A quick note: For the last year or so, I have written a newsletter on Substack. For a period, I crossposted those here but as the subscriber base for the newsletter grew I stopped doing that. However, due to choices by leadership at Substack, will no longer use the service. However, you can continue to follow the newsletter here.
I don't have a lot of redlines in my life. But one redline I do have is that if an institution or business says that “Nazis are welcome here” I will take my business elsewhere. In the case of Substack, the leadership of the company has made their choice and now I am making mine. It's not a particularly difficult decision. No, this isn't about freedom of speech; no, it's not about censorship. It's simply my choice.
Here is the statement that necessitated my decision from Hamish McKenzie, co-founder of Substack.
I reject the school of thought that the response to people who would wipe me from existence is some sort of constructive debate in the “marketplace of ideas.”
The Nazi Bar analogy is instructive here: if I found out my favorite bar welcomed Nazis, I would stop going to it. If I found out that a social club I belong to welcomed Nazis, I would stop being a member. I shouldn't even have to explain this, but here we are in the year of our Lord 2023, having to have this silly conversation.
“We’re going to keep Nazis and other white supremacists on our platform because we believe that limiting them is censorship” is a stupid, infantile argument. It's so clownish I'm not going to waste my time explaining.
Here is Chat GPT with a simple breakdown:
Denying monetization and access to services for Neo-Nazis and white supremacists is not a violation of free speech because private companies have the right to set and enforce their own content policies (emphasis added). Free speech protections typically apply to government actions, not private entities
Platforms have the authority to establish guidelines to maintain a safe and inclusive environment, and restricting content that promotes hate speech or violence is within their prerogative. This is not censorship in the legal sense, as individuals are still free to express their views elsewhere on different platforms or through other means.
ChatGPT 3.5: December 22nd, 2023
Choosing to carry and monetize the speech of Neo-Nazis and white supremacists is a commerce choice this company has made and it's a choice that I disagree with, and I'm taking my business elsewhere.
Given that, this will be the last edition of the newsletter sent from Substack. I will spend the next 48 hours transitioning to a different service. I'm trying to figure out if I want to use Buttondown or Ghost. If you have thoughts about either platform, shoot me an email. Both services have drawbacks and are more difficult to use than Substack, but that’s the cost of having taste and boundaries.
There will be a regularly scheduled edition of the newsletter on Sunday. I’ll talk a little about the verdict in the Ellis trial and reviewing the books that I read this year. If you follow the newsletter solely via the Substack App you will lose access to it. But you can get it via your regular email inbox by changing a setting in the app.
Again, you can subscribe to the next iteration of the newsletter here.