Substack Removes Several Newsletters After Campaign to Ban “Nazi” Content

If you ban anything at all, you open yourself up to banning everything.

If you refuse to ban anything, then you have a strong position. But once you’ve decided something was “too much,” then you are offering an implicit endorsement of everything you don’t ban.

Substack will be totally censored into oblivion by this time next year.

CNN:

Substack has removed several publications for inciting violence, the newsletter publisher said in a statement shared with CNN Tuesday, as writers from across the platform threatened to quit over the presence of pro-Nazi content.

After Casey Newton, founder of Substack tech news publication Platformer, flagged a list of publications violating content guidelines to the company, Substack says it is removing five.

None of the nixed newsletters have paid subscribers and, in total, account for about 100 active readers, according to the company.

At the time of writing, I couldn’t find what any of these newsletters were, or what they said.

Of course, it doesn’t matter. The Jews probably made these themselves so they could complain about them and then get Substack to institute censorship.

Now, they’re on the slippery slope.

The decision to remove the content could represent a change of heart for Substack, a subscription network through which writers can publish free or paid newsletters that has taken a very hands-off approach to moderation.

The company has said it aims to be a hub for individual voices, expert thought and critical discourse that it claims are harder to find in mainstream media.

Although the platform has explicit guidelines banning content that incites violence, a November article in The Atlantic pointed out at least 16 different newsletters with Nazi symbols, as well as many more supporting far-right extremism, leading to calls for change from many Substack authors and a refusal from leadership.

Video on the Atlantic’s hit piece, which was written by a Jew

A December letter signed by more than 200 of the platform’s authors decried the presence of newsletters pushing Nazi and white nationalist views with thousands of paid subscribers, claiming Substack was allowing this content to exist and profiting off of them.

Talia Lavin, a Jewess who used to work for Huffington Post, was one of the people who quit Substack for allowing free speech

Substack takes 10% of profits from paid newsletters.

“From our perspective as Substack publishers, it is unfathomable that someone with a swastika avatar, who writes about ‘The Jewish question,’ or who promotes Great Replacement Theory, could be given the tools to succeed on your platform,” the letter reads.

Yeah, well – it’s call the “US Constitution,” Jews, and if you don’t like it, you should go live in your own country.

In response, co-founder Hamish McKenzie released a statement in late December refusing to remove such newsletters, saying the move would limit free speech and open discourse.

“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,” McKenzie wrote in December. “Given that, we don’t think that censorship (including through demonetizing publications) makes the problem go away — in fact, it makes it worse.”

Ah.

Such innocence.

Although the company is now removing several such newsletters, Substack says it does not plan on changing its current decentralized approach to moderation that “gives power to readers and writers,” McKenzie wrote in December in a newsletter the company reshared with CNN Tuesday.

“If and when we become aware of other content that violates our guidelines, we will take appropriate action,” the company wrote.

Substack has raised millions from major venture capital firms such as Andreessen Horowitz and has been valued at between $500 million and $1 billion in those funding rounds.

The company recruited some big name writers from other media outlets such as Glenn Greenwald, Matthew Yglesias, Andrew Sullivan, Bari Weiss and Heather Cox Richardson, many of whom champion free speech, heterodox thinking and broad discourse.

Glenn Greenwald should quit over this.

He’s been through this whole thing before.

Several of us have been through this whole thing before.

There are no “degrees of free speech.” It either exists or it doesn’t, and if it doesn’t, you are always on the path to printing nothing but government propaganda.

If someone is writing something illegal on the internet, people can call the cops. That was the view of all normal people before 2017. It’s not an extreme position.