I’m just starting to read this. I wanted to jump in and say that as far as I’ve seen you are the only substack writer speaking up for free speech. At length, at least. @popehat (ken white) is in a different category as he regularly writes and podcasts about it.
I appreciate your taking this stand. It’s surprising to me that free speech doesn’t seem to have too many defenders on here; maybe I shouldn’t be surprised as it never seems to. But these days it’s even more in retreat than usual.
If free speech has little to teach private parties then who is the government actor in the seminal First Amendment case NYTimes v. Sullivan?
More broadly, I found the Atlantic article a little naive. Substack doesn’t have a Nazi problem. Our society has a Nazi problem. Substack is doing great given the society it’s stuck in.
Media reaction after Trump’s election followed by Covid hysteria mind-fucked a lot of people into believing censorship is a moral necessity. And an entire generation is growing up with this belief as a standard, acceptable position. I’m sad to say I think this is the road we’re going down from now on.
I think free speech is vital, and I liked your post very much. As you note, there are time-tested narrow constraints on free speech.
As for Substack, I have not encountered any "speech" that I could not easily accommodate.
In any case, the only true test of one's fidelity to free speech comes when you find the speech to be repugnant. I have not been subjected to that test on Substack.
However, I do not know the answer to the following question.
If on a social media platform, there's clear incitement to violence, what is the social media platform's proper responsibility? To judge that it violates the norms of constitutionally protected free speech and censor it? To report it to he government? Both? Neither?
Free Speech maximalism doesn't harken to the constitution tho. Throughout the 19th century there were blasphemy and obscenity laws that were thought at the time to be constitutional. It's only in the mid 20th century that the court adopted a maximalist position. I mean I agree with it! But it's not totally historical to call it our country's founding principle or to say that restraints on speech are incompatible with liberal democracy
This is an elegant, thought-provoking piece of writing. The idealism required to uphold true freedom is something most of us mere mortals are incapable of because it demands that we, at times must hold two violently opposing ideas in our head at the same time.
There are a few rare moments where we have the opportunity to see up, close the power of free speech in action. During the Pride celebration, a couple of months back, a group of zealot religious types stood in my front yard across from Piedmont Park with megaphones and signs espousing a variety of hateful things about the LGBTQ community. My heart hurt, and my blood pressure rose. I have a trans daughter.
An hour later, a group twice as big gathered on the opposite side of the street holding nothing but large handmade flowers. From a large set of speakers, they blasted a playlist of music that celebrates love and queerness.
Within 10 minutes, the holy assembly of haters disbanded. No one was hurt. No one was arrested.
Glad you're leaning into this. There is a whole side conversation that I won't get into about the limitations on academic freedom in an increasingly corporatized and liability-averse culture of higher ed. The fact that tenure was ever thought necessary perhaps speaks to how complicated free speech has been in practice.
I've scanned the comments, and I don't see this issue raised. But perhaps it has been broached in your conversation on Notes. Simply, it's the difference between drawing income from offensive sources and creating an environment in which those groups can freely express their own self-funded views. We would find it politically questionable if a candidate drew campaign funds from the KKK, and this is the ethical knot that I think Substack has to untangle if they provide a platform for white supremacists who paywall content and thus kick back a portion of their earnings to Substack. Perhaps that was always true of television networks, as well, but it seems a little more direct and personal in this case. As Timothy Burke has said quite well, Substack is probably trying to dodge a lot of expensive overhead by backing away from content moderation, not necessarily taking a principled stance on the issue: https://timothyburke.substack.com/p/and-now-a-word-about-your-sponsor. But I think it's fair for people to expect the top brass to have a principled stance and to articulate it clearly, which they've struggled to do.
