I'll go wherever you go. There's trash everywhere. It's your newsletter, you should be comfortable with where it's hosted. I really appreciate you asking the community but, despite being an elder millenial sometimes grumpy about learning new platforms, I'll figure out any new situation. You figure out what feels good, honest, and true for you.
That's pretty much all I wanted to chip in, too. I completely trust David to decide. There are so many bad actors in the world, lets keep celebrating this haven.
Me too - with the exception of not really wanting to download an app, if possible. I like that I can just read substack online, without having to download and log in to yet another separate app (why does every single thing have to have its own app these days?! Get off my lawn, bah humbug, etc.)
Came here to say something really similar thanks Julia!
Agree though, anywhere you go will eventually turn up some shit cause that's just how the world rolls unfortunately! I'm happy if you stay or move and would figure out the new app.
But have enjoyed substance so far 😊
Do what feels right when it feels right, which may not be yet ? Or maybe it is...
I don't like being on a site that allows Nazi content. But... that's also the story of most of the internet I grew up on. Tumblr, twitter, facebook, myspace, etc.
I've been thinking a lot about how loose and disconnected culture feels right now in a post-twitter world. (From an American perspective,) We successfully dismantled in-person/offline spaces to share and discuss our ideas. And then Elon dismantled the biggest digital one.
I don't want substack to endorse Nazis, but I also don't think the pattern of everyone bailing on platforms when this problem inevitably comes up is working either.
To borrow your Nazi bar analogy:
The bartender may not be willing or able to kick the nazis out, but the other patrons could find ways make it an inhospitable environment.
I dunno. It feels like a lot gets lost when people wholesale abandon platforms because we're still in the process of figuring out how to stamp out those jerks in digital social spaces. It feels important to stick around and fight it out, if this is a platform people care about.
Agree. As I've mentioned elsewhere, even if you ban swastikas and slurs, the people that use them will still exist - they'll just be a bit more careful with their language ("just asking questions" is a good example).
In the bar analogy, they might cover up their Nazi tattoos and T-shirts, but will still buy the beer and chat among themselves... However, if all the hip and interesting people leave the bar because one friend-of-a-friend - who happens to also own a big bar down the road - apparently 'caught a glance at a 3rd Reich tattoo on someone's heel beneath the toilet cubical door', the Nazis are the real winners (and are further empowered by it)
Seconding - great comment. I’m relieved Substack has removed the Nazi content, as they should have. At least they didn’t dig their heels in and do nothing. If all the non-Nazi Substack writers leave, and there was nothing on here but that vile vomit, then Substack becomes the Nazi bar...
Can’t say I’d noticed the shift towards it becoming a social media platform, but then all I use Substack for is for Webworm and Emily Writes 🤣
I think what's happening at Substack is happening everywhere. The very worst of humanity seems to be seeping to every space on the internet.
If Substack becomes the Nazi bar and all the good writers leave including your wonderful self, then l will be there with you. I trust you to navigate this in the right way. Your nuanced, thoughtful, and principled way of seeing the world is why l am here.
I agree with this. It’s a tricky issue and I’m happy to follow to a new platform if you end up (needing to do that). Happy also to contribute more to assist with inevitable drop in earnings.
Knowing that you are considering the options and won’t stay on a really objectionable platform, I’d probably only bail on Webworm if I started to be served up awful recommendations.
Thank you for your work and also your thoughtful consideration of these issues.
Combating Nazis with more free speech is a losing battle. Appeasement didn’t work 100 years ago and it won’t work now.Their opinions are abhorrent and incite violence. They need to be deplatformed, quarantined, and maybe punched in the face. I don’t care about a stupid tech platform whose sole purpose is to try and turn a profit to return to the dubious investors who initially funded them, even if they have to take $$ from literally the worst people on earth.
I agree with Mac. “Be the peace that you want to see” is a friend’s motto this year. Nazis won’t like the environment and move on. To stay sane in a war-torn world riddled with violence, injustice and conspiracy theories, you need to focus on what YOU ARE and the type of influence you want to be. You can’t change America, Russia, Israel, Hamas. But you can sow seeds you feel are good ….
Yup, this is how I feel too. The Nazis could end up wherever this goes to next, even if they aren't there now. If we keep running away from them and letting them take over 'our bars' then they totally win. We need to stand together and kick them out, make them know they aren't welcome, put more pressure on the platform to kick them out so we can reclaim our safe space without them.
Timebox it. Substack is a great platform and worth fighting for. Set yourself a deadline to move - if Substack hasn’t sorted out their moderation problem to satisfy alignment with your values by this date, assuming there is a viable alternative, move.
I admit that I have also mostly ignored these issues at Substack, because I'm really only here for Webworm. I don't follow any other pages on here closely, though there are some really good ones, to be sure. Thus, I've never paid attention to the Notes thing. Has it taken off at all? I don't even know. I don't see it becoming useful to me.
That said, the idea of hiding behind an anticensorship stance to avoid taking responsibility for dangerous rhetoric is...bad. It's not what censorship is about, and it's bad. Feels very "we report on both sides" 24-hr news network to me.
Substack is a clean, streamlined platform from a reader perspective, but I'm in no way married to it. I'll follow Webworm wherever it goes, and I trust your judgment as a journalist and as a human in making sure it's in the right place.
We share every aspect of this world with arseholes.
A large part of how hate groups, conspiracy groups and fringe groups keep people indoctrinated is by making sure they have minimal access to information, resources or ideas that contradict their "truth".
It would be nice to think that through this platform they may occasionally get exposed to that, by being offered alternative content like yours.
For some reason I've read a few things recently on people who have held extreme racist views and came out the other side of that. A big part was exposure to information and people in non loaded contexts. If everyone else leaves this platform it just becomes an echo chamber for the vile shit.
I support your current approach.
I support you knowing there may be a line which gets crossed and you will make the call on that.
From a business and PR perspective these guys are already feeling that pressure and have made change. My guess is that's its highly unlikely this will be the last cull of the bad shit, they are just working out what that could look like without breaching their own policies.
Good luck David.
We will totally move with you if it comes to that!
I think it's a great point that we don't want to isolate people who have been indoctrinated on the alt right from legitimate news sources or progressive thought. That being said, I think part of the problem with hosting Nazism on these platforms is that the opposite happens a lot. Thinly veiled Nazism and hate speech is mixed in with legitimate journalism and recommended to you by a platform you trust and then people are unwittingly indoctrinated into alt right thinking.
