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Mike Masnick ✅I had some thoughts about @nilay_patel's interview with Substack's Chris Best.
Kev@mmasnick @nilay_patel Nazis don't generate a lot of revenue but content moderation is as expensive af.
Ernie Smith@mmasnick @nilay_patel Not only that, but it appears to have a pretty significant security gap. Check out this thing I just caught: https://substack.com/profile/556619-ernie-smith/note/c-14698819
Ernie Smith on Substack
Quick point of comment for @Substack team: Currently, it is possible for your email to get added to a list without being asked because there is no double opt-in verification. I could see a big fish in the pond getting added to random Substacks, leading to an essential “force-follow” situation where you are being pulled in on spam, phishing threats, or explicit material that you did not directly consent to. This could turn into a trolling mechanism—end users with public email addresses could find themselves having problematic or triggering materials in their “Subscribed” feed. I specifically ran into something like this a few hours ago when I found myself receiving notes from a list that I did not remember signing up for. By attaching a social network to an email service, there is a real, significant threat of bad actors lowering the quality of the Substack Notes experience. What plans do you have to manage this?
Ben EvansHow do you know that substance isn't an example of the Nazis building their own bar?
@Benevans @nilay_patel the larger post addresses that point.
Flittermouse 🔞🐩 
@mmasnick @nilay_patel
Thank you for that. There is such widespread confusion over free speech, that our right (and one might say, duty) to avoid amplifying harmful speech is easily forgotten. It's the most misunderstood element. "Cancel culture" is often merely the exercise of free speech.
Thank you for that. There is such widespread confusion over free speech, that our right (and one might say, duty) to avoid amplifying harmful speech is easily forgotten. It's the most misunderstood element. "Cancel culture" is often merely the exercise of free speech.
Darrel PlantThe line I liked was "And literally, we launched this thing one day ago. We’re going to have to figure a lot of this stuff out."
They spent some time putting this together and thinking about its marketing, processes, etc. so Substack Notes didn't just spring out of Best's head like Athena overnight without any time to FIGURE A LOT OF THIS STUFF OUT. My guess is that what they figured out was they were going to deliberately ignore it.
Peter Butler@darrelplant @mmasnick @nilay_patel I caught that too, and it was very telling. You should figure out the answer to that question *before* you launch
@peterbutler @mmasnick @nilay_patel
All the work even software companies put into product development and these guys are more than happy to either lie about not bothering to plan or they're admitting they have the strategic acumen of Twitter-era Elon.
Erich V@darrelplant @mmasnick @nilay_patel
“We’re out here for fawning attention not for critical appraisal!”
Les OrchardYeah, "move fast and break things" is a tenet of our industry that I really wish would die. But, I'm unclear how to kill it.
The market & investors reward the folks who get out there first & early and externalize as much risk & cost as possible to everyone but themselves. There's little profit & hype in holding back until you get it right.
(Well, I guess Apple can kind of get away with that for gadgets, but that's a different story)
Doctor Biobrain@mmasnick Yeah. It's pathetic how free speechers refuse to explicitly say what they believe, like they think it's a trap that makes their wise actions seem wrong.
Back when Colbert first said reality had a liberal bias, it was mainly about Bushies. Now it's a core belief among all rightwingers. And if they lie and deflect, it's our fault for asking them the wrong questions.
Ken White@mmasnick @nilay_patel Yeah, I really don’t get the refusal to answer the question.
Proxima Centauri
@Popehat @mmasnick @nilay_patel part of it's brain-freeze, some of it is poor media training (or none) but mainly it's a tech bro trick where they think if they say nothing, the interviewer will fill the void to kill the dead air.
Fortunately Mister Patel - Scott Pilgrim Reference - is an experienced, smart interviewer and knows how to fuck.
Cynthia Morse Linton
Justin Schuh@Popehat @mmasnick @nilay_patel I feel like I get it. From my own experience the worst thing that can come out of this kind of interview is to get pinned down saying something that turns into a really bad headline. So, he just stuck to the canned line that the lawyers and PR cooked up.
The thing is that it's really not very hard to avoid getting pinned down without completely faceplanting like he did. But that would require being at least somewhat versed in trust and safety concerns, and being able to point to some actual efforts Substack is making in that space. IMHO the complete failure at that is why this interview was so bad. Because it reinforces all the other evidence that Substack is simply ignoring trust and safety almost entirely as a concern.