I'm not sure the HBO revolution was a win for free speech. Sure, it was a win for gripping storytelling. But it's not so easy to elide the need for some kind of content moderation for minors. As a father of three, I've never felt that I needed to coddle my kids, but there are a lot of adult topics that I don't think they should have to confront involuntarily at, say, age 7 or 10. Has the profit-driven (and sometimes craft-driven) renaissance in TV been a net positive for American culture? I don't think there's an obvious answer to that, and don't hear me making a case for tepid content or for censorship, necessarily. But the "free speech is simple" argument glosses over the countless decisions that parents make, that teachers make, and that I once made as director of a first-year seminar to exercise a certain discretion about content that is a form of moderation but not necessarily a censorious one. That, to me, feels quite distinct from the debate about moderation of content on Substack, where it's not the opinion so much as revenue collected discreetly from those authors and readers that poses the real ethical conundrum.
The FCC wanted to keep things under control so much that they shot the networks in their feet. If content regulation had been looser there, then perhaps they would still have their near-monopoly.
The most controversial shows in the network period didn't get on their without a fight. Norman Lear fought tooth and nail to get his realistic sitcoms on the air as they were, and eventually got his wish.
First observation: who in their right mind thinks an article titled "Substack has a Nazi Problem" is anything but bad faith?
Second observation: timing is everything. Coming as this does after the smear attempt of Russell Brand and Musk telling advertisers to go fuck themselves - and, most importantly, before 2024 - it was only a matter of time before the powers that be tried to "do something" about Substack. It doesn't matter if there are Nazis here or not. Substack's allowance of free speech is a threat. Sadly, I think a lot of people who benefit from the free speech of Substack will be more than willing to stab it in the back and support censorship. For the cause, of course.
And third "observation:" long live the First Amendment!
Doesn’t the right of “free speech” focus solely on the individual’s right to avoid direct government interference with speech? I mean, I don’t feel like I have a right to go onto someone’s property and call them whatever I want without being evicted from the premises. We’ve had plenty of laws that restrict speech; for instance, no matter my opinion, I can’t go around saying that John down the street is a pedophile and avoid the consequences of a libel suit, no matter how much I truly believe it. A newspaper isn’t bound by law to print every letter to the editor it receives. I don’t understand why “free speech” has much to do with social media, which are inherently advertising platforms, not public debate mechanisms. Reach is expressly NOT PROMISED by these platforms. In fact, just the opposite is true—they work extra hard to algorithmically serve you content whether you want it or not because, at their heart, they charge for reach (again, they only make money via ads!). If they were ever to be considered “public squares,” then they couldn’t accept ads for placement or reach because that’s the opposite definition of a public square. These are simply media companies that have tricked users into providing free content (originally) under the guise of “exposure” and possible virality in an attempt to sell ad dollars against their attention. They don’t connect users as a core purpose; they connect advertisers with users...again, that’s how they make the money that pays for the service. The fact that journalists and public figures started using them was simply because they misassumed what this medium was about. Social media is simply a letters to the editors section without anyone to curate what gets printed.
You said everything so simply and astutely. I only want to add I was born in a post Soviet country and my family lived through the horrors that communism created. We immigrated to North America to be free. Never did we think our freedoms would be stifled. It is kind of disconcerting how not far from 1984 our society is becoming, but I am grateful for freedom fighters speaking out and fighting it in courts and people waking up and making changes to prevent things like censorship. Censoring one thing is a slippery slope to all of us being silenced eventually.
Excellent. Absolutely true. Free speech has been pushed around pretty badly the past 5-7 years. The rash illiberalism of Trump created an equally noxious 'Woke' illiberal reaction on the fringe left. People love to say that free speech only relates to the public sphere; private social media companies aren't held to the same standard and can create their own moderation policies. True, technically. But there's no denying the creation of a censorious environment, and that's just as anti-democratic and bad for society. A big concern from my perspective also is: Who gets to decide what is 'racist' or what is 'conspiracy'? Fringe lefties are now often pro-Hamas; many of these people claim that the IDF attacked their own people on purpose to have an excuse to destroy Gaza. They're also rabidly antisemitiic. Both sides are filled with absurd claims; look no further than Trump's election denial on the one hand, and the 1619 Project on the other. Conspiracy galore on both!