Fiona - you have hit the nub of the problem 👍While it is POSSIBLE someone leaning "Nazi" may stumble upon Webworm & be rescued from going further down, it is far more LIKELY that the opposite will happen in that someone might innocently be sucked into one of these sites by seemingly innocuous language that they sympathise with on its face - freedom of association, freedom of speech etc. - & gradually get indoctrinated without noticing. 🤷
My concern is, we're not actually eliminating Nazism by censoring it, all we're doing is incentivising it to be better veiled. And then, how do you moderate it? Virtually no one really buys the raw, overt hate - they need to be eased into it - so I personally prefer to have it visible enough to avoid, rather than hidden behind the credibility of a "moderated" platform, political party, media, or thinktank (especially if alternative views are weakly scattered and hard to find)
If it has to be veiled, then it's not normalised. If it's allowed--Nazi symbols included--and even supported, then there is a signal that it is acceptable to society at large.
I totally see your point and that's something I really wrestle with too. However, my general feeling is that allowing Nazi propaganda to exist on all these big platforms like Facebook, Twitter, now Substack etc, has served mainly to spread and grow white supremacy. Even if a small portion of alt right thinkers stumble upon progressive content on those platforms that shifts their point of view, I think the net Nazis is still higher. By removing the content, we're not eliminating Nazism, but we're taking away one of its greatest weapons in propagandizing people.
I get what you mean about the overt hatred being easier to avoid. But a lot of the Nazi content that currently exists on these platforms is already very subtle and people are already being eased into it and it's a lot easier to be eased into when the content is right alongside real, factual trusted sources.
I also think it's important to note that we don't need to give Nazi's free reign to push genocide on social media in order to counter Nazi ideology.
Sure - I don't want to give you the wrong impression; I'm a very long way off being a 'free-speech absolutist', and have zero tolerance for outright threatening or inciting content. But I've also not personally seen a single example that I think would count as that among any of the "leaving-substack" commentary; just vague references to comically-obvious Nazi-adjacent phrases and symbols. However I do think we're broadly worried about the same thing: The ability of people with bad intent to persuade the unwary to swing to their viewpoint.
I guess I'm coming at it from the perspective that, (a) I don’t believe humans are fundamentally evil, and my experience leads me to an optimism that people will make the right choices given the right information. Therefore, we shouldn’t be making the 'right' information harder to find than the ‘wrong’ information, by abandoning the communities we’ve built or moderating away all the sign-posting-cosplayers who point us directly to their ‘leaders’; And (b), this is our place, and it's a place we’ve built precisely to have these sorts of discussions without the capitalist gate-keepers of mainstream media channels. In that context, it’s fair to question what the motivations of a huge traditional publisher like The Atlantic are - getting us all riled up about a handful of publications which they won’t name and which someone like me (who has read Substack publications every day for the past couple of years) have never been exposed to?
While I agree with Peter that their symbols should never be normalised, neither should we be running from the mere idea of them. History has left those of us alive today with an understanding of the Nazis that is all "concentration-camps and book-burnings", but what actually made them more successful [sic] than other hate groups was the way they co-opted the ideas, infrastructure, and communities build originally for the common good (‘national pride’ and ‘socialism’ are right there in their name!). They could only do what they did because good people were too weak or too scattered to provide counter-factuals.
Communities like this are where those conversations happen. I’m fully prepared to stand beside anyone who will petition Substack to maintain *that* common good, but I’m not prepared to abandon the diversity, the fledgling writers, and the engaged readers that this platform uniquely offers, and gift all that on a silver platter to the Nazis, just to teach Hamish and co. a lesson.
Yes, but most normal people don't go to the fringe, extremist platforms in the first place to see that content and become radicalised. The vast majority of people who are radicalised online saw that content posted on mainstream platforms and social media networks with the veneer of respectability and acceptability that goes with content being allowed on a mainstream platform ('if xyz platform allows it then it must be okay'), and fell down the rabbit hole from there. The kinds of people who were already going to post on the niche, underground forums aren't going to be deradicalised by open debate, if they were the debate twitch streamers and youtubers would be a lot more successful than they are.
Twitter is a good example - the moderation practices for extremist content were massively relaxed when Elon took over, and it hasn't become a more pleasant platform because the nazis are now allowed to post there, it's become a much worse place with people feeling emboldened to behave in a frankly ghoulish manner.
Definitely worth bringing up but I feel like unfortunately if one played out that logic to the end we'd all realize that most of the internet is a raging rotten cesspool of despair and we'd all have to go offline completely. We can only do as much as we are comfortable with and obviously all have our limits.
I spent my teenage years very immersed in local music and Nazis would show up to the punk gigs every now and then. It was always the audience that ejected them, the venues wouldn’t do anything (so it doesn’t surprise me at all that Substack aren’t doing much). Nazi substackers fuck off.
I’ll follow you anywhere, David, even if we have to park at a proverbial bashford antiques to get there.
Yeah, there were a few nazi skinheads in the Auckland scene, never made welcome. Eventually they all moved to Christchurch, NZ's own Florida. Sorry to the good decent folk of Christchurch.
I don't think you should potentially torpedo your career over it. You could "protest" by moving to another platform, but it's not *really* going to change anything. It might be good to be vocal about it still, and apply some pressure to Substack to delete their Nazis, but in the end, you should prioritize your own platform and the net good it does.
Truthfully, it's probably a good thing to have blogs like yours in the off chance a radical reads one of your posts and is normalized just a tiny bit, and to dilute out the more radical stuff!
In the end, every online platform has nazi content. Twitter has Nazi content. Reddit has Nazi content. Everywhere has Nazi content. Substack is just one of them.
If we keep running looking for truly "safe" spaces on the internet, we leave almost every platform filled with horrible crap leaving the uninformed to think that's really how the majority of the world thinks.
As a reader I don't think I'm at risk of being exposed to Nazi content from your newsletter (yet), so it's only a moral issue of giving money to a platform that does allow it.
I think just flip the thinking around - you're providing sanity in the chaos which is an extremely important service. Every platform needs some sanity.
I'm noticing many comments about only following Webworm on Substack (which was me until a few days ago). Highly suggest people check out The Good News Letter by Webworm contributor Josh Drummond. Not sure why I hadn't considered he'd have his own newsletter on here but it's good!
