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2: We do have a strong philosophical stance on this. We think taking a strong stance in favor of freedom of the press is both the right thing to do, and critica

by cjbest 5y ago

2: We do have a strong philosophical stance on this. We think taking a strong stance in favor of freedom of the press is both the right thing to do, and critical to the success of our broader mission. We've written about this a few times, e.g. https://on.substack.com/p/substacks-view-of-content-moderation https://on.substack.com/p/substacks-view-of-content-moderati... and https://on.substack.com/p/society-has-a-trust-problem-more https://on.substack.com/p/society-has-a-trust-problem-more That is incidentally a big part of the answer for (3). We are very public about how we think about this, and the first of those posts was written before there was any real pressure on this stuff. We talk about this with folks we are hiring, and it helps people choose for themselves if the approach we take is something they are excited to get behind. 4. YES!

jxramos 5y ago
Thank you for #2, I never knew these points > Substack’s key metric is not engagement. Our key metric is writer revenue. We make money only when Substack writers make money, by taking a 10% cut of the revenue they make from subscriptions. I think I'm going to start subscribing to two writers in particular and see how that goes. This is a great model.
wpietri 5y ago
That philosophical stance is very common at the beginnings of a platform. E.g., Twitter being the "free-speech wing of the free-speech party". Or Christopher "moot" Poole, who created 4-chan. But over time, tensions develop between the theory and the practice. So what sorts of things do you folks find personally odious but see it as important to support? From your terms of service, obviously porn isn't in that category. What about, say, open antisemitism? Will you host and help fund the American Nazi Party or the KKK? How about more borderline actors, like people who promote racist conspiracy theories and ethnic cleansing, but stop short of direct calls for violence?
- Zababa 5y ago
  > Or Christopher "moot" Poole, who created 4-chan. 4chan has never been about free speech, it had rules since the beginning which are constantly enforced.
  - krapp 5y ago
    If your definition of free speech requires that a platform have no rules whatsoever, then there has never been a free speech platform anywhere on the internet, because such a platform would have to accept illegal content and spam, and could never moderate anything.
    - wpietri 5y ago
      Exactly. My point with Poole is that he started a platform that was much more accepting than competitor sites. Eventually he wasn't happy with how it turned out and walked away from it. Easy enough to do when it's a small operation. But with a larger operation like Twitter staff are invested enough that they won't just say "fuck it". So you see stronger TOSes build up over time.
    - Zababa 5y ago
      But that's not my point, 4chan has clear rules that are not about illegal content: https://4chan.org/rules https://4chan.org/rules. There are moderators/janitors enforcing thoses rules and a report system. The first rule is: "1. You will not upload, post, discuss, request, or link to anything that violates local or United States law." But that's only the first rule. There are 17 global rules, and each board has a few.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  Why would these actors want to publish on Substack in the first place? They have their own platforms already. Alt-right content is highly "meme" based (e.g. the whole thing with frogs and 'Kekistan', or the Qanon LARPing), it doesn't do well on a platform focused on long-form texts with serious intellectual interest.
  - meowface 5y ago
    I'm not trying to promote their blog and am not a fan of it and won't link it, but I know of at least one Substack blog by one such actor who indeed makes their blog highly meme-based. The fact that you can insert arbitrary inline images in blog posts and write whatever text you want near them is pretty much all you need.