What's my point? Free speech must stand for everyone and consistently--with rare and minor exceptions in cases of actual calls to violence--or what's the point? If you say certain views can't be voiced you've lost the plot.
Dems and social media companies tried to silence dissenting Covid claims in 2020. But many claims about Covid on the left turned out to be wrong, and some on the other side turned out to be right. So what does that tell you? When you've got one side claiming only *they* have the right to speak, that's cultural authoritarianism. Full stop.
One big difference that I've noticed migrating here from Twitter & WordPress, is there are fewer obnoxious people. The people who wish that my cancer will consume me or that my children will die in a road traffic accident or who just want to reply to everyone with something rude; those people don't seem to have come to Substack.
I find it easy to ignore people with obnoxious politics but the ones who wish me dead are harder to ignore. Let's hope those people don't find us here but, if they do, I hope Substack has a plan for dealing with them.
Hatchet job is right. Katz found what he was looking to find. From his posts on Notes, it was pretty obvious he came to Substack assuming he was entering a place filled with hate and bigotry and right-wing extremism and then went looking for examples that fit his narrative. The only surprising thing about this Atlantic piece is that the “traditional gatekeepers” never learn. Every couple years there are a few more hit pieces written at places like the Atlantic, NY Magazine, Columbia Journalism Review, bemoaning the “laissez faire approach” of Substack. It’s clear the thing they really care about is that Substack is a bit of a threat to their model and they hate the thought of anything they can’t control.
Sure, if you have free speech, that means some Nazis are going to speak freely. See, Skokie Illinois. For that matter, far left extremists will, too. The case for free speech isn’t that it doesn’t result in some extreme speech. It’s that the alternative (censorship) is worse.
Substack is, of course, a business and they do own the pixels we write on, Sam. None of us have a right to be here. That said, I very much like their free speech policy and it’s one of the things that drew me to Substack in the first place. Thanks for writing this defense/explainer.
I’m just starting to read this. I wanted to jump in and say that as far as I’ve seen you are the only substack writer speaking up for free speech. At length, at least. @popehat (ken white) is in a different category as he regularly writes and podcasts about it.
I appreciate your taking this stand. It’s surprising to me that free speech doesn’t seem to have too many defenders on here; maybe I shouldn’t be surprised as it never seems to. But these days it’s even more in retreat than usual.
If free speech has little to teach private parties then who is the government actor in the seminal First Amendment case NYTimes v. Sullivan?
More broadly, I found the Atlantic article a little naive. Substack doesn’t have a Nazi problem. Our society has a Nazi problem. Substack is doing great given the society it’s stuck in.
Media reaction after Trump’s election followed by Covid hysteria mind-fucked a lot of people into believing censorship is a moral necessity. And an entire generation is growing up with this belief as a standard, acceptable position. I’m sad to say I think this is the road we’re going down from now on.
I think free speech is vital, and I liked your post very much. As you note, there are time-tested narrow constraints on free speech.
As for Substack, I have not encountered any "speech" that I could not easily accommodate.
In any case, the only true test of one's fidelity to free speech comes when you find the speech to be repugnant. I have not been subjected to that test on Substack.
However, I do not know the answer to the following question.
If on a social media platform, there's clear incitement to violence, what is the social media platform's proper responsibility? To judge that it violates the norms of constitutionally protected free speech and censor it? To report it to he government? Both? Neither?
Free Speech maximalism doesn't harken to the constitution tho. Throughout the 19th century there were blasphemy and obscenity laws that were thought at the time to be constitutional. It's only in the mid 20th century that the court adopted a maximalist position. I mean I agree with it! But it's not totally historical to call it our country's founding principle or to say that restraints on speech are incompatible with liberal democracy
This is an elegant, thought-provoking piece of writing. The idealism required to uphold true freedom is something most of us mere mortals are incapable of because it demands that we, at times must hold two violently opposing ideas in our head at the same time.