Oh. I'm really out of the loop. I hope he stays. I jumped off all social media 6 years ago (but then somehow found myself on Tiktok…). The algorithm only feeds me "good" content and seeing the comments threads full of (recidivist) awful people makes me think well at least they're being exposed to something other than conspiracies and hate.
Thank you for this, I was pretty confident you would be thinking about it.
When my subscription was about to roll over a couple of weeks ago I seriously considered not renewing so nothing would go to Substack. In the end I decided you do enough to count Nazis and their allies to make my contributipn a net good.
But... I am very uncomfortable that a single cent went to Substack while they intend their infrastructure will support Nazis. If there could be a better option in eleven months I would be very grateful.
Yeah I feel very similarly. It’s one thing, I guess, to be passively monetarily exploited by a social media company (ie ad revenues etc) and another to actively choose to give a platform money that ends up promoting nazism?
The more I wrote that the more it became a question. But yeah, it’s all very gross hey!
Anita..I’ve been reading a bit of commentary with a couple of other Substack writers. It’s not that Substack is INTENDING that their infrastructure will support Nazis (or any type of thinking that most of us here would find revolting and offensive ) - but the result of their moderation policy has allows some content on here.
I like the fact that David has had private and honest conversations with Hamish Mackenzie so he is possibly in possession of more facts than most.
Part of me also wishes to ignore the Nazi content (which I certainly don't go hunting for) but also a large part of me wants to give no support to anyone or anything that allows mysogynistic homophobic homicidal fuckwits to speak out. Apologies for any spelling mistakes there, I'm coming out of a migraine phase.
David, I'm incredibly grateful that you use your voice to raise issues like this. Hamish, if you're reading this, please do more. Please.
Thanks for writing this. I've seen this car crash unfolding in the news, and I was curious as to your thoughts about it.
Mine in some ways are complicated. I think everyone has a line, and where that line is something everyone has to decide for themselves. I'm not comfortable watching a Roman Polanski movie, but I'm not necesaarily going to judge someone who is. Injustices like these generally have systemic causes that aren't going to be solved by the actions of an individual person.
But it's also very simple in other ways. These are Nazis. And from what I understand, they're not hiding their views or who they are. I'm baffled by Substack management's reticence to ban them from their platform. Even from a pure cold-blooded business point view, it makes no sense to me. Which in turn, makes me wonder about the people running this company.
I'd be lying if I said Webworm staying here wouldn't make me uneasy. I think the significant amount of pushback Substack received will eventually cause them to tighten their moderation policies, if only slightly. But what happens when another set of newsletters come along, where they have the same Nazi beliefs but have a little plausible deniability about being actual Nazis? Substack has signaled to those people that this is a safe haven for people with atrocious views, and that starts to make it unsafe for everyone else.
Honestly one of the things that is most upsetting about Substack stance is that it was set up by a New Zealander who is then not taking accountability for moderation. I know there is the view that all platforms have Nazi content and it is just life. But we don’t have to accept it or other harmful content such as homophobia. Substack could and should stand for better as should Hamish McKenzie. As a fellow kiwi this makes me embarrassed and feel worse. In the end I will continue to support Webworm and any other newsletter that chooses to stay or leave and I appreciate how difficult the decision is. Would appreciate if there is any guidance on how we as readers can express our disappointment and views on this to Substack if this would help make a difference
Trust your moral compass David- I’m sure that most of your subscribers will follow you where ever you go.
Even if you don’t agree with Substacks approach right now, if you feel they’re coming at it from an ethical standpoint then there’s no reason to leave. It’s still a new platform, there is still plenty of room for them to learn and grow.
There are Nazis in every cafe. We need to work on having less Nazis rather than going to less cafes.
When I heard about the issues at Substack, my immediate thought was, shit, David’s on there. I’ve always tried to live by Popper’s observation of the Tolerance Paradox. If you tolerate intolerance, intolerance wins. Nazi ideology is based on intolerance, full stop. It also relies on human psychology where if you repeat things enough by exploiting media, the repetition makes things normal. Normalised intolerance has never served human society well. Business models that rely on intolerant views to bring traffic don’t deserve to exist. Let the Nazis find their own echo chambers and shut down avenues that allow their views to be normalised as free speech. Free speech has consequences and it’s not as if history hasn’t shown us what they are. I’ll follow you wherever you go. I hope you and others on the platform use your power to influence Substack to shut down Nazi ideology proponents.
I think Sandy raised a really interesting point. I’ve only recently joined as a paying member so I haven’t posted too often but have really enjoyed reading Webworm for free for years now.
Although I don’t sympathise with Nazis or hold similar views to them I do think most spaces should value free speech. I agree with you David that I’d also rather see nudity than far right content, but I suspect moderating nudity is something that a lot of platforms simply have to do from a legal point of view.
I also think there may be some value to these Nazis operating in plain sight rather than starting their own platforms where you wouldn’t have a clue what they were up to. I suppose there is some value in being able to see what they’re writing about. I also think the rise of the far right is a symptom of things being seriously messed up in society and banning these people from expressing themselves often makes the situation worse. I’ve seen some of that in German society. The way the German government and police handle their existence certainly hasn’t made them go away. I feel like the treatment they receive has almost given them more ammunition and authority to say: “We’re not being treated fairly”, which then validates their views even more.
Unfortunately there is a difference between saying “I think society would be better off without XYZ people” or saying “I think all XYZ people should be killed”. I assume the latter would be banned by Substack. On a similar note, I’m sure if the Israeli government were moderating Substack you might be banned for your views. It’s a really tricky situation and I do sympathise with your predicament. I think ultimately if you feel too uncomfortable staying here I’d follow you elsewhere, but I do think Substack helping you out with the massive bank fee is something you wouldn’t necessarily find elsewhere even though it’s the decent thing to do.
The argument for allowing such groups to operate in plain sight is highly risky. It gives them legitimacy. Nazis used mass media and huge rallies to woo the majority into thinking that it was okay to ‘other’ some groups in society so that when they created laws to restrict the ‘others’ and then the ultimate solution, attitudes were softened into thinking it was a ‘natural’ progression. Modern day Nazis are using the same methods to get their messages across to as wide an audience as they can.
I get the irony in all of this. The Tolerance paradox recognises the irony. Tolerance and free speech are desirable ideals. Yet, Nazi ideology is predicated on eliminating both, so should we, in our desire to be tolerant of free speech, allow them to try?
