I am very fond of urging people to work to sustain fragile coalitions by giving up their own pet causes or perspectives in order to maintain solidarity—and also to be solicitously aware of what everybody else in the coalition is sacrificing by being part of it.
I am very bad at taking this advice myself.
So below, I reproduce a collective letter entitled “Substackers Against Nazis”. I am a now a signatory. But as is often the case, I have a “yes but…” that amounts to a third letter. (The first letter floating around Substack argues more or less that Substack should do absolutely nothing about any newsletter published on its platform besides provide tools for individual authors to block individual commenters or readers from their newsletters and to block newsletters from view that they don’t want to see on Notes, because free speech.)
My third letter is more like a footnote to the Against Nazis letter, which you can read below, but these are points that are important to me personally, that informed a recent column I wrote here on these issues. They extend beyond Substack itself.
Dear Chris, Hamish and Jairaj:
Just a couple more things, by the way:
Please at a minimum actually speak directly to these issues in a clear and forthright way. Don’t just link and wink. There’s a reason that content creators don’t trust the owners and managers of social media platforms, and that’s because they make big, vast, abstract and feel-good declarations about their platforms and then say nothing about the actual issues and problems that readers and content creators face in their use of those platforms.
Especially you need to explain and perhaps change your policy on promoting content, whether it’s through some form of featured attention to particular newsletters or through tweaking the algorithms that you sometimes like to pretend you don’t have. If you really want to be innovators in the social media space, being transparent about how and when you will choose to direct attention to particular newsletters would be an amazing and courageous act.
Your silence about your decision to promote Richard Hanania’s work is especially baleful, because it leaves many of your authors and your readers in the dark about whether you simply didn’t prepare well for that profile and therefore were unaware of what you were profiling or whether you were consciously trying to help someone misrepresent their history of advocacy and writing. Fix this.
For my own peace of mind and comfort with publishing on this platform, I need to understand whether you are naive or cynical about the likely future development of a platform that has next to no active moderation. S Peter Davis has accurately forecast that history. I can bear “cynical” and expect it from Silicon Valley at this point; I find it hard to live with “naive” because it suggests there are other points of failure in this enterprise yet to be revealed.
I personally might be able to live with drinking in a bar with Nazis in it if I thought the Nazis would stay in their own heavily-soundproofed party room in a dank rat-filled basement that has its own separate entrance and exit in the alleyway and I lived in a town where there were only three or four bars anyway and they all had Nazis in them somewhere. I won’t drink in a Nazi bar where the management promotes “Nazi Night! Fascist-curious centrists drink for half-price!”, the Nazi party room has the best sound system in the bar and free snacks, and the bartenders have been directed not to care when the Nazis spill out into the rest of the bar and start harassing everybody else. Which they will, sooner or later, because they’re Nazis, and there’s only so many times that everybody is going to stand up and sing “La Marseillaise”, especially when they start to be outnumbered by the Nazis. At that point I’d rather just fill my own liquor cabinet and stay home, and I’ll wish I’d never gone out in the first place.
Signed,
Substacker With Low Expectations That Will Likely Go Unmet Anyway
With that out of the way, I also endorse the main letter, and am glad to sign it.
Substackers Against Nazis
A collective letter to Substack leadership
Hi readers—Below is a letter to the Substack founders that I helped draft as part of a group of publishers seeking answers to questions about the platforming and monetizing of Nazis. We are all publishing the letter on our own individual Substacks today for visibility, and to make our readers aware of our asks and concerns. Thanks for reading.
Dear Chris, Hamish & Jairaj:
We’re asking a very simple question that has somehow been made complicated: Why are you platforming and monetizing Nazis?
According to a piece written by Substack publisher Jonathan M. Katz and published by The Atlantic on November 28, this platform has a Nazi problem:
“Some Substack newsletters by Nazis and white nationalists have thousands or tens of thousands of subscribers, making the platform a new and valuable tool for creating mailing lists for the far right. And many accept paid subscriptions through Substack, seemingly flouting terms of service that ban attempts to ‘publish content or fund initiatives that incite violence based on protected classes’...Substack, which takes a 10 percent cut of subscription revenue, makes money when readers pay for Nazi newsletters.”
As Patrick Casey, a leader of a now-defunct neo-Nazi group who is banned on nearly every other social platform except Substack, wrote on here in 2021: “I’m able to live comfortably doing something I find enjoyable and fulfilling. The cause isn’t going anywhere.” Several Nazis and white supremacists including Richard Spencer not only have paid subscriptions turned on but have received Substack “Bestseller” badges, indicating that they are making at a minimum thousands of dollars a year.
From our perspective as Substack publishers, it is unfathomable that someone with a swastika avatar, who writes about “The Jewish question,” or who promotes Great Replacement Theory, could be given the tools to succeed on your platform. And yet you’ve been unable to adequately explain your position.
In the past you have defended your decision to platform bigotry by saying you “make decisions based on principles not PR” and “will stick to our hands-off approach to content moderation.” But there’s a difference between a hands-off approach and putting your thumb on the scale. We know you moderate some content, including spam sites and newsletters written by sex workers. Why do you choose to promote and allow the monetization of sites that traffic in white nationalism?
Your unwillingness to play by your own rules on this issue has already led to the announced departures of several prominent Substackers, including Rusty Foster and Helena Fitzgerald. They follow previous exoduses of writers, including Substack Pro recipient Grace Lavery and Jude Ellison S. Doyle, who left with similar concerns.
As journalist Casey Newton told his more than 166,000 Substack subscribers after Katz’s piece came out: “The correct number of newsletters using Nazi symbols that you host and profit from on your platform is zero.”
We, your publishers, want to hear from you on the official Substack newsletter. Is platforming Nazis part of your vision of success? Let us know—from there we can each decide if this is still where we want to be.
Signed,
Substackers Against Nazis
Thanks for reading. If this letter resonates, please share this post with others. If you’re a publisher who would like to join this collective effort, we encourage you to repost the letter on your own Substack.
Your claim that the site is “promoting content” of Nazis such as Richard Hanania is dubious. Providing information enumerating the subscribers of various substacks is not "promoting", it is sharing accurate data.
Substack's success has nothing to do with alleged promotion of Nazis and IMO the site's minimal editorial control is a big part of its appeal. If I am wrong the market will self-correct.
I'm pleased that content creators who don't feel safe at Substack are speaking out and may choose to barter their wares however they see fit. You have many options.