There are a few rare moments where we have the opportunity to see up, close the power of free speech in action. During the Pride celebration, a couple of months back, a group of zealot religious types stood in my front yard across from Piedmont Park with megaphones and signs espousing a variety of hateful things about the LGBTQ community. My heart hurt, and my blood pressure rose. I have a trans daughter.
An hour later, a group twice as big gathered on the opposite side of the street holding nothing but large handmade flowers. From a large set of speakers, they blasted a playlist of music that celebrates love and queerness.
Within 10 minutes, the holy assembly of haters disbanded. No one was hurt. No one was arrested.
Glad you're leaning into this. There is a whole side conversation that I won't get into about the limitations on academic freedom in an increasingly corporatized and liability-averse culture of higher ed. The fact that tenure was ever thought necessary perhaps speaks to how complicated free speech has been in practice.
I've scanned the comments, and I don't see this issue raised. But perhaps it has been broached in your conversation on Notes. Simply, it's the difference between drawing income from offensive sources and creating an environment in which those groups can freely express their own self-funded views. We would find it politically questionable if a candidate drew campaign funds from the KKK, and this is the ethical knot that I think Substack has to untangle if they provide a platform for white supremacists who paywall content and thus kick back a portion of their earnings to Substack. Perhaps that was always true of television networks, as well, but it seems a little more direct and personal in this case. As Timothy Burke has said quite well, Substack is probably trying to dodge a lot of expensive overhead by backing away from content moderation, not necessarily taking a principled stance on the issue: https://timothyburke.substack.com/p/and-now-a-word-about-your-sponsor. But I think it's fair for people to expect the top brass to have a principled stance and to articulate it clearly, which they've struggled to do.
I'm not sure the HBO revolution was a win for free speech. Sure, it was a win for gripping storytelling. But it's not so easy to elide the need for some kind of content moderation for minors. As a father of three, I've never felt that I needed to coddle my kids, but there are a lot of adult topics that I don't think they should have to confront involuntarily at, say, age 7 or 10. Has the profit-driven (and sometimes craft-driven) renaissance in TV been a net positive for American culture? I don't think there's an obvious answer to that, and don't hear me making a case for tepid content or for censorship, necessarily. But the "free speech is simple" argument glosses over the countless decisions that parents make, that teachers make, and that I once made as director of a first-year seminar to exercise a certain discretion about content that is a form of moderation but not necessarily a censorious one. That, to me, feels quite distinct from the debate about moderation of content on Substack, where it's not the opinion so much as revenue collected discreetly from those authors and readers that poses the real ethical conundrum.
The FCC wanted to keep things under control so much that they shot the networks in their feet. If content regulation had been looser there, then perhaps they would still have their near-monopoly.
The most controversial shows in the network period didn't get on their without a fight. Norman Lear fought tooth and nail to get his realistic sitcoms on the air as they were, and eventually got his wish.
First observation: who in their right mind thinks an article titled "Substack has a Nazi Problem" is anything but bad faith?
Second observation: timing is everything. Coming as this does after the smear attempt of Russell Brand and Musk telling advertisers to go fuck themselves - and, most importantly, before 2024 - it was only a matter of time before the powers that be tried to "do something" about Substack. It doesn't matter if there are Nazis here or not. Substack's allowance of free speech is a threat. Sadly, I think a lot of people who benefit from the free speech of Substack will be more than willing to stab it in the back and support censorship. For the cause, of course.
And third "observation:" long live the First Amendment!
Doesn’t the right of “free speech” focus solely on the individual’s right to avoid direct government interference with speech? I mean, I don’t feel like I have a right to go onto someone’s property and call them whatever I want without being evicted from the premises. We’ve had plenty of laws that restrict speech; for instance, no matter my opinion, I can’t go around saying that John down the street is a pedophile and avoid the consequences of a libel suit, no matter how much I truly believe it. A newspaper isn’t bound by law to print every letter to the editor it receives. I don’t understand why “free speech” has much to do with social media, which are inherently advertising platforms, not public debate mechanisms. Reach is expressly NOT PROMISED by these platforms. In fact, just the opposite is true—they work extra hard to algorithmically serve you content whether you want it or not because, at their heart, they charge for reach (again, they only make money via ads!). If they were ever to be considered “public squares,” then they couldn’t accept ads for placement or reach because that’s the opposite definition of a public square. These are simply media companies that have tricked users into providing free content (originally) under the guise of “exposure” and possible virality in an attempt to sell ad dollars against their attention. They don’t connect users as a core purpose; they connect advertisers with users...again, that’s how they make the money that pays for the service. The fact that journalists and public figures started using them was simply because they misassumed what this medium was about. Social media is simply a letters to the editors section without anyone to curate what gets printed.
