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Substack co-founder says “we don’t like or condone bigotry,” doesn’t explain how it will be moderated on Substack Notes

“Final week, we caught some warmth after Chris didn’t settle for the phrases of a query from a podcast interviewer about how Substack will deal with bigoted speech on Notes,” McKenzie stated. “It got here throughout poorly and a few folks sternly criticized us for our naivety whereas others puzzled how we’d discourage dangerous behaviors and content material on Notes. We want that interview had gone higher and that Chris had extra clearly represented our place in that second, and we remorse inflicting any alarm for individuals who care about Substack and the way the platform is evolving. We messed that up. And simply in case anybody is ever in any doubt: we don’t like or condone bigotry in any type.” (Emphasis ours.)

However McKenzie nonetheless doesn’t precisely specify how that bigotry will likely be moderated on Notes or how Notes moderation will evaluate to Substack publication insurance policies. As a substitute, like Greatest in his Decoder interview, McKenzie questions the “default assumption that aggressive content material moderation is the reply to the issues it’s supposed to unravel.” He argues that regardless of having giant content material moderation groups, Fb, Instagram, and Twitter haven’t lowered bigotry or solved issues about misinformation.

Substack’s declare is that it may possibly resolve these issues by utilizing a distinct enterprise mannequin targeted on paying writers as a substitute of “consideration that’s harvested by algorithms” for adverts. “We give communities on Substack the instruments to ascertain their very own norms and set their very own phrases of engagement slightly than have all that handed all the way down to them by a government,” McKenzie says. (This sounds quite a bit like Reddit’s coverage of letting folks run their very own moderated subreddits, though Reddit remains to be largely ad-supported.)

Proper now, these instruments are nonetheless of their early phases. Notes lets folks block and conceal customers and delete replies, and McKenzie stated Substack is experimenting with methods to restrict replies to subscribers. And sooner or later, “we’ll design Notes in order that customers can outline the precise phrases of engagement of their group as soon as, or solely often,” McKenzie stated.

McKenzie additionally acknowledges that Substack might need to make modifications alongside the best way. “The reality is that we all know Notes is a brand new house, and that it has some essential variations from the core Substack platform that individuals have come to know during the last 5 years,” he writes. “We absolutely count on to need to adapt our content material moderation insurance policies and strategy because the platform evolves.”

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