It only takes a minority of 15% to normalise ideas and influence the acceptance and tolerance of the majority. Limitless tolerance and free speech have grave consequences. We will never stop people from believing what they want, nor should we. We do have a responsibility to restrict the ability to proclaim or act on those beliefs when those actions harm others either physically or psychologically or which aim to undermine society’s desirable ideals.
Lengthy but relevant story: A couple of years ago, I was semi-frequently performing stand up in NZ, when i ran into a comparable issue. I was out of town for a family event, and I heard that there was an open mic in a pub. I'd been running hot that week - relaxed, cracking jokes, MC'd the event to positive feedback. Reached out to the organiser. Got a spot. Hunky dory.
The show was interesting for a number of reasons, but the most eye watering was a young man who got up and spent about 4 of his 6 minutes telling edgy straight-from-4chan street jokes about the holocaust. I was offended, as were family members nearby. Some of my guests that evening had personal connection to those events than many could ever comprehend.
The MC did nothing about it. The producer did nothing about it. They just rolled on the show as if nobody had made jokes about genocide. The following acts said nothing. It was like a horror movie, where somebody is brutally murdered and none of the characters takes it in. Some of the audience walked out during the break. I had to ask my family to stay. The mood was dead, i went on, ignored the elephant in the room too. Nobody did well after that, and the night finished with a sour taste in all our mouths.
I think about that moment a lot. What material difference could I have made that night? This kid wasn't himself a nazi. He was being edgy in an environment where he clearly thought the audience would be receptive. Could I have gotten on stage and excoriated him? Maybe. But there had been 4 or 5 acts between us avoidingthe topic, it would have felt very barbed. Not to mention I was a guest there, in my late 20s, while he was a 19 year old beginner. I'm not sure if it's possible for there to be a power imbalance if the lesser party is a Nazi, but there was nobody saying a word. Many raised eyebrows, but no words. It had been a disaster from woah to go.
The only perspective I can lend is that I regret not doing anything, but 3 years later I still don't know what i should have done.
Hmmm... Have'nt we had this situation VERY recently in Aotearoa (Tauranga??) where the establishment did nothing? I say now what I said then - it is up to EVERYONE to "say something" but particularly the MC/establishment hosting. People up and leaving is a version of that, but ALL the following acts should have "said something", especially the one following. Doesn't need a long rant, just a short quip about it being obvious Hitler can rise from the dead and speak through people of today, so the previous act better watch out for all those killed in the Holocaust rising from the dead & coming for the Nazi sympathisers, or something more elegant that a stand-up comedian being a quick thinker might be able to fashion. Then each following act could do their own version at the start before their planned routine, and YOU would not have been out on a limb. Yes, perhaps you SHOULD have said something yourself, but haven't we learned that EVERYONE has to so that EVERYONE is seen as part of the majority and not setting themselves up to be picked on for retaliation? 🤷 In sum, it should not have been up to YOU... By the time it was your time the audience, management, other performers, should have addressed the situation and you would have known what to do? 👍🤔
That's a tough spot - it's so hard in the moment to go into that small quiet place where you can work out how to handle it. After 20 years of lecturing I still find it hard when someone is trading in 'power over' jokes, 'just saying' or 'whataboutthis', particularly when they ought to be aware of its effect on the audience. I got so tired of philosophy boys wanting to abstractly debate reproductive rights in classes without thought about the women in the class that I ban the topic outright in my political theory class, and ask anyone who wonders why to come and see me in office hours. The 4chan thing seems like that; people (like Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment) thinking they can go outside society's norms.
For this reason I have no problem with bans. People need guardrails to indicate what is appalling to other people - those guardrails can be debated and be moved, but free speech absolutists are suggesting that there ought to be no guardrails at all (or in this case, deciding porno is ok to be censored whereas hideous anti-semitism is not nice but ok to publish; mysogny much?). The doctrine Free speech is after all a doctrine that is supposed protect citizens from government, not the right to say anything at anytime about other people speech.
On Nazis', in "On Tyranny" by Timothy Snyder, there is a terrifying quote from an editorial in a German Jewish Newspaper from February 2, 1933, "We do not subscribe to the view that Mr. Hitler and his friends, now finally in possession of the power they have so long desired, will implement the proposals circulating in [Nazi newspapers]; they will not suddenly deprive German Jews of their constitutional rights, nor enclose them in ghettos, nor subject them to the jealous and murderous impulses of the mob. They cannot do this because a number of crucial factors hold powers in check … " Snyder notes that it took less than a year for all the German institutions to be overwhelmed and under the control of Nazis. (pages 22-3, location 135 of kindle edition)
Words count, they have effects. They make possible the worlds we inhabit, and provide boundaries on worlds we wish not to inhabit. Words that provided Nazi ideology created a world in which the holocaust could, and then did, exist. For Substack to have difficulty understanding the cause and effect while having qualms with the objectification of the body seems so bizarre as to render it being co-opted in the Arendt's banality of evil.
As with others David, I'd follow you wherever, and understand Substack operates in a very different commercial logic than my antipodean sensibility and political theory
Sorry for the essay. Your question is begs two of the key questions of the early 21st century 🤷🏽♂️ ie. (1) How do we stop enshittification (to borrow from Cory Doctorow) (2) how do we combat the democratic backsliding and rise of facism?
I think a slow clap that everyone can join in and/or someone shouting - heckling change the channel "you're" spoiling a good night out before walking out.
Just wanted to say reading and absorbing and so, so appreciative of the thought you are all putting into this. Feels good not to be alone in it!
🙋 I don't want this to sound creepy, but.... You are NEVER ALONE while the Worms are there for you 🫂
Gaga has her monsters, Beyoncé has her bees, and you have your worms 🪱 ❤️
I'll go wherever you go. There's trash everywhere. It's your newsletter, you should be comfortable with where it's hosted. I really appreciate you asking the community but, despite being an elder millenial sometimes grumpy about learning new platforms, I'll figure out any new situation. You figure out what feels good, honest, and true for you.
That's pretty much all I wanted to chip in, too. I completely trust David to decide. There are so many bad actors in the world, lets keep celebrating this haven.
I agree. It’s a tricky one David. Not black and white and you described your feelings/deliberations as a substack writer well.
Me too - with the exception of not really wanting to download an app, if possible. I like that I can just read substack online, without having to download and log in to yet another separate app (why does every single thing have to have its own app these days?! Get off my lawn, bah humbug, etc.)
