[HN Gopher] Substack: How We Approach Moderation Decisions
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Substack: How We Approach Moderation Decisions
Author : undefined1
Score : 11 points
Date : 2021-03-25 18:58 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.substack.com)
| cblconfederate wrote:
| I don't see how a corporate service can scale up the way substack
| wants to. If they editorialize , then they become the thing from
| which their users ran away in the first place. And they have to
| editorialize to survive, so really, there's no way to have the
| freedom they claim to offer in a corporate context. Only a public
| system (which is solely bounded by the legal limits on free
| speech) is able to offer that.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| > And they have to editorialize to survive
|
| I don't understand this part of your argument. Why do they need
| to editorialize to survive? They can make money off readers
| subscribing to authors. If someone doesn't want to read a
| certain author's content, they don't have to click it or
| subscribe to it. That's it.
|
| I'm not sure why the thinking these days is that some platform
| can't survive unless it editorializes. Amazon operated for
| years without censoring books for instance, rebuffing calls for
| censorship and committing to a free speech stance. Now they've
| changed direction (example 1 https://www.firstthings.com/web-
| exclusives/2021/02/when-amaz... example 2
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/technology/amazon-
| hitler-...) and I am not sure why. They would have no impact to
| their bottom line if they just stuck to their neutral stance,
| and I imagine the same is true for Substack.
| 8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote:
| They already are editorializing to some degree with their
| program of paying writers large advances.
|
| They needed to choose who they would recruit to the platform
| and then pay them and that's an editorial decision. The fact
| that it's _also_ an open platform for anyone to write on
| doesn't change that.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| > We do not allow hate, defined as publishing content or funding
| initiatives that call for violence, exclusion, or segregation
| based on protected classes. This does include serious attacks on
| people based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex,
| gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, or medical
| condition. It does not include attacks on ideas, ideologies,
| organizations, or individuals for other reasons, even if those
| attacks are cruel or unfair.
|
| So what does this mean when authors write about things like
| gender identity? Can Abigail Shrier
| (https://twitter.com/AbigailShrier/status/1277906221618487296) or
| Debra Soh
| (https://twitter.com/DrDebraSoh/status/1285649878308323328) or
| Ryan Anderson (https://www.firstthings.com/web-
| exclusives/2021/02/when-amaz...) expect to be allowed on this
| platform without being censored or deplatformed? What about the
| millions of parents of girls, who do not want transwomen
| (biological men) in women's sports - would Substack label content
| pushing for such separation as "hateful"?
|
| And to reverse the situation: what about proponents of
| affirmative action, which is a call for active racial
| discrimination against some races like Asians and Whites? Or
| those calling for segregated graduation ceremonies at colleges?
|
| How do words like "exclusion" or "segregation" apply in all these
| instances? Why doesn't Substack just let all legal non-spam
| speech operate on its platform instead of defining vague rules
| that will no doubt be abused in the future?
|
| If Substack practices the same censorship we've seen elsewhere,
| it really is not useful to me as a platform. We already have a
| whole collection of tech companies that practice biased
| censorship.
| 8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote:
| So first off substack currently right now hosts newsletters
| that are aggressively transgender-hostile and which have been
| nucleation sites for harassment against trans people. So at
| least for now it's a safe spot for your anti-trans newsletter
| or whatever it is you're coyly referring to here. Obviously and
| hopefully they might change their mind later under external
| pressure.
|
| The millions of parents of girls should probably talk to their
| children to see what facets of life are currently causing them
| the most pain and distress because I doubt for most of them
| it's going to be trans teen athletes.
| intended wrote:
| > Readers choose for themselves which writers to invite into
| their inboxes and their minds. And that's why we have a hands-off
| philosophy when it comes to censorship.
|
| If this is a PR piece, well and good. I do hope no one actually
| believes this.
|
| Moderation _is_ the product. If you succeed in scaling, then your
| platform will be used for everything from accounting to warfare
| logistics. How are you going to stop that without planning,
| researching and enforcing rules?
|
| Free speech is a platonic ideal. This is, in my opinion, setting
| up expectations which are guaranteed to be disappointed.
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