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.
> 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.<p>If this is a PR piece, well and good. I do hope no one actually believes this.<p>Moderation <i>is</i> 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?<p>Free speech is a platonic ideal. This is, in my opinion, setting up expectations which are guaranteed to be disappointed.
> 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.<p>So what does this mean when authors write about things like gender identity? Can Abigail Shrier (<a href="https://twitter.com/AbigailShrier/status/1277906221618487296" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/AbigailShrier/status/1277906221618487296</a>) or Debra Soh (<a href="https://twitter.com/DrDebraSoh/status/1285649878308323328" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/DrDebraSoh/status/1285649878308323328</a>) or Ryan Anderson (<a href="https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2021/02/when-amazon-erased-my-book" rel="nofollow">https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2021/02/when-amaz...</a>) 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”?<p>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?<p>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?<p>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.
It's amazing to me that a company that has been started so recently has put such little thought into editorial decisions and moderation.<p>> We do not allow hate,<p>Factually untrue. Substack is a welcome home for bigots that have been pushed off places like twitter (for exampl Graham Linehan)<p>Also for me, their speech on what they "tolerate" is worthless until they come clean about their editorial standards, ie, who do they pay to come write for them. Some people like Matty are honest, but it should be a requirement to disclocse that they're funded by the platfrom.