Oh you are my kind of person! There is no need for a separate app if you make your internet site mobile compatible!
Came here to say something really similar thanks Julia!
Agree though, anywhere you go will eventually turn up some shit cause that's just how the world rolls unfortunately! I'm happy if you stay or move and would figure out the new app.
But have enjoyed substance so far 😊
Do what feels right when it feels right, which may not be yet ? Or maybe it is...
This sums up my opinion as well, thanks Julia :)
This is how I feel as well! Thanks for expressing it Julia!
Also agree with Julia... Thanks
Ditto.
I don't like being on a site that allows Nazi content. But... that's also the story of most of the internet I grew up on. Tumblr, twitter, facebook, myspace, etc.
I've been thinking a lot about how loose and disconnected culture feels right now in a post-twitter world. (From an American perspective,) We successfully dismantled in-person/offline spaces to share and discuss our ideas. And then Elon dismantled the biggest digital one.
I don't want substack to endorse Nazis, but I also don't think the pattern of everyone bailing on platforms when this problem inevitably comes up is working either.
To borrow your Nazi bar analogy:
The bartender may not be willing or able to kick the nazis out, but the other patrons could find ways make it an inhospitable environment.
I dunno. It feels like a lot gets lost when people wholesale abandon platforms because we're still in the process of figuring out how to stamp out those jerks in digital social spaces. It feels important to stick around and fight it out, if this is a platform people care about.
Agree. As I've mentioned elsewhere, even if you ban swastikas and slurs, the people that use them will still exist - they'll just be a bit more careful with their language ("just asking questions" is a good example).
In the bar analogy, they might cover up their Nazi tattoos and T-shirts, but will still buy the beer and chat among themselves... However, if all the hip and interesting people leave the bar because one friend-of-a-friend - who happens to also own a big bar down the road - apparently 'caught a glance at a 3rd Reich tattoo on someone's heel beneath the toilet cubical door', the Nazis are the real winners (and are further empowered by it)
Appreciate this. Great way of looking at it
Seconding - great comment. I’m relieved Substack has removed the Nazi content, as they should have. At least they didn’t dig their heels in and do nothing. If all the non-Nazi Substack writers leave, and there was nothing on here but that vile vomit, then Substack becomes the Nazi bar...
Can’t say I’d noticed the shift towards it becoming a social media platform, but then all I use Substack for is for Webworm and Emily Writes 🤣
I think what's happening at Substack is happening everywhere. The very worst of humanity seems to be seeping to every space on the internet.
If Substack becomes the Nazi bar and all the good writers leave including your wonderful self, then l will be there with you. I trust you to navigate this in the right way. Your nuanced, thoughtful, and principled way of seeing the world is why l am here.
Me too. And David Slack - who recommended Hussain’s ‘walk with me’, Bernard Hickey, Alan Doak, Michael Moore. So many good people and good writers.
Me too! What a great pairing!
I agree with this. It’s a tricky issue and I’m happy to follow to a new platform if you end up (needing to do that). Happy also to contribute more to assist with inevitable drop in earnings.
Knowing that you are considering the options and won’t stay on a really objectionable platform, I’d probably only bail on Webworm if I started to be served up awful recommendations.
Thank you for your work and also your thoughtful consideration of these issues.
Combating Nazis with more free speech is a losing battle. Appeasement didn’t work 100 years ago and it won’t work now.Their opinions are abhorrent and incite violence. They need to be deplatformed, quarantined, and maybe punched in the face. I don’t care about a stupid tech platform whose sole purpose is to try and turn a profit to return to the dubious investors who initially funded them, even if they have to take $$ from literally the worst people on earth.
I agree with Mac. “Be the peace that you want to see” is a friend’s motto this year. Nazis won’t like the environment and move on. To stay sane in a war-torn world riddled with violence, injustice and conspiracy theories, you need to focus on what YOU ARE and the type of influence you want to be. You can’t change America, Russia, Israel, Hamas. But you can sow seeds you feel are good ….
Yup, this is how I feel too. The Nazis could end up wherever this goes to next, even if they aren't there now. If we keep running away from them and letting them take over 'our bars' then they totally win. We need to stand together and kick them out, make them know they aren't welcome, put more pressure on the platform to kick them out so we can reclaim our safe space without them.
Timebox it. Substack is a great platform and worth fighting for. Set yourself a deadline to move - if Substack hasn’t sorted out their moderation problem to satisfy alignment with your values by this date, assuming there is a viable alternative, move.
Yes!
I admit that I have also mostly ignored these issues at Substack, because I'm really only here for Webworm. I don't follow any other pages on here closely, though there are some really good ones, to be sure. Thus, I've never paid attention to the Notes thing. Has it taken off at all? I don't even know. I don't see it becoming useful to me.
That said, the idea of hiding behind an anticensorship stance to avoid taking responsibility for dangerous rhetoric is...bad. It's not what censorship is about, and it's bad. Feels very "we report on both sides" 24-hr news network to me.
Substack is a clean, streamlined platform from a reader perspective, but I'm in no way married to it. I'll follow Webworm wherever it goes, and I trust your judgment as a journalist and as a human in making sure it's in the right place.
ALSO DAVID I was terrified by this headline, I was bracing myself for a very upsetting story about an actual doggo. >=[
Me too!!
Oh me too! Phew.
💯 this!
We share every aspect of this world with arseholes.
A large part of how hate groups, conspiracy groups and fringe groups keep people indoctrinated is by making sure they have minimal access to information, resources or ideas that contradict their "truth".
It would be nice to think that through this platform they may occasionally get exposed to that, by being offered alternative content like yours.
For some reason I've read a few things recently on people who have held extreme racist views and came out the other side of that. A big part was exposure to information and people in non loaded contexts. If everyone else leaves this platform it just becomes an echo chamber for the vile shit.
I support your current approach.
I support you knowing there may be a line which gets crossed and you will make the call on that.
From a business and PR perspective these guys are already feeling that pressure and have made change. My guess is that's its highly unlikely this will be the last cull of the bad shit, they are just working out what that could look like without breaching their own policies.
Good luck David.
We will totally move with you if it comes to that!
