Here's one of them, from TechDirt, April 14:
Substack CEO Chris Best Doesn’t Realize He’s Just Become The Nazi Bar
from the just-fucking-own-it dept
I get it. I totally get it. Every tech dude comes along and has this thought: “hey, we’ll be the free speech social media site. We won’t do any moderation beyond what’s required.” Even Twitter initially thought this. But then everyone discovers reality. Some discover it faster than others, but everyone discovers it. First, you realize that there’s spam. Or illegal content such as child sexual abuse material. And if that doesn’t do it for you, the copyright police will.
But, then you realize that beyond spam and content that breaks the rules, you end up with malicious users who cause trouble. And trouble drives away users, advertisers, or both. And if you don’t deal with the malicious users, the malicious users define you. It’s the “oh shit, this is a Nazi bar now” problem.
And, look, sure, in the US, you can run the Nazi bar, thanks to the 1st Amendment. But running a Nazi bar is not winning any free speech awards. It’s not standing up for free speech. It’s building your own brand as the Nazi bar and abdicating your own free speech rights of association to kick Nazis out of your private property, and to craft a different kind of community. Let the Nazis build their own bar, or everyone will just assume you’re a Nazi too.
It was understandable a decade ago, before the idea of “trust & safety” was a thing, that not everyone would understand all this. But it is unacceptable for the CEO of a social media site today to not realize this.
Enter Substack CEO Chris Best.
Substack has faced a few controversies regarding the content moderation (or lack thereof) for its main service, which allows writers to create blogs with subscription services built in. I had been a fan of the service since it launched (and had actually spoken with one of the founders pre-launch to discuss the company’s plans, and even whether or not we could do something with them as Techdirt), as I think it’s been incredibly powerful as a tool for independent media. But, the exec team there often seems to have taken a “head in sand” approach to understanding any of this.
That became ridiculously clear on Thursday when Chris Best went on Nilay Patel’s Decoder podcast at the Verge to talk about Substack’s new Notes product, which everyone is (fairly or not) comparing to Twitter. Best had to know that content moderation questions were coming, but seemed not just unprepared for them, but completely out of his depth....
....MUCH MORE
