See the Slip

Substack is making a mistake.

Soon after I urged Substack to stand its ground on censorship to avoid the slippery slope, the media announced some concessions. NBC News:

The newsletter publisher Substack said Monday it had removed five publications that included incitements to violence, after weeks of pressure from writers who threatened to quit the platform over its refusal to remove Nazis and other white supremacists from its roster. 

Substack said that after a review, it had decided that the five publications had violated the company’s existing content rules, which prohibit content that incites violence based on protected classes.  

To be fair, Substack says it’s enforcing existing rules rather than caving to critics. And either way, these are token concessions:

According to Substack, Casey Newton, the editor of Platformer, sent Substack six potentially problematic publications for review Thursday evening, and later, Substack concluded that five of the six had violated its rules. 

The Substack co-founders said the five newsletters in question weren’t popular. 

“None of these publications had paid subscriptions enabled, and they account for about 100 active readers in total,” their statement said. 

But if you take the slippery slope seriously — as I do — anything that even remotely resembles a concession to the critics is dangerous.

Does this mean, as a reader privately asked me, that I’m actually worried about being kicked off Substack? My answer: Not imminently. That’s not how the slippery slope works. But over the course of ten years, I am indeed worried.

Is this just paranoid? I wish, because the slippery slope is already underway! From the same NBC story:

“If and when we become aware of other content that violates our guidelines, we will take appropriate action,” the company said in a statement signed by its three co-founders: Chris Best, Hamish McKenzie and Jairaj Sethi. 

They added: “We are actively working on more reporting tools that can be used to flag content that potentially violates our guidelines, and we will continue working on tools for user moderation so Substack users can set and refine the terms of their own experience on the platform.” 

Rest assured, these “reporting tools” will be overwhelmingly used by the woke, and no matter how much Substack panders to them, they’ll keep moving the goalposts of what merits “reporting.” They never planned to stop with a rounding error of literal Nazis.

Platformer reported Monday that there were many more than five or six extremist newsletters on Substack. 

“We’ve now reviewed dozens of active, monetized publications that advance violent ideologies, including anti-Semitism and the great replacement theory,” Platformer said. It added that Substack’s features related to recommendations and social networking meant that such fringe publications could grow quickly. 

As usual, Communists will not be treated like Nazis, apologists for Stalinism and Maoism will not be treated like Holocaust deniers, and cheerleaders for ongoing popular wars will not be accused of “inciting violence.” This is a power play, after all, not a philosophy seminar.

And what’s with this “based on protected classes” caveat?! You might as well announce, “Woke gurus decide who deserves protection, and who doesn’t.”

Is it possible that Substack’s token concessions will end there, and the whole problem will go away? Sure. But all of the other social media platforms tried soothing woke critics with token concessions too, and ended up handing their woke critics the keys to their kingdoms. Substack, why risk it?!

Another page from *Build, Baby, Build*, forthcoming in April!