans content on Substack, and I worried that I would be inadvertently linked to hateful publications. It wasn't until someone at Substack explained to me that the only way someone would open one of my posts and see anti-trans content would be if I linked it there, myself. There are a lot of valid criticisms of Substack. I called it a "bigot factory" because of the bad content a few years ago. Still, it's been a mostly good experience for me as a writer.

52 Those are rules for decent people looking to have decent interaction. Obviously, you can't make decency compulsory everywhere, but owners of spaces can insist on it for their space. And if it's a shared space, folks sharing it can ask that decent rules be adopted, and if they aren't, can make decisions. And if you approach Substack and say 'well it's either me or Richard Spencer' and they say 'nice knowing you' well you know where you are.

I'm not quite sure if we're disagreeing or are in "furious agreement."

My basic position is that I think substack leadership both have an impression of "free speech" that I don't share and have made what I think of as a number of mistakes and bad decisions in how they have responded to questions and criticisms. I think the people who have been pressing the issue are, in general doing a good thing, and I think it's good that large accounts like Casey Newton and Anne Helen Peterson have pushed hard on the issue. I also think that even if substack had said, "oh, yes, Nazi's violate our terms of service, we will remove or demonitize people who are promoting neo-nazi ideas on substack" there would still be broader issues unresolved.

I also appreciate people who put in the time and energy to insist on decent interactions in the spaces they control (and substack gives authors a fair amount of control over the comments in their publication), I also think there are limits to relying on people to spend their own time acting as volunteer moderators. I am supportive of people who have decided this has been a sign that it's time for them to leave.

That said, I also don't think the current state of affairs presents an obligation on people to leave substack and, while the majority of people defending the management in this case seem awful, there a few people arguing in favor of "we support the model of substack trying to avoid centralized moderation, but also building the platform in such a way that people will generally only see and interact with content that they choose" that frustrate me but which I wouldn't dismiss. Two of the writers that fall into that category, that I haven't been following for long, but who both have a consistently high standard of quality to their writing on substack are Sherman Alexie and Susie Bright. Both of whom have had plenty of experience having their own books banned, and appreciate the stance of management.

I had a brief exchange with Sherman Alexie about it, neither of us convinced each other at all, but I do think think his position comes from a secret support of the right wing (I do think his sense of "decent people looking to have decent interaction" isn't going to line up perfectly with yours).

I'm still at the stage, in my own thinking, that I wouldn't mind having another opportunity to try to convince someone who's on the opposite side of the question than me -- not that I expect it to go anywhere, but I think of it as a question that's worth persuasion (this is, as Witt notes, because I am not in the position of being, "immediately and personally [endangered]"). The reason why I have been reading so much of the coverage is because I am interested in the debates about what it would mean to build a platform that was designed for writers and readers -- I don't think there's a chance that Substack will become precisely the platform that I would envision or desire, but I am still open to the idea that some of the decisions they have made have been good ones, and that there are elements of the platform which are well designed -- and one test of that is whether it can be a platform for a "community of communities" (in which some communities will have principles that look a lot like Sidechannel and some won't). Right now there's an aspect of each individual writer being siloed and having some control over that silo and another aspect of shared space (Notes, recommendations, leaderboards, etc . . . ) which isn't really moderated by anybody, and negotiating the boundaries of those two modes end up.

I think not wanting to have to moderate your own blog's comments is an underappreciated part of the story of the decline of the aughts-era individual and small group blog culture.

I went to a Sherman Alexie reading several years ago. He was great. I don't know that he's been back since the MeToo stuff . . .

The argument that platforming Nazis is worse for Nazis than deplatforming them (as Substack put it) is transparent nonsense, at a level that discredits everything else the proponent of that type of view has to say. Would Trump have benefitted from msm not broadcasting his 2016 rallies at length? People said so at the time, and it was ridiculous. People are attracted to authoritarian grievance mongering because it speaks to them and their need to feel victimized by lesser types -- against whom they fantasize revenge -- not because it's on a fringe site instead of a mainstream site.

AHP's newsletter was originally part of Sidechannel, until she abruptly dropped out and shut down her discord, a year ago. I think moderation was a big part of that. It may be harder for her to leave Substack while her current podcast experiment is on, and more so if it truly becomes economically viable.

I don't judge the people who are staying, especially because of the cost and time required to transition. Molly White says it took her like 60 hours, and doing some coding herself, to make the switch to Ghost. Chris LaTray, one of my few paid subscriptions, is the poet laureate of Montana, and is all over the place for that, and he has a book coming out. Self-employed writers are pretty low on the list of people with lots of free time.

By definition, sunlight only disinfects that which must stay hidden to thrive. At this point in time, sexually harassing women meets that definition. Nazism does not.

https://citationneeded.news/substack-to-self-hosted-ghost/

a platform for a "community of communities" (in which some communities will have principles that look a lot like Sidechannel and some won't).

I don't think this is a moral defense when the money runs through the platform company to connect the fascist communities to the rest of them.

If Goebbels hadn't offed himself, someone could have tried to defend him at Nuremberg with "Sunlight is the best disinfectant"

OT: I can't believe Paul Giamatti got an award for this. I guess it might get better.

To be fair to him, I'm just listening to the sound. It might work better if I watched.

The process described in the link at 61 is fascinating. I'm not surprised how many moving parts there are in emailing newsletters, just impressed that people understand them all.

66 is correct, 61 is well written and fascinating to see all of the steps involved.

Paul Giamatti is now bounding with the one guy.

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Incidentally, an invisible line is still perceived by red deer, which no longer cross where the Iron Curtain between West Germany and Czechoslovakia further south once stood, even though the old electric fences, armed guards and watchdogs are long gone, and the deer living today would not have been alive to remember them.

69: that sounds like an urban legend. Is there a citation to a observational study?

"'For red deer, Iron Curtain habits die hard', NPR (1 May 2014)."

71: Thanks! It checks out. Upon further reflection it's not really that surprising.

re: 69

A lot of that border is now a cycling and walking trail. It's pretty great. We cycled back and forth along the Moravia/Austria section in the summer, visiting vineyards and relaxing.

https://en.eurovelo.com/ev13

https://www.visitczechia.com/en-us/things-to-do/places/landmarks/cities/t-mikulov

We did see deer, but I didn't notice if they crossed the border or not. The cycling trail now crosses the border at various points and you'd never know (because Schengen).