Former Big Tech comms person here. I agree both the initial Substack messaging around this and the subsequent spin have been poor. But comms wouldn’t be the ones interpreting Substack’s policies and whether they were violated, or determining the what those policies would be in the first place. Comms can’t fix bad policy. And in 2024 there are no comms efforts capable of fixing a policy of “we’re ok with monetizing Nazis because FrEe sPeeCh.”
It seems pretty obvious to me that Substack underestimated the coordinated and sustained pushback from the community and thought they could wait it out. Hamish’s note had big [Founder voice] “all we need is to **explain** what we’re doing and then people will understand it!” energy that I’ve all too often seen bulldoze over comms people behind the scenes trying to get leaders to acknowledge their policy is bad and unsustainable. It was only when the brand damage became too great they had to adjust course, and then it gets cast as a comms/PR problem. But at its core it’s a leadership and policy problem.
Based on my own long observation of the dominant culture of Silicon Valley (by no means confined to the geographical region known as Silicon Valley), I suspect a major part of the problem is that they just don't want to think about it. Nazis are uncommon in Silicon Valley (fascists more broadly are somewhat more common), but the place is lousy with libertarians. The essence of libertarianism is a pretense that society is (or should be) a voluntary association of autonomous individuals. It follows that politics is (or should be) just a rhetorical game. It may be amusing from time to time, but having to take it seriously is a nuisance and a burden to be shouldered only when truly necessary (e.g., when threatened with a tax increase).
To be sure, libertarians have no monopoly on treating politics as if it were just a rhetorical game. Many affluent white people who don't call themselves libertarians do likewise. More than a few such people call themselves journalists.*
By the way, to this day, I refer to him - when I must refer to him - as Bretbug Stephens. Thanks for that.
Substack seems rather naive. This 'content' stuff shows it.
Off topic: But their actual business also has issues from most customer's perspectives. It doesn't scale if one has to subscribe to many columnists, not compared to a newspaper where I get all of these (plus more) together. If one columnist writes one article each week (there is no guarantee), and one pays $7 per month for that, each single column costs $1.75 to read. That is more expensive than an entire newspaper. It is like one has to subscribe to each individual journalist of a paper. So, this model works a bit, but as long as there are no affordable micropayments per column in the same range of about 1/40 of the cost of a newspaper, it is horrendously expensive and it will not scale as a business a people make decisions not so much on individual cases, but more on on patterns. The individual case here (if you're really interested in a single monetising writer) might be OK, the pattern (let's take out 10 subscriptions for 10 article writers) isn't. And people will (mostly?) decide to buy based on a pattern they see. Buying a very expensive lunch/latte as a rule is far too expensive, so the pattern is avoided by some. But doing that while on holiday or as a single separate treat is OK as it is not a pattern. Human intelligence is 90% 'speedy and efficient pattern execution'.
it feels like a year ago there was much more clarity around moderation/trust and safety at Substack: whoever runs the sub-site is responsible for moderating it, and Substack decides who can use their services according to whatever is in the ToS.
when they (and I guess I mean Hamish, I remember that interview) deployed the "Notes" feature during Twitter's implosion and then responded to "but what about moderation?" with a shrug, this kind of nonsense feels like it became a matter of time as a follow-on. an impressive level of foot-shooting.
I think it's important to note that the Nazis they announced they're kicking off the platform are all tiny little newsletters that aren't making them any money. They kept the ones they profit from.
I.e., this isn't them turning over a new leaf and trying to do better. It's them trying _again_ to distract people by saying/doing something performative while continuing to profit just as much from Nazis on their platform.
The unequivocal fact remains: Substack is perfectly OK with profiting from Nazism.
Former Big Tech comms person here. I agree both the initial Substack messaging around this and the subsequent spin have been poor. But comms wouldn’t be the ones interpreting Substack’s policies and whether they were violated, or determining the what those policies would be in the first place. Comms can’t fix bad policy. And in 2024 there are no comms efforts capable of fixing a policy of “we’re ok with monetizing Nazis because FrEe sPeeCh.”
It seems pretty obvious to me that Substack underestimated the coordinated and sustained pushback from the community and thought they could wait it out. Hamish’s note had big [Founder voice] “all we need is to **explain** what we’re doing and then people will understand it!” energy that I’ve all too often seen bulldoze over comms people behind the scenes trying to get leaders to acknowledge their policy is bad and unsustainable. It was only when the brand damage became too great they had to adjust course, and then it gets cast as a comms/PR problem. But at its core it’s a leadership and policy problem.
Based on my own long observation of the dominant culture of Silicon Valley (by no means confined to the geographical region known as Silicon Valley), I suspect a major part of the problem is that they just don't want to think about it. Nazis are uncommon in Silicon Valley (fascists more broadly are somewhat more common), but the place is lousy with libertarians. The essence of libertarianism is a pretense that society is (or should be) a voluntary association of autonomous individuals. It follows that politics is (or should be) just a rhetorical game. It may be amusing from time to time, but having to take it seriously is a nuisance and a burden to be shouldered only when truly necessary (e.g., when threatened with a tax increase).
To be sure, libertarians have no monopoly on treating politics as if it were just a rhetorical game. Many affluent white people who don't call themselves libertarians do likewise. More than a few such people call themselves journalists.*
By the way, to this day, I refer to him - when I must refer to him - as Bretbug Stephens. Thanks for that.
*Cf. https://splinternews.com/bipartisanship-means-i-dont-understand-what-politics-1796268741 .
Substack seems rather naive. This 'content' stuff shows it.
Off topic: But their actual business also has issues from most customer's perspectives. It doesn't scale if one has to subscribe to many columnists, not compared to a newspaper where I get all of these (plus more) together. If one columnist writes one article each week (there is no guarantee), and one pays $7 per month for that, each single column costs $1.75 to read. That is more expensive than an entire newspaper. It is like one has to subscribe to each individual journalist of a paper. So, this model works a bit, but as long as there are no affordable micropayments per column in the same range of about 1/40 of the cost of a newspaper, it is horrendously expensive and it will not scale as a business a people make decisions not so much on individual cases, but more on on patterns. The individual case here (if you're really interested in a single monetising writer) might be OK, the pattern (let's take out 10 subscriptions for 10 article writers) isn't. And people will (mostly?) decide to buy based on a pattern they see. Buying a very expensive lunch/latte as a rule is far too expensive, so the pattern is avoided by some. But doing that while on holiday or as a single separate treat is OK as it is not a pattern. Human intelligence is 90% 'speedy and efficient pattern execution'.
it feels like a year ago there was much more clarity around moderation/trust and safety at Substack: whoever runs the sub-site is responsible for moderating it, and Substack decides who can use their services according to whatever is in the ToS.
when they (and I guess I mean Hamish, I remember that interview) deployed the "Notes" feature during Twitter's implosion and then responded to "but what about moderation?" with a shrug, this kind of nonsense feels like it became a matter of time as a follow-on. an impressive level of foot-shooting.
This is one of those posts that's good enough I'm mad at the author because I wish I wrote it.
I think it's important to note that the Nazis they announced they're kicking off the platform are all tiny little newsletters that aren't making them any money. They kept the ones they profit from.
I.e., this isn't them turning over a new leaf and trying to do better. It's them trying _again_ to distract people by saying/doing something performative while continuing to profit just as much from Nazis on their platform.
The unequivocal fact remains: Substack is perfectly OK with profiting from Nazism.
Doesn't it just come down to arrogance? I've noticed that it's a feature, not a bug.