  - wpietri 5y ago
    One obvious answer is revenue. Getting money in is a real struggle for extremists, who tend to get banned from traditional platforms. Think of it as like paying membership dues.
- briandear 5y ago
  [flagged]
  - esperent 5y ago
    The keyword here is "extremism". Doesn't matter whether the extremists label themselves as left or right.
    - wpietri 5y ago
      Exactly. I read his response and said, "Wait, did I say anything about the far right?" No, I didn't. In the US, right now violent extremists are almost all from the far right. At points in our history, we have had violent far-left extremists, so it's not impossible. It's not even inconceivable; given spiking wealth inequality, in some ways I'm surprised I haven't seen any anti-billionaire violence. Ditto climate-change and eco-terrorism. But it's definitely the case that extremist threats here are mostly from the right. But I do think it's telling that he saw me pointing out the KKK and the American Nazi Party as examples of current violent extremism and thought, "How dare you attack the right!"
  - topaz0 5y ago
    The CPUSA? You've got to be kidding me.
    - native_samples 5y ago
      [flagged]
      - Fnoord 5y ago
        > So the idea that society doesn't have a problem with communist extremism is unfortunately not quite accurate. It's still out there. It doesn't seem like communist extremism is the problem we are dealing with today. Unless you'd like to argue Putin's GRU lackeys are communists (which they're not, but either were and are nationalists). What you are doing here is essentially a whataboutism. What about the COMMUNIST extremists?! Yeah, well, what about them? They're irrelevant in the current playing field. The danger is coming from the right: alt-right. But either way, we can just call all of them extremists. Just don't pretend its 50/50 extreme left/right cause that's not the world we are living in. Not anymore, anyway.
no_butterscotch 5y ago
> We talk about this with folks we are hiring, and it helps people choose for themselves if the approach we take is something they are excited to get behind. I'm interested in hearing more, I recently had a Substack recruiter reach out to me and was curious about this because I work at a tech company w/ some internal "activists" (I don't consider them to be activists). How would you talk about it with them while hiring? It seems like you might need to bring up uncomfortable (and potentially risky) things like politics (?) during an interview? What to do if your employees start doing walkouts or what not? At the company I work for this happened. A lot of people don't feel comfortable standing up to the ones who are most vocal about cancel-culture (if you disagree with them you may be labeled and considered a "fascist" (ugh) or even worse a "nazi" and your career impacted), I find that most people just stay silent in the face of this and the organizers of these movements seem to rule the roost in the workplace. Great job either way I'm a Substack supporter! :thumbsup:
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  Sounds like you need a new job with a more inclusive culture.
  - Gareth321 5y ago
    This is happening the most "inclusive" workplaces, and it's spreading. Count yourself lucky if you haven't encountered it yet.
  - no_butterscotch 5y ago
    It was a well known company where the walkout made the news. My main thing in stating this is just to say that at this point in time I'm looking for a Coinbase/37Signals style work environment where I don't have to take part in others activism or "be an ally" by doing as told.
gadders 5y ago
I just want to say thank you for allowing other views contrary to the mainstream narrative to flourish.
high_byte 5y ago
I enjoyed these articles, you really nailed it. I think if you ever add podcasts and videos you could be the next YouTube, without the click-maximizing algorithms.

