The problem is in the approach, really: every content moderation decision is treated as an all-or-nothing, final, and often completely opaque choice, isolated from all other aspects of being a social media site or communications business or whatever. Where a bar owner can say, "Dude, fuck off" to the klansman that started getting pissy about having to deal with opinions from a mere football player, and it's understood to not necessarily be a permanent decision, the scale problem of social media creates a situation where people feel that moderation decisions have to be pretty permanent and pretty absolute, because otherwise repeat offenders can skate or otherwise just make the mods play whackamole. I think if there was some mechanism for scaling and time-limiting things like downranking, demonetization, and the like, there would be less of a tendency for every incident to turn into an agonizing Hobson's choice over whether it's really time to take out the banhammer.
Well, third time writing this now since I’ve accidentally swiped and lost several paragraphs where I included more nuance.
Substack’s ignoring Nazis seems a lil sus when an official account is signal boosting a self described “reactionary radical”.
That isn’t to say that I disagree with your perspective, I do appreciate the way you’ve broken things down and am excited to check out the author over at tech dirt!
I'm sympathetic to their stated free speech ideals. I agree it's much worse that they seem to be enthusiastic about Hanania, who has the thinnest possible veneer over his racism.
I forget who it was and could look if you’d like, but it might be a worse look for substack that I was thinking of someone else and there’s maybe several cases of “this person is possibly racist and shitty”
One of the best frameworks to view this in that I’ve seen is Ken White. He has an article in defense of free speech pedantry where he’s encouraging folks to differ between free speech rights, free speech culture, and speech decorum. For example, I am supportive of the free speech rights of these folks, I am fairly supportive of the free speech culture that Substack wants to cultivate; despite this, my views on speech decorum leads me to think that, even if Substack wants to host these people and allow them on their site, the active signal boosting of certain folks has me hesitant to offer financial support via Substack.
The problem is in the approach, really: every content moderation decision is treated as an all-or-nothing, final, and often completely opaque choice, isolated from all other aspects of being a social media site or communications business or whatever. Where a bar owner can say, "Dude, fuck off" to the klansman that started getting pissy about having to deal with opinions from a mere football player, and it's understood to not necessarily be a permanent decision, the scale problem of social media creates a situation where people feel that moderation decisions have to be pretty permanent and pretty absolute, because otherwise repeat offenders can skate or otherwise just make the mods play whackamole. I think if there was some mechanism for scaling and time-limiting things like downranking, demonetization, and the like, there would be less of a tendency for every incident to turn into an agonizing Hobson's choice over whether it's really time to take out the banhammer.
Well, third time writing this now since I’ve accidentally swiped and lost several paragraphs where I included more nuance.
Substack’s ignoring Nazis seems a lil sus when an official account is signal boosting a self described “reactionary radical”.
That isn’t to say that I disagree with your perspective, I do appreciate the way you’ve broken things down and am excited to check out the author over at tech dirt!
I'm sympathetic to their stated free speech ideals. I agree it's much worse that they seem to be enthusiastic about Hanania, who has the thinnest possible veneer over his racism.
I forget who it was and could look if you’d like, but it might be a worse look for substack that I was thinking of someone else and there’s maybe several cases of “this person is possibly racist and shitty”
One of the best frameworks to view this in that I’ve seen is Ken White. He has an article in defense of free speech pedantry where he’s encouraging folks to differ between free speech rights, free speech culture, and speech decorum. For example, I am supportive of the free speech rights of these folks, I am fairly supportive of the free speech culture that Substack wants to cultivate; despite this, my views on speech decorum leads me to think that, even if Substack wants to host these people and allow them on their site, the active signal boosting of certain folks has me hesitant to offer financial support via Substack.
(I’m sticker club for the pod tho!)
Fair! Substack only takes 10%, so it's nearly nothing, but I get it.