I think it's a great point that we don't want to isolate people who have been indoctrinated on the alt right from legitimate news sources or progressive thought. That being said, I think part of the problem with hosting Nazism on these platforms is that the opposite happens a lot. Thinly veiled Nazism and hate speech is mixed in with legitimate journalism and recommended to you by a platform you trust and then people are unwittingly indoctrinated into alt right thinking.
Fiona - you have hit the nub of the problem 👍While it is POSSIBLE someone leaning "Nazi" may stumble upon Webworm & be rescued from going further down, it is far more LIKELY that the opposite will happen in that someone might innocently be sucked into one of these sites by seemingly innocuous language that they sympathise with on its face - freedom of association, freedom of speech etc. - & gradually get indoctrinated without noticing. 🤷
My concern is, we're not actually eliminating Nazism by censoring it, all we're doing is incentivising it to be better veiled. And then, how do you moderate it? Virtually no one really buys the raw, overt hate - they need to be eased into it - so I personally prefer to have it visible enough to avoid, rather than hidden behind the credibility of a "moderated" platform, political party, media, or thinktank (especially if alternative views are weakly scattered and hard to find)
If it has to be veiled, then it's not normalised. If it's allowed--Nazi symbols included--and even supported, then there is a signal that it is acceptable to society at large.
I totally see your point and that's something I really wrestle with too. However, my general feeling is that allowing Nazi propaganda to exist on all these big platforms like Facebook, Twitter, now Substack etc, has served mainly to spread and grow white supremacy. Even if a small portion of alt right thinkers stumble upon progressive content on those platforms that shifts their point of view, I think the net Nazis is still higher. By removing the content, we're not eliminating Nazism, but we're taking away one of its greatest weapons in propagandizing people.
I get what you mean about the overt hatred being easier to avoid. But a lot of the Nazi content that currently exists on these platforms is already very subtle and people are already being eased into it and it's a lot easier to be eased into when the content is right alongside real, factual trusted sources.
I also think it's important to note that we don't need to give Nazi's free reign to push genocide on social media in order to counter Nazi ideology.
Sure - I don't want to give you the wrong impression; I'm a very long way off being a 'free-speech absolutist', and have zero tolerance for outright threatening or inciting content. But I've also not personally seen a single example that I think would count as that among any of the "leaving-substack" commentary; just vague references to comically-obvious Nazi-adjacent phrases and symbols. However I do think we're broadly worried about the same thing: The ability of people with bad intent to persuade the unwary to swing to their viewpoint.
I guess I'm coming at it from the perspective that, (a) I don’t believe humans are fundamentally evil, and my experience leads me to an optimism that people will make the right choices given the right information. Therefore, we shouldn’t be making the 'right' information harder to find than the ‘wrong’ information, by abandoning the communities we’ve built or moderating away all the sign-posting-cosplayers who point us directly to their ‘leaders’; And (b), this is our place, and it's a place we’ve built precisely to have these sorts of discussions without the capitalist gate-keepers of mainstream media channels. In that context, it’s fair to question what the motivations of a huge traditional publisher like The Atlantic are - getting us all riled up about a handful of publications which they won’t name and which someone like me (who has read Substack publications every day for the past couple of years) have never been exposed to?
While I agree with Peter that their symbols should never be normalised, neither should we be running from the mere idea of them. History has left those of us alive today with an understanding of the Nazis that is all "concentration-camps and book-burnings", but what actually made them more successful [sic] than other hate groups was the way they co-opted the ideas, infrastructure, and communities build originally for the common good (‘national pride’ and ‘socialism’ are right there in their name!). They could only do what they did because good people were too weak or too scattered to provide counter-factuals.
Communities like this are where those conversations happen. I’m fully prepared to stand beside anyone who will petition Substack to maintain *that* common good, but I’m not prepared to abandon the diversity, the fledgling writers, and the engaged readers that this platform uniquely offers, and gift all that on a silver platter to the Nazis, just to teach Hamish and co. a lesson.
Yes, but most normal people don't go to the fringe, extremist platforms in the first place to see that content and become radicalised. The vast majority of people who are radicalised online saw that content posted on mainstream platforms and social media networks with the veneer of respectability and acceptability that goes with content being allowed on a mainstream platform ('if xyz platform allows it then it must be okay'), and fell down the rabbit hole from there. The kinds of people who were already going to post on the niche, underground forums aren't going to be deradicalised by open debate, if they were the debate twitch streamers and youtubers would be a lot more successful than they are.
Twitter is a good example - the moderation practices for extremist content were massively relaxed when Elon took over, and it hasn't become a more pleasant platform because the nazis are now allowed to post there, it's become a much worse place with people feeling emboldened to behave in a frankly ghoulish manner.
This is a great point - that people who sympathize with conspiracy and hate groups might occasionally get exposed to Webworm.
Definitely worth bringing up but I feel like unfortunately if one played out that logic to the end we'd all realize that most of the internet is a raging rotten cesspool of despair and we'd all have to go offline completely. We can only do as much as we are comfortable with and obviously all have our limits.
I spent my teenage years very immersed in local music and Nazis would show up to the punk gigs every now and then. It was always the audience that ejected them, the venues wouldn’t do anything (so it doesn’t surprise me at all that Substack aren’t doing much). Nazi substackers fuck off.
I’ll follow you anywhere, David, even if we have to park at a proverbial bashford antiques to get there.
Yeah, there were a few nazi skinheads in the Auckland scene, never made welcome. Eventually they all moved to Christchurch, NZ's own Florida. Sorry to the good decent folk of Christchurch.
I live in Christchurch and can confirm!
There are a lot of great people in Christchurch, you are one of them.
🥰 Our next meet up - outside "a proverbial bashford antiques" 👏
I don't think you should potentially torpedo your career over it. You could "protest" by moving to another platform, but it's not *really* going to change anything. It might be good to be vocal about it still, and apply some pressure to Substack to delete their Nazis, but in the end, you should prioritize your own platform and the net good it does.
Truthfully, it's probably a good thing to have blogs like yours in the off chance a radical reads one of your posts and is normalized just a tiny bit, and to dilute out the more radical stuff!
In the end, every online platform has nazi content. Twitter has Nazi content. Reddit has Nazi content. Everywhere has Nazi content. Substack is just one of them.
If we keep running looking for truly "safe" spaces on the internet, we leave almost every platform filled with horrible crap leaving the uninformed to think that's really how the majority of the world thinks.
As a reader I don't think I'm at risk of being exposed to Nazi content from your newsletter (yet), so it's only a moral issue of giving money to a platform that does allow it.