by cjbest 5y ago

jxramos 5y ago

Thank you for #2, I never knew these points > Substack’s key metric is not engagement. Our key metric is writer revenue. We make money only when Substack writers make money, by taking a 10% cut of the revenue they make from subscriptions. I think I'm going to start subscribing to two writers in particular and see how that goes. This is a great model.

wpietri 5y ago

That philosophical stance is very common at the beginnings of a platform. E.g., Twitter being the "free-speech wing of the free-speech party". Or Christopher "moot" Poole, who created 4-chan. But over time, tensions develop between the theory and the practice. So what sorts of things do you folks find personally odious but see it as important to support? From your terms of service, obviously porn isn't in that category. What about, say, open antisemitism? Will you host and help fund the American Nazi Party or the KKK? How about more borderline actors, like people who promote racist conspiracy theories and ethnic cleansing, but stop short of direct calls for violence?

Zababa 5y ago
> Or Christopher "moot" Poole, who created 4-chan. 4chan has never been about free speech, it had rules since the beginning which are constantly enforced.
- krapp 5y ago
  If your definition of free speech requires that a platform have no rules whatsoever, then there has never been a free speech platform anywhere on the internet, because such a platform would have to accept illegal content and spam, and could never moderate anything.
  - wpietri 5y ago
    Exactly. My point with Poole is that he started a platform that was much more accepting than competitor sites. Eventually he wasn't happy with how it turned out and walked away from it. Easy enough to do when it's a small operation. But with a larger operation like Twitter staff are invested enough that they won't just say "fuck it". So you see stronger TOSes build up over time.
  - Zababa 5y ago
    But that's not my point, 4chan has clear rules that are not about illegal content: https://4chan.org/rules https://4chan.org/rules. There are moderators/janitors enforcing thoses rules and a report system. The first rule is: "1. You will not upload, post, discuss, request, or link to anything that violates local or United States law." But that's only the first rule. There are 17 global rules, and each board has a few.
zozbot234 5y ago
Why would these actors want to publish on Substack in the first place? They have their own platforms already. Alt-right content is highly "meme" based (e.g. the whole thing with frogs and 'Kekistan', or the Qanon LARPing), it doesn't do well on a platform focused on long-form texts with serious intellectual interest.
- meowface 5y ago
  I'm not trying to promote their blog and am not a fan of it and won't link it, but I know of at least one Substack blog by one such actor who indeed makes their blog highly meme-based. The fact that you can insert arbitrary inline images in blog posts and write whatever text you want near them is pretty much all you need.
- wpietri 5y ago
  One obvious answer is revenue. Getting money in is a real struggle for extremists, who tend to get banned from traditional platforms. Think of it as like paying membership dues.
briandear 5y ago
[flagged]
- esperent 5y ago
  The keyword here is "extremism". Doesn't matter whether the extremists label themselves as left or right.
  - wpietri 5y ago
    Exactly. I read his response and said, "Wait, did I say anything about the far right?" No, I didn't. In the US, right now violent extremists are almost all from the far right. At points in our history, we have had violent far-left extremists, so it's not impossible. It's not even inconceivable; given spiking wealth inequality, in some ways I'm surprised I haven't seen any anti-billionaire violence. Ditto climate-change and eco-terrorism. But it's definitely the case that extremist threats here are mostly from the right. But I do think it's telling that he saw me pointing out the KKK and the American Nazi Party as examples of current violent extremism and thought, "How dare you attack the right!"
- topaz0 5y ago
  The CPUSA? You've got to be kidding me.
  - native_samples 5y ago
    [flagged]
    - Fnoord 5y ago
      > So the idea that society doesn't have a problem with communist extremism is unfortunately not quite accurate. It's still out there. It doesn't seem like communist extremism is the problem we are dealing with today. Unless you'd like to argue Putin's GRU lackeys are communists (which they're not, but either were and are nationalists). What you are doing here is essentially a whataboutism. What about the COMMUNIST extremists?! Yeah, well, what about them? They're irrelevant in the current playing field. The danger is coming from the right: alt-right. But either way, we can just call all of them extremists. Just don't pretend its 50/50 extreme left/right cause that's not the world we are living in. Not anymore, anyway.

no_butterscotch 5y ago

> We talk about this with folks we are hiring, and it helps people choose for themselves if the approach we take is something they are excited to get behind. I'm interested in hearing more, I recently had a Substack recruiter reach out to me and was curious about this because I work at a tech company w/ some internal "activists" (I don't consider them to be activists). How would you talk about it with them while hiring? It seems like you might need to bring up uncomfortable (and potentially risky) things like politics (?) during an interview? What to do if your employees start doing walkouts or what not? At the company I work for this happened. A lot of people don't feel comfortable standing up to the ones who are most vocal about cancel-culture (if you disagree with them you may be labeled and considered a "fascist" (ugh) or even worse a "nazi" and your career impacted), I find that most people just stay silent in the face of this and the organizers of these movements seem to rule the roost in the workplace. Great job either way I'm a Substack supporter! :thumbsup:

BurningFrog 5y ago
Sounds like you need a new job with a more inclusive culture.
- Gareth321 5y ago
  This is happening the most "inclusive" workplaces, and it's spreading. Count yourself lucky if you haven't encountered it yet.
- no_butterscotch 5y ago
  It was a well known company where the walkout made the news. My main thing in stating this is just to say that at this point in time I'm looking for a Coinbase/37Signals style work environment where I don't have to take part in others activism or "be an ally" by doing as told.

gadders 5y ago

I just want to say thank you for allowing other views contrary to the mainstream narrative to flourish.

high_byte 5y ago

I enjoyed these articles, you really nailed it. I think if you ever add podcasts and videos you could be the next YouTube, without the click-maximizing algorithms.