What if this Substack Nazi shit is all part of their plan... and not in the way we've all been worrying about?
By JD Goulet
Originally posted December 2023 on my now defunct blog on Substack
I know many of you may be blissfully unaware of the drama involving literal Nazis that has been unfolding on the Substack platform in recent weeks because you maybe only see my newsletters in your email and you don't use the app to read them or wade into the Notes social media feature that was added over the summer. So, I will recap and link a few pieces from other Substack authors who have written plenty of words about the situation below in case you need the tl;dr. Otherwise, you can skip to the section after the divider below.
There’s been much ado about something brewing for awhile now about the problematic lack of content moderation and consistency on Substack, but last month the journalist Jonathan M. Katz wrote an article in The Atlantic that called attention to the fact Substack has not only been allowing overtly Nazi writers (as in they use swastika and sonnenrad imagery and have titles that include the term “National Socialist”) to publish on Substack, but given them tools to flourish and monetize. They even platformed a prominent Nazi writer, Richard Hanania, on their podcast, The Active Voice, who Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie painted as an “enlightened centrist” (he's not), effectively lurching the Overton Window much further to the right.
Then there were a couple of open letters that a bunch of us Substackers signed onto, curiously published in the following order:
- Substack shouldn't decide what we read (written by The Elysian's Elle Griffin, more on her in a sec…)
and
- Substackers Against Nazis (coordinated by Marisa Kabas of The Handbasket and since signed onto and written about by well over 200 writers).
The “Substack shouldn't decide what we read” letter penned by yes, you can build a utopia on the ongoing suffering and subjugation of others writer, Elle (who has since paywalled the comments section in which I engaged with her to challenge her on this disingenuous, and dare I say, Nazi-esque idea), seemed, among other things, like an attempt to get ahead of and control the narrative of the other letter that would be published the following day.
Photo by ahmad kanbar on Unsplash
In the letter I signed onto, Substackers Against Nazis, we were merely seeking an explanation from the co-founders for how they could justify actively promoting Nazis, and while the co-founders remained completely silent for about two weeks apart from pointing media inquirers to Elle’s letter, Notes erupted in controversy over the issue. Then, Hamish finally issued the kind of response most of us figured was coming eventually, which was to say he made lame excuses for allowing Nazis, blah blah blah free speech blah blah blah.
Just a few of the amazing things that I’ve seen written about this whole issue can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, and there are many more. Even The New York Times has written about it (for the record, I’m not fan of NYT, but there’s no denying they are the paper of record in the US). And it has also caught the attention of some prominent tech publications, like TechPolicy.press and Germany’s Heise Online (more on that below).
And that's the end of the tl;dr.
For those of you who skipped down to this section, I left off above with the weaksauce response from Hamish about Substack's commitment to free speech yada yada yada. Welcome back.
First off, let me address the elephant in the room that so much of the American-centric discussion misses. Substack is an international platform and will eventually have to act like it if they want to grow, or you know, succeed in capitalism. As I pointed out previously on Substack Notes:
I'm calling it now. If Substack wants to grow, they will absolutely have to implement moderation and ban hate speech and Nazis. As I've said a few times now, Substack will eventually fall into the crosshairs of the EU's Digital Services Act, which will fine them out of existence if they don't. You listening now, Hamish? Wanna become a business school's case study on how to ruin a business with pig-headed ignorance?
Don't fuck with people who already went through a horrific war over this shit. Nazis lost. There's no argument for allowing their ideas to circulate again. Especially not here in Europe. title Paragraph below, translated:
“Freedom of expression has limits, for example in the event of insult and slander – also in the trivialisation of the Nazi era. In addition to the Network Transposition Act (NetzDG) in Germany, the DSA regulates the handling of illegal content on the Internet in the EU. Special rules apply to social networks with a very long reach, so-called VLOPs (Very Large Online Platforms).”
That paragraph quoted above is from the previously mentioned German tech publication, Heise Online. Substack might not yet be a big enough player, but growth is a necessity under the rules of the game they are playing and so they will eventually have to answer to the European Union if they want to operate there.
And regarding Hamish's disingenuous claim to be nobly upholding free speech (over which laws vary widely between the US, EU, and other parts of the world), I've previously warned that I think there is an intentional strategy by Big Tech power players being deployed to blur the line between what is the government's lane and what is their business’ lane.
So here's the thing folks… These techno-optimist bros are intentionally blurring the line between what's considered business's lane and government's lane. This is because they want to usurp the role of government and are largely already there. They are getting everyone's minds primed to think it's normal for business to claim responsibility for the government's roles and responsibilities.
Now, ask yourself how you feel about living in the United Corporations of America, run by people like McKenzie, Musk, Bezos, Thiel, and Zuckerberg.
The attempts to break the U.S. government may not be a collusion, but they could certainly be considered an opportunity.