Ian McKellar@jschuh @Popehat @mmasnick @nilay_patel
What I don't understand is why the PR team & lawyers haven't had a set of answers cooked up for this question literally years ago. This is an obvious question that any half good journalist will ask anyone launching a new publishing / social media company.
What I don't understand is why the PR team & lawyers haven't had a set of answers cooked up for this question literally years ago. This is an obvious question that any half good journalist will ask anyone launching a new publishing / social media company.
@ian @Popehat @mmasnick @nilay_patel Because lawyers and PR can't cook up a reasonable set of responses in a vacuum. They need to be informed by at least some semblance of a trust and safety team. That's why I interpret the years of Substack failing so miserably at this to mean that for all intents and purposes they simply don't have a trust & safety team.
Katherine Derbyshire@jschuh @ian @Popehat @mmasnick @nilay_patel Exactly. The correct answer is something like “We’re not going to be the Nazi bar. Period. And we’ll need to look at our TOS to see the best way to ensure that. But the bottom line is that we’re not a platform for Nazis.” Refusal to come out and say that? Very bad look.
@kewms @jschuh @Popehat @mmasnick @nilay_patel
The problem for an American company is that overt racism is not only the editorial line of major mainstream media organizations, but also the platform of one of the two major parties. By saying "we're not going to be the Nazi bar" you're limiting your audience and revenue drastically. They don't want to have to make that call. Unfortunately for them, they've chosen a business where they have to make that call.
The problem for an American company is that overt racism is not only the editorial line of major mainstream media organizations, but also the platform of one of the two major parties. By saying "we're not going to be the Nazi bar" you're limiting your audience and revenue drastically. They don't want to have to make that call. Unfortunately for them, they've chosen a business where they have to make that call.
@ian @jschuh @Popehat @mmasnick @nilay_patel Yes, exactly. If you're going to open a bar, you have to decide whether to serve Nazis.
Dirk HohndelI hear that in some leftist / woke circles there is still some remaining bad connotation to being a "proud Nazi"...
Maybe that's why he isn't just openly saying this... To pander to that fringe part of society that thinks being a Nazi is... you know... BAD?
Nik@Popehat @mmasnick @nilay_patel I read the transcript. Refusing to answer the question could easily be "we have a team of people who moderate. I don't have our ToS in front of me. I'm not going to make our moderation team's job harder by making stuff up on the fly in the middle of the interview".
Elsewhere in the interview he said that Notes is covered by their ToS, and the interviewer said that his hypothetical would be banned by the ToS.
@Popehat @mmasnick @nilay_patel the story might be "Substack's ToS is not strong enough" or "Substack do not enforce their ToS".
But as far as I can see, no one's making that claim.
So if their ToS is strong enough, and they do enforce it, this doesn't seem to be much more than a CEO who needs much better media training and briefing.
Michael@nikclayton @Popehat @mmasnick @nilay_patel he's the fucking CEO, and "will you be welcoming to Nazis" shouldn't be a hard fucking question to answer. If you refuse to answer that question, the answer is "yes".
AdamChris Best isn't getting enough credit for letting us know to abandon the platform *before* anyone adopts it. It's actually super considerate.
Jonathan Mull
Qwijib0@mmasnick afaik that's a bot reposter account, @nilaypatel is probably him, maybe if we tag him he'll start using it more
Greg Bell
SHODAN 
@mmasnick Said it earlier in another post but can we at least learn from Twitter where from it's early days it was seemingly clear as day it never had any intention of real content moderation but we kept with it even as the user experience became dire as a result. I don't have high hopes of people learning to be honest.
ThomasAPowell@mmasnick @nilay_patel The full interview transcript reads like a light weight grifter tech bro who has no business in the role he is in. Yes indeed very bad ethics, but also if this interview is indicative he is completely out of his depth.
hammancheez@mmasnick @nilay_patel all these neu-twitters are finding out content moderation is a motherfucker like it wasn't an obvious thing you have to deal with (not that being obvious makes it EASY)
Diligence JonesYou're right; content moderation hasn't eliminated the existence of certain (terrible) ideas.
But de-platforming hate speech (particularly white supremacist, white nationalist speech) can certainly narrow that channel significantly so that those groups/people find it hard to identify each other, mobilize, and organize their terribleness.
