Substack takes a halfsies approach to banning Nazis

In a move that makes no one fully happy, Substack will remove a few of the Nazi blogs on its platform.

• Substack is taking down five newsletters that had Nazi or white supremacist content.
• The move comes after a popular newsletter, Platformer, threatened to leave Substack.
• Still, Substack isn't changing its official stance on demonetizing or allowing Nazi content.

Substack has found a half-measure solution to its Nazi problem — for now.

In December 2023, The Atlantic reported that it had seen a handful of Nazi-affiliated or white supremacist blogs on the platform, some of them with paying subscribers. Substack's founder, Hamish McKenzie, wrote a blog post at the time doubling down on the idea that Substack is a free speech platform that won't censor even loathsome speech.

But many people, including prominent Substack writers, were outraged.

Platformer, a scoopy tech publication written by Casey Newton and Zoë Schiffer, got involved. Last week, Newton wrote in the newsletter that he was meeting with Substack to discuss the issue and was considering taking his popular newsletter to another service if Substack wouldn't budge.

Newton and Schiffer flexing their power worked: Substack is removing five out of the 14-plus newsletters with Nazi or white supremacist content.

On Monday, Newton gave an update:

The company will not change the text of its content policy, it says, and its new policy interpretation will not include proactively removing content related to neo-Nazis and far-right extremism. But Substack will continue to remove any material that includes "credible threats of physical harm," it said.

It's unclear if saying these blogs had a "credible threat of harm" means that Substack agrees that pro-Nazi or white supremacist content is an existential call to violence — or if those blogs had some very specific sentences or words that were very specific threats. ("Bring your guns to the meetup" or something.)

If it's the latter, it's almost as if the blogs are being banned for a technicality not tied to the central complaint. It's like banning them for copyright violation instead of, you know, praising Hitler. This also doesn't address another huge aspect of the issue, which is that Substack is likely profiting from these blogs by taking its standard cut of paid subscriptions.

It seems like Substack did just enough to keep some of its popular (and lucrative) bloggers from quitting — but it stopped short of any substantial change. Substack did not respond to a request for comment from BI.

The policy also manages to keep a different group of prominent pro-free speech bloggers happy. This group, including popular writers like Bari Weiss and Richard Dawkins, signed a separate open letter encouraging Substack not to cave to censorship on the issue.

Reacting only to extreme pressure from high-profile users and keeping everyone slightly unhappy — but not unhappy enough to quit the platform — is a strategy that social platforms have been employing for the last decade. Splitting the blog baby sort of works, I guess.