“McKenzie continues the blurring by suggesting that being platformed by private actors is a civil right: “We believe that supporting individual rights and civil liberties while subjecting ideas to open discourse is the best way to strip bad ideas of their power. We are committed to upholding and protecting freedom of expression, even when it hurts.” That’s fine, but nobody has the individual right, civil liberty, or freedom of expression to be on Substack if Substack doesn’t want them there. In fact that’s part of Substack’s freedom of expression and civil liberties — to build the type of community it wants, that expresses its values. If Substack’s values are “we publish everybody” (sort of, as noted below) that’s their right, but a different approach doesn’t reflect a lack of support for freedom of expression. McKenzie is begging the question — assuming his premise that support of freedom of expression requires Substack to accept Nazis, not just for the government to refrain from suppressing Nazis.” Paragraph quoted from "Substack Has A Nazi Opportunity" by Ken White
JD Goulet, 21 December 2023 (read full quoted passage on Substack Notes)
I think these techno-feudalists aim to get rid of government altogether because they think they should be the ones running society. No really, just trust us, brah, ya gotta just have faith in our Master Plan! Seriously, read this piece by tech critic Paris Marx on the religion of techno-optimism and the manifesto written by Marc Andreessen, one of the major Silicon Valley venture capitalist financial backers of this platform. (And if that isn’t enough to convince you, read basically anything else Paris writes about the tech billionaires’ failed promises and increasing desperation to justify their existence. It’s good and super important stuff!)
I think getting people confused about whose role and responsibility it is to make and enforce the law, make monetary policy and money itself, and even make decisions in international warfare is all part of their smoothbrain plan. Anyone who has followed me long enough here knows I’m not exactly a fan of what most governments are doing these days, but that doesn’t mean I think unelected oligarchs like Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, and Thiel would be better at running the show. Frankly, their various ideologies are terrifying to me. The United Corporations of America should absolutely not be something we aspire to.
I had an unsettling realization unfold over the last few days that the enabling of Nazis on Substack is intentional, just not for the reasons I originally suspected.
A friend of mine in academia said something to me last week that was totally unrelated to this “Substack has a Nazi problem” topic that I began to realize is probably related after all. He basically said that he was taking his academic research into the corporate realm because unlike academia with its rigorous standards that just slow the process of research down while you are made to comply with tedious bottlenecks like “consent” and “ethics” rules, there are no such barriers on the business R&D side because it's not considered experimenting anymore, it's just marketing research. And marketing research doesn't have to concern itself with pesky roadblocks like consent and ethics. Pffft.
So, that’s how I arrived at thinking about this Nazi nonsense from a different angle… If I was an evil techbro, drunk with power, money, and ego, and I had an unwavering sense of certainty in the central role my fellow broclub’s tech creations will play in the future of humanity and getting rid of the biggest cockblock of them all, government with its regulation, and a Machiavellian belief that the ends justify the means if utopia (for survivors) lies on the other side of unspeakable horrors, I would create Substack.
I would understand that the Language Learning Models need not only massive quantities of data in their training process, but that they will need to be taught how to reason and problem solve if they will ever be capable of being more than oversized and overhyped predictive text generators.
I, being clever and opportunistic if not very conscientious, would see the perfect solution would be to create a new kind of LLM training ground, but one that is more sneaky than those other LLM training grounds which let pesky things like Trust & Safety (and consent and ethics) stand in their way.
I would be oh so clever… oh so sneaky. I would attract writers and readers to be my unknowing (and largely uncompensated) trainers. I would even pay a few of the most well known writers and give them editors and I’d make the platform free to use for everyone and not have any ads and claim I just really, really care about supporting writing and discourse and helping people maybe even earn a living as a writer if they are good enough because most of these rubes still believe in the Myth of Meritocracy. Hah hah!
But I know that to train the LLMs how to reason and problem solve, I need more than writers writing ordinary, uncontroversial things. I need people arguing over something really controversial, like even the most controversial. Something so argument inducing and divisive that to even suggest it's still a controversial topic worth debating in the first place is itself controversial. A perfect Scissor statement experiment.
So I, evil techbro that I am, would welcome Nazis to the platform, both overt and covert. I'd be stealthy about it at first so that I can recruit plenty of non-Nazis to the experiment platform. I obviously cannot interfere with my experiment free speech, so I will stay as silent as possible while things play out and definitely won't tamper with the experiment’s data moderate the conversations.
Sure, actual people will probably get hurt, wars may even be fought, but as one of our favorite tools writers Elle Griffith has already explained, utopias are still utopias, even when they are built on the mass suffering of others.
But am not an evil techbro, so what do I know?
I'm going to end this with another question to Hamish McKenzie (not that I anticipate a response based on how cagey he was over answering about platforming Nazis) [and indeed, he did ignore me]. If we writers toggle this switch indicating we want to block AI tools that respect this setting from using our published content to train their models, does Substack itself respect us, or nah? Are we human beings all just pawns in your competition to pwn your tech oligarch competitor bros at Microsoft and Google?
What is it to a billionaire to sacrifice so many of us so they can rule over their scorched wasteland? Who will be left to hang the banner that reads, “Welcome to Utopia!”
P.S. You know who else liked to experiment on people against their will even when it meant their pain, suffering, and death because it furthered their ideological cause? Nazis. Wanna support my writing without giving a cut to Nazis? Scroll down and select the big yellow button at the bottom of this essay.
P.S.S. Interested in reading more about the dangers of Big Tech's grip on society? Here are two other essays I've written—one about LinkedIn and another about Substack.
- Obey the Technofash, or else: On living as an unemployed pariah after being permanently banned from LinkedIn and why this should concern everyone
- Friends don’t let friends use Substack: The moral case and the business case for not hosting your content at the Nazi-bar
JD Goulet (they/she) is an American-born former corporate writer/editor & learning product designer, political leader, Planned Parenthood board member, and secular movement leader. Throughout her career, she has been an educator and champion for inclusion and wellbeing, especially at the intersection of disability, neurodiversity, sexuality, gender, and class. Their bylines appear in Harvard Business Review, Tumbleweird Magazine, Solarpunk Stories, and various regional publications. She lives in Portugal with her wife and two dogs.
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