Embed Notice

@thomasfuchs

Up front, I neither read, nor write on substack (I spend more time with dev.to which is just my particular bent).

But:

1) As a neutral bystander, I'm with Hamish on the censorship front, though there are of course always limits. I will not ever, however, draw my limits on the basis of banal labels like Nazi or WTF you like smearing other people with but on slightly more objective criteria like actually calls to violence. Any publication with that content needs to be pulled down fast. As long as we're civil I don't right care what your views you, it's a dangerous thing to try and start deciding on the basis of those who should be able to stand on a given (virtual) soapbox and efforts to do so cause as much trouble as they purport to solve (we could apply the pathetically inadequate label "Nazi" to them - Godwin would feel vindicated)

2) When I read this: https://thehypothesis.substack.com/p/heres-why-substacks-scam-worked-so
my main concern is indeed the lack of transparency. If they are pumping money into Pro writers, I would like them to be transparent about who is getting up front money and who isn't on their platform. Any other venture I know would market that as a badge of honour, the Pro writers could have a big badge on their page for example.

3) Comparisons with nudity have some merit indeed, and alas we have a way to go there given most of these platforms are US based - easily one of the most prudish and conservative of western cultures alas. There is a line to draw (explicit pornography) but nudity itself could and should well be normalised (specifically to counter the effect that its suppression only serves to are in no way endangered sexualise it). Children are in no way endangered by nudity. They are endagered by the blatant sexualisation of everything. So I'd concur that substack (or any other service) if it preaches and wants to stand against censorship can actually perform consistently and well in this space by permitting casual nudity.

The problem of course always emerges with curation and where the lines are drawn, as they should be in both the arena of calls to violence and the endless sexualisation of everything. Such curation tends to be a) expensive and b) inescapably subjective, and there is no clear, unambiguous line to hold.