Well, thanks to the free speech tech bros, that's no longer the case, and these f*cked up groups are connecting + mobilizing more effectively than they should be.
Golf clap to these platforms, I guess?
william.maggosso is Nilay actually using this account?
realcaseyrollins ✝️@wjmaggos @mmasnick @nilay_patel No, it’s a bot.
@realcaseyrollins @mmasnick @nilay_patel
that's my impression too but I do believe he's here somewhere.
Dan Shick@mmasnick @nilay_patel i was waiting all day for this! thank you for the great article, Mike, and for the excellent interview, Nilay!
Nihl L'AmasWaiter, there's a nazi sitting next to me.
"Would sir like to be moved to the non-nazi section? We also offer complimentary ear muffs if you would like to control your experience."
Great solution, Chris.
Derek Powazek 🐐
Abdulla77@mmasnick @nilay_patel after seeing that interview, I’m honestly disappointed at Best and at what Substack has become. Best’s reactions speaks volumes.
Tim Hwang@mmasnick We gotta do a proper catchup sometime
Glitch (over count 1999)@mmasnick @nilay_patel even dang from the orange "you should be polite to the nazis" site has a straightforward answer that that sort of overt racism isn't welcome.
wow that is weasely.
wow that is weasely.
Grandma Bates@mmasnick @nilay_patel The idea that running a server is infrastructure, and infrastructure should not be used to censor is a view so lacking in nuance as to sound like a bad joke, but it is coming from someone trying to create an influential source for the exchange of news and ideas.
CautionWIP 🎃+🇨🇦+🏳️🌈= 
@mmasnick Someone correct me if they think I’m being too fussy, but did he actually confirm they’ve stopped their program of paying certain hate-promoting creators to use the service to draw people in? The exact quote when he was asked that whether that was ongoing (in a far more politic manner, to be sure) was “No. Not really.” Not really sounds like a bit of a qualifier to me..
Morten Bay@mmasnick @nilay_patel "I'm not going to get into content moderation". YOU RUN A CONTENT PLATFORM!
tlDrew@mmasnick @nilay_patel I asked a substack writer what they thought about the substack’s social features. The reply: “As the author, I have full control over moderation.” The ‘full control’ was in response to my reference to comments and chats.
I wonder if they are outsourcing notes moderation to authors? requiring/asking them to moderate if they post or respond. Market approach~> it seems the only downside would be losing paid subscribers. What happens when 2 authors interact?
Ízaro
Sloan Studio@mmasnick @nilay_patel The damage done to SubStack by the CEO in one interview is pretty amazing. These weren't surprising questions, Nilay simply didn't let him slide out of it.
Dianne Hackborn@mmasnick Really struck by: "I think we’ve run, in my estimation over the past five years, however long it’s been, a grand experiment in the idea that pervasive censorship successfully combats ideas that the owners of the platforms don’t like. And my read is that that hasn’t actually worked."
I guess he is saying in the last 5 years content moderation got more aggressive and made it worse, but I think you should compare to pre-social media publishers with much more content moderation.
Erik Haugen@mmasnick Is it the Nazi Bar? Or is the point that it is inevitable and will be shortly?
Experiencer (Mastodon)@mmasnick @nilay_patel and I definitely didn't make an account a few weeks prior
It's easier discovery than trying to do GitHub pages or anything
svenh@mmasnick @nilay_patel As Nilay once said about Elon when he bought Twitter. "Welcome to Hell"...
Janne Ojaniemi@mmasnick @nilay_patel they want to “maximize freedom” in the society, but you can’t do that for everybody. If they maximize freedom for Nazis they automatically reduce it for everybody who is not a Nazi. They need to ask themselves whose freedom they want to maximize.
@mmasnick @nilay_patel Saw this yesterday when searching for Substack Notes on the App Store.
dpg“Nazi Bar” doesn’t seem a little hyperbolic? Chris Best clearly avoided “gotcha” questions and it’s no wonder when he’s derided as a literal nazi.
@dpg read the story. I didn't say he was a nazi.
> Say it. Say that you’re the Nazi bar and you’re proud of it.
My mistake. He’s merely the proprietor of a Nazi Bar.
My mistake. He’s merely the proprietor of a Nazi Bar.
@dpg again, read the story. I'm saying that if you do this, that is the reputation much of the world will put on you. As seems to be happening.