I think just flip the thinking around - you're providing sanity in the chaos which is an extremely important service. Every platform needs some sanity.
I'm noticing many comments about only following Webworm on Substack (which was me until a few days ago). Highly suggest people check out The Good News Letter by Webworm contributor Josh Drummond. Not sure why I hadn't considered he'd have his own newsletter on here but it's good!
Me too. Love Josh Drummond’s two substacks.
He's a good man.
It's the *Bad* News Letter :)
Oh shame. My bad!
FWIW Josh is about to move off Substack due the Nazi content and it’s handling :/
Oh. I'm really out of the loop. I hope he stays. I jumped off all social media 6 years ago (but then somehow found myself on Tiktok…). The algorithm only feeds me "good" content and seeing the comments threads full of (recidivist) awful people makes me think well at least they're being exposed to something other than conspiracies and hate.
Yup also follow Josh and enjoy Emily Writes on here but have never browsed
Thank you for this, I was pretty confident you would be thinking about it.
When my subscription was about to roll over a couple of weeks ago I seriously considered not renewing so nothing would go to Substack. In the end I decided you do enough to count Nazis and their allies to make my contributipn a net good.
But... I am very uncomfortable that a single cent went to Substack while they intend their infrastructure will support Nazis. If there could be a better option in eleven months I would be very grateful.
Yeah I feel very similarly. It’s one thing, I guess, to be passively monetarily exploited by a social media company (ie ad revenues etc) and another to actively choose to give a platform money that ends up promoting nazism?
The more I wrote that the more it became a question. But yeah, it’s all very gross hey!
Anita..I’ve been reading a bit of commentary with a couple of other Substack writers. It’s not that Substack is INTENDING that their infrastructure will support Nazis (or any type of thinking that most of us here would find revolting and offensive ) - but the result of their moderation policy has allows some content on here.
I like the fact that David has had private and honest conversations with Hamish Mackenzie so he is possibly in possession of more facts than most.
Part of me also wishes to ignore the Nazi content (which I certainly don't go hunting for) but also a large part of me wants to give no support to anyone or anything that allows mysogynistic homophobic homicidal fuckwits to speak out. Apologies for any spelling mistakes there, I'm coming out of a migraine phase.
David, I'm incredibly grateful that you use your voice to raise issues like this. Hamish, if you're reading this, please do more. Please.
Thanks for writing this. I've seen this car crash unfolding in the news, and I was curious as to your thoughts about it.
Mine in some ways are complicated. I think everyone has a line, and where that line is something everyone has to decide for themselves. I'm not comfortable watching a Roman Polanski movie, but I'm not necesaarily going to judge someone who is. Injustices like these generally have systemic causes that aren't going to be solved by the actions of an individual person.
But it's also very simple in other ways. These are Nazis. And from what I understand, they're not hiding their views or who they are. I'm baffled by Substack management's reticence to ban them from their platform. Even from a pure cold-blooded business point view, it makes no sense to me. Which in turn, makes me wonder about the people running this company.
I'd be lying if I said Webworm staying here wouldn't make me uneasy. I think the significant amount of pushback Substack received will eventually cause them to tighten their moderation policies, if only slightly. But what happens when another set of newsletters come along, where they have the same Nazi beliefs but have a little plausible deniability about being actual Nazis? Substack has signaled to those people that this is a safe haven for people with atrocious views, and that starts to make it unsafe for everyone else.
100% agree and thanks for articulating my unease so well. Your last point is key to why this lack of strong moderation can't be overlooked.
Honestly one of the things that is most upsetting about Substack stance is that it was set up by a New Zealander who is then not taking accountability for moderation. I know there is the view that all platforms have Nazi content and it is just life. But we don’t have to accept it or other harmful content such as homophobia. Substack could and should stand for better as should Hamish McKenzie. As a fellow kiwi this makes me embarrassed and feel worse. In the end I will continue to support Webworm and any other newsletter that chooses to stay or leave and I appreciate how difficult the decision is. Would appreciate if there is any guidance on how we as readers can express our disappointment and views on this to Substack if this would help make a difference
Trust your moral compass David- I’m sure that most of your subscribers will follow you where ever you go.
Even if you don’t agree with Substacks approach right now, if you feel they’re coming at it from an ethical standpoint then there’s no reason to leave. It’s still a new platform, there is still plenty of room for them to learn and grow.
There are Nazis in every cafe. We need to work on having less Nazis rather than going to less cafes.
When I heard about the issues at Substack, my immediate thought was, shit, David’s on there. I’ve always tried to live by Popper’s observation of the Tolerance Paradox. If you tolerate intolerance, intolerance wins. Nazi ideology is based on intolerance, full stop. It also relies on human psychology where if you repeat things enough by exploiting media, the repetition makes things normal. Normalised intolerance has never served human society well. Business models that rely on intolerant views to bring traffic don’t deserve to exist. Let the Nazis find their own echo chambers and shut down avenues that allow their views to be normalised as free speech. Free speech has consequences and it’s not as if history hasn’t shown us what they are. I’ll follow you wherever you go. I hope you and others on the platform use your power to influence Substack to shut down Nazi ideology proponents.
Amen
Perfectly put Sandy - "if you tolerate intolerance, intolerance wins" 👏😥
Thank you.
Did not expect a Popper reference here. God damn Iove web worm.
I think Sandy raised a really interesting point. I’ve only recently joined as a paying member so I haven’t posted too often but have really enjoyed reading Webworm for free for years now.
Although I don’t sympathise with Nazis or hold similar views to them I do think most spaces should value free speech. I agree with you David that I’d also rather see nudity than far right content, but I suspect moderating nudity is something that a lot of platforms simply have to do from a legal point of view.
I also think there may be some value to these Nazis operating in plain sight rather than starting their own platforms where you wouldn’t have a clue what they were up to. I suppose there is some value in being able to see what they’re writing about. I also think the rise of the far right is a symptom of things being seriously messed up in society and banning these people from expressing themselves often makes the situation worse. I’ve seen some of that in German society. The way the German government and police handle their existence certainly hasn’t made them go away. I feel like the treatment they receive has almost given them more ammunition and authority to say: “We’re not being treated fairly”, which then validates their views even more.
