@mmasnick
Yea I read your piece, which accurately describes the problem of not doing content moderation, but I was confused because I hadn't seen any particular Nazi controversy
@AriCohn yeah, i'm guessing that that spread around and someone maybe only read the headline or half grasped the discussion... and... now thinks there's a Nazi controversy.
@mmasnick To be fair, that IS kinda the content that was being subtweeted (if you will) in the interview, considering the...y'know, world we currently live in. It was a question about keeping the racial purity of the country. It just got long-handed and then short-handed two or three times apiece and now we get someone giving the shortest hand so far.
If @mmasnick is correct, regular people will increasingly desert Substack. Then advertisers (I assume it has them) will desert it. You will be left alone with a few thousand fascists, and your articles will have #fascist advertising on them because that is all that is left.
At some point you too will have to move to somewhere else. So better do it now rather than later.
@staidwinnow@tokensane@AriCohn yeah, I think there remain perfectly legitimate reasons to use Substack. They do some things quite well. And most people won't care about the controversy for standard Substack uses (newsletters). The question is more around how "Notes" will grow.
But, yeah, personally, I'd probably go with Ghost or or Wordpress. But I totally understand why people would still use Substack. It's straightforward and easy & handles everything... and many people are used to it.
I've offered to a few people to switch to Ghost if they'll subscribe at 300/year so I can continue offering it for free. No takers yet.
Much harder to get people to visit a separate WordPress site over Substack, where it's pushed by email and is where they go to read other subscriptions too.
Just doesn't make sense to do something else for this type of thing.
@AriCohn@staidwinnow@tokensane Yup. Totally makes sense. You can set up Wordpress to email people to, but it's... more work. I totally get the convenience of Substack for this kinda thing. It's simple, plug and play.
I get the pushback to substack but it's got decent built in features and a small but powerful community discovery layer (and this was pre notes deployment)
They are also really good to creators. I had technical issues at <1000 subs and they helped me out like I was a VIP
@LouisIngenthron I see Mike's characterization about what Substack Notes will turn into without moderation, but nothing that points to any specific "Nazi controversy"
@AriCohn It's more about the comments the CEO made in the interview (video embedded in the above linked article) where he was asked point-blank some questions he should have easily said "no" to and instead he just waffled poorly.
@Abazigal This isn't about "politically correct". It's about whether you let content like "all brown people are animals and should be kicked out of the country" on your platform.
Either you unequivocally say "no" to that or you'll quickly find yourself surrounded by white guys who have unhealthy obsessions with swastikas.
So, yes, it would have been better if he had "lied" because at least that would send the message that such content is not welcome.
@LouisIngenthron@Abazigal Part of the problem is the site has already been a bastion for racists, homophobes, transphobes, misogynists antiSemites, etc. the waffling in the interview was less about welcoming them in, but rather not wanting to anger some of their biggest earners.
The interview won't turn them into a Nazi bar, they're already there. It is about continuing the policy that made them a Nazi bar.
@LouisIngenthron@Abazigal There are UI and algorithm fixes that can help with this without management having to make the call on this or that bit of disgusting-but-lawful speech.
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