I think the Substack model gives us a bunch of advantages here: readers are choosing to subscribe to writers they trust, and who they then have a direct relationship with. I don't think that Apple is likely to try to police that too heavily, and if they do there is always web and email that exists as a fallback.
> I don't think that Apple is likely to try to police that too heavily
As someone who uses and loves substack precisely because of its censorship resistance, this sounds like wishful thinking at best. Even if substack is primarily web based, introducing a dependency on the ever-changing Apple content policing system is a potential conflict of interest.
A cynical take is that smaller platforms compete early by allowing more speech, only to close it down when they become bigger and tied up in corporate relationships.
Please don't do this on HN. Thoughtful critique is welcome, but we're trying to avoid the online callout/shaming culture, and also the cross-examination/flaming style of forum comments. They just tend to have a dumbing-down effect on threads. We want curious conversation here and I'm sure you can make your substantive points in that way if you want to.
Censorship happens when a writer is de-platformed, and has nowhere to turn to re-platform themselves. People on HN then give snarky, insincere advice about creating your own web hosting company or whatever. On the other hand, there are lots of platforms catering to nudity and sexual content, so I don't think this is going to be a problem there.
In a society where the government isn't allowed to censor, the greatest fear is that speech platforms will become few enough, or homogeneous enough, that particular kinds of legal speech have nowhere to go. Substack provides a home for some speakers who had nowhere else to go, and is therefore decreasing the total amount of censorship that happens in the US.
Some of your "racists and abusers" may be people that others want to read. If you don't like what they're saying, don't read them. If you're going to try to stop me from reading people I want to read, I'll financially support companies that don't let you do that.
You're only saying that censorship isn't a problem for content that you personally judge to be unimportant. Many don't see it that way - they see policies like this as evidence of Substack appeasing Christian moralist values that have "cancelled" the expression of sexuality and sexual identity outside of a set of norms acceptable to them. Worse, these "blanket" policies often only end up enforced against LGBTQ people in practice. I don't know if that's the case with Substack, but they are absolutely censoring content for political reasons when they ban the arbitrarily defined category of "pornography".
Likewise, one could trivially dismiss your position by saying that there are plenty of ways to get anti-vaccine messages (or whatever other "forbidden" political knowledge) - they are published all over the web! In the op ed section of every major newspaper, for example. Far more widely with regard to readership than sexual content is published.
> ... but they are absolutely censoring content for political reasons when they ban the arbitrarily defined category of "pornography".
Have they said in plaintext that this is politically motivated or motivated by their "values"?
A lot of platforms that censor sexual content don't do so out of their own