Unfortunately there is a difference between saying “I think society would be better off without XYZ people” or saying “I think all XYZ people should be killed”. I assume the latter would be banned by Substack. On a similar note, I’m sure if the Israeli government were moderating Substack you might be banned for your views. It’s a really tricky situation and I do sympathise with your predicament. I think ultimately if you feel too uncomfortable staying here I’d follow you elsewhere, but I do think Substack helping you out with the massive bank fee is something you wouldn’t necessarily find elsewhere even though it’s the decent thing to do.
The argument for allowing such groups to operate in plain sight is highly risky. It gives them legitimacy. Nazis used mass media and huge rallies to woo the majority into thinking that it was okay to ‘other’ some groups in society so that when they created laws to restrict the ‘others’ and then the ultimate solution, attitudes were softened into thinking it was a ‘natural’ progression. Modern day Nazis are using the same methods to get their messages across to as wide an audience as they can.
I get the irony in all of this. The Tolerance paradox recognises the irony. Tolerance and free speech are desirable ideals. Yet, Nazi ideology is predicated on eliminating both, so should we, in our desire to be tolerant of free speech, allow them to try?
It only takes a minority of 15% to normalise ideas and influence the acceptance and tolerance of the majority. Limitless tolerance and free speech have grave consequences. We will never stop people from believing what they want, nor should we. We do have a responsibility to restrict the ability to proclaim or act on those beliefs when those actions harm others either physically or psychologically or which aim to undermine society’s desirable ideals.
Lengthy but relevant story: A couple of years ago, I was semi-frequently performing stand up in NZ, when i ran into a comparable issue. I was out of town for a family event, and I heard that there was an open mic in a pub. I'd been running hot that week - relaxed, cracking jokes, MC'd the event to positive feedback. Reached out to the organiser. Got a spot. Hunky dory.
The show was interesting for a number of reasons, but the most eye watering was a young man who got up and spent about 4 of his 6 minutes telling edgy straight-from-4chan street jokes about the holocaust. I was offended, as were family members nearby. Some of my guests that evening had personal connection to those events than many could ever comprehend.
The MC did nothing about it. The producer did nothing about it. They just rolled on the show as if nobody had made jokes about genocide. The following acts said nothing. It was like a horror movie, where somebody is brutally murdered and none of the characters takes it in. Some of the audience walked out during the break. I had to ask my family to stay. The mood was dead, i went on, ignored the elephant in the room too. Nobody did well after that, and the night finished with a sour taste in all our mouths.
I think about that moment a lot. What material difference could I have made that night? This kid wasn't himself a nazi. He was being edgy in an environment where he clearly thought the audience would be receptive. Could I have gotten on stage and excoriated him? Maybe. But there had been 4 or 5 acts between us avoidingthe topic, it would have felt very barbed. Not to mention I was a guest there, in my late 20s, while he was a 19 year old beginner. I'm not sure if it's possible for there to be a power imbalance if the lesser party is a Nazi, but there was nobody saying a word. Many raised eyebrows, but no words. It had been a disaster from woah to go.
The only perspective I can lend is that I regret not doing anything, but 3 years later I still don't know what i should have done.
Hmmm... Have'nt we had this situation VERY recently in Aotearoa (Tauranga??) where the establishment did nothing? I say now what I said then - it is up to EVERYONE to "say something" but particularly the MC/establishment hosting. People up and leaving is a version of that, but ALL the following acts should have "said something", especially the one following. Doesn't need a long rant, just a short quip about it being obvious Hitler can rise from the dead and speak through people of today, so the previous act better watch out for all those killed in the Holocaust rising from the dead & coming for the Nazi sympathisers, or something more elegant that a stand-up comedian being a quick thinker might be able to fashion. Then each following act could do their own version at the start before their planned routine, and YOU would not have been out on a limb. Yes, perhaps you SHOULD have said something yourself, but haven't we learned that EVERYONE has to so that EVERYONE is seen as part of the majority and not setting themselves up to be picked on for retaliation? 🤷 In sum, it should not have been up to YOU... By the time it was your time the audience, management, other performers, should have addressed the situation and you would have known what to do? 👍🤔
That's a tough spot - it's so hard in the moment to go into that small quiet place where you can work out how to handle it. After 20 years of lecturing I still find it hard when someone is trading in 'power over' jokes, 'just saying' or 'whataboutthis', particularly when they ought to be aware of its effect on the audience. I got so tired of philosophy boys wanting to abstractly debate reproductive rights in classes without thought about the women in the class that I ban the topic outright in my political theory class, and ask anyone who wonders why to come and see me in office hours. The 4chan thing seems like that; people (like Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment) thinking they can go outside society's norms.
For this reason I have no problem with bans. People need guardrails to indicate what is appalling to other people - those guardrails can be debated and be moved, but free speech absolutists are suggesting that there ought to be no guardrails at all (or in this case, deciding porno is ok to be censored whereas hideous anti-semitism is not nice but ok to publish; mysogny much?). The doctrine Free speech is after all a doctrine that is supposed protect citizens from government, not the right to say anything at anytime about other people speech.
On Nazis', in "On Tyranny" by Timothy Snyder, there is a terrifying quote from an editorial in a German Jewish Newspaper from February 2, 1933, "We do not subscribe to the view that Mr. Hitler and his friends, now finally in possession of the power they have so long desired, will implement the proposals circulating in [Nazi newspapers]; they will not suddenly deprive German Jews of their constitutional rights, nor enclose them in ghettos, nor subject them to the jealous and murderous impulses of the mob. They cannot do this because a number of crucial factors hold powers in check … " Snyder notes that it took less than a year for all the German institutions to be overwhelmed and under the control of Nazis. (pages 22-3, location 135 of kindle edition)
Words count, they have effects. They make possible the worlds we inhabit, and provide boundaries on worlds we wish not to inhabit. Words that provided Nazi ideology created a world in which the holocaust could, and then did, exist. For Substack to have difficulty understanding the cause and effect while having qualms with the objectification of the body seems so bizarre as to render it being co-opted in the Arendt's banality of evil.
As with others David, I'd follow you wherever, and understand Substack operates in a very different commercial logic than my antipodean sensibility and political theory
Sorry for the essay. Your question is begs two of the key questions of the early 21st century 🤷🏽♂️ ie. (1) How do we stop enshittification (to borrow from Cory Doctorow) (2) how do we combat the democratic backsliding and rise of facism?
I think a slow clap that everyone can join in and/or someone shouting - heckling change the channel "you're" spoiling a good night out before walking out.