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"We don’t like Nazis either—we wish no-one held those views. But some people do hold those and other extreme views. Given that, we don't think that censorship (including through demonetizing publications) makes the problem go away—in fact, it makes it worse".

So goes #Substack, for good.

If you don't like Nazis, white supremacists and conspiracy theorists, you kick them out and demonetize their content, period.

I don't know what's so hard to understand. If you throw a party, and invite someone who shits on the floor, vomits in other guests' cups and insults anybody with a different creed or tone of skin, then all decent people will leave.

If you let Nazis hang out at your party, then your party will become the Nazi party, period.

And I'm sick of reading "we're becoming too polarized, liberals no longer want to share spaces with conservatives, extremes are winning" etc. No, we are NOT becoming more extreme on the left. Quite the opposite, as both in Europe and the US the left has (unfortunately) largely abandoned its social-democratic roots, and most of the parties have moved towards the political center. It's the other political side that has decided to go full in with their extremely distorted and intolerant views of society. And it's our duty, as a civilized society, to confine them to the sewage they belong to, before their shit talk takes over all the platforms, and their hateful ideas are normalized like it's the 1930s again.

Think of it for a moment: would you be welcome, as a gay, trans, or as a socialist/liberal, or as an individual who belongs to a non-white / non-Christian minority, on platforms like Gab, Parler or Truth? The answer is a resounding no - and I can say that after being heavily bruised by encounters with people on those platforms.

Then why are we supposed to welcome Nazi scum on other platforms? We have a civic duty of showing zero tolerance towards the intolerant if we want to preserve the principles of tolerance in our societies. If they want to talk to one another, let them build their own platforms for that - assuming that there are Nazis with enough brains to run a social media platform, without either ripping off Mastodon's codebase or doing hostile takeovers.

https://substack.com/@hamish/note/c-45811343