You said everything so simply and astutely. I only want to add I was born in a post Soviet country and my family lived through the horrors that communism created. We immigrated to North America to be free. Never did we think our freedoms would be stifled. It is kind of disconcerting how not far from 1984 our society is becoming, but I am grateful for freedom fighters speaking out and fighting it in courts and people waking up and making changes to prevent things like censorship. Censoring one thing is a slippery slope to all of us being silenced eventually.
Excellent. Absolutely true. Free speech has been pushed around pretty badly the past 5-7 years. The rash illiberalism of Trump created an equally noxious 'Woke' illiberal reaction on the fringe left. People love to say that free speech only relates to the public sphere; private social media companies aren't held to the same standard and can create their own moderation policies. True, technically. But there's no denying the creation of a censorious environment, and that's just as anti-democratic and bad for society. A big concern from my perspective also is: Who gets to decide what is 'racist' or what is 'conspiracy'? Fringe lefties are now often pro-Hamas; many of these people claim that the IDF attacked their own people on purpose to have an excuse to destroy Gaza. They're also rabidly antisemitiic. Both sides are filled with absurd claims; look no further than Trump's election denial on the one hand, and the 1619 Project on the other. Conspiracy galore on both!
What's my point? Free speech must stand for everyone and consistently--with rare and minor exceptions in cases of actual calls to violence--or what's the point? If you say certain views can't be voiced you've lost the plot.
Dems and social media companies tried to silence dissenting Covid claims in 2020. But many claims about Covid on the left turned out to be wrong, and some on the other side turned out to be right. So what does that tell you? When you've got one side claiming only *they* have the right to speak, that's cultural authoritarianism. Full stop.
Michael Mohr
Sincere American Writing
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/
One big difference that I've noticed migrating here from Twitter & WordPress, is there are fewer obnoxious people. The people who wish that my cancer will consume me or that my children will die in a road traffic accident or who just want to reply to everyone with something rude; those people don't seem to have come to Substack.
I find it easy to ignore people with obnoxious politics but the ones who wish me dead are harder to ignore. Let's hope those people don't find us here but, if they do, I hope Substack has a plan for dealing with them.
Hatchet job is right. Katz found what he was looking to find. From his posts on Notes, it was pretty obvious he came to Substack assuming he was entering a place filled with hate and bigotry and right-wing extremism and then went looking for examples that fit his narrative. The only surprising thing about this Atlantic piece is that the “traditional gatekeepers” never learn. Every couple years there are a few more hit pieces written at places like the Atlantic, NY Magazine, Columbia Journalism Review, bemoaning the “laissez faire approach” of Substack. It’s clear the thing they really care about is that Substack is a bit of a threat to their model and they hate the thought of anything they can’t control.
Sure, if you have free speech, that means some Nazis are going to speak freely. See, Skokie Illinois. For that matter, far left extremists will, too. The case for free speech isn’t that it doesn’t result in some extreme speech. It’s that the alternative (censorship) is worse.
Substack is, of course, a business and they do own the pixels we write on, Sam. None of us have a right to be here. That said, I very much like their free speech policy and it’s one of the things that drew me to Substack in the first place. Thanks for writing this defense/explainer.
Without rules there is unconscious habit
The exception is crucial for the emergence of the conscious, as it creates the corruption of habit.
https://open.substack.com/pub/iweothers/p/without-rules-there-is-unconscious?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1eqrx1