Substackers Battle over Banning Nazis | Hacker News Reader

Substackers Battle over Banning Nazis

reason.com

I think explicit Nazism is banned on SubStack - at least I have not yet seen any example of a literal Hitlerian National Socialist Aryan Ubermensch newsletter on that platform. This issue is the expansion of the term 'Nazism', which seemingly today can be applied to 'the other side' no matter the content of the argument. We have all seen opposite sides in an argument accuse each other of Nazism with both actually seeming to mean it.

How do you ban this, who does the banning? Content moderation is a really hard problem, anything other than a legalistic position is over reach

George Orwell described that very thing in 1946.

https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...

> The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’. The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice, have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. ... Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.

A big difference between 1946 and now is that we have the internet, so we can see how the Nazis described themselves with only a few clicks, eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanns_Johst#Schlageter

Are there any problems with this rough definition?

Nazis: right-wing racist nationalists (who thought women should occupy themselves with children and believed in the bullet more than the ballot)

Of course, it's possible to attempt to confuse the issue (witness Putin, starting an "anti-fascist" war of choice by invading his neighbour) but that smacks highly of the old lawyer's tactic of kicking up a lot of dust* and then complaining that no one can see.

* this is the friendly version; a less friendly one ends "... placing oneself at the mercy of the court as an orphan"

Thoughts from someone who is both (a) currently on substack, and (b) has domain experience with legalistic positions:

https://popehat.substack.com/p/substack-has-a-nazi-opportuni...

Yes, online moderation, literally "deleting people by a single click, for even misunderstood opinions or expressions (overcensorship)" has become a big problem. On the one side it leads some to believe, that you can clean the world simply by sweeping the dirt under the carpet with your mouse. On the other hand, it has caused a lot of suffering and injustice because, of course, most people are not Nazis. But they will defend themselves aggressively, and some may even become one, if you constantly make them feel like they are. Online moderation has become a source of power and abuse, and it leads to fears, conformity and oppression. And the whole thing happens more or less, not because one is so moral and well meaning, but because one wants to run a successful and well-visited platform. Capitalist interest and the idea of growth obscure the psychological reality here.

It’s shocking we even have to talk about this. We figured out how to handle Nazis 80 years ago and we know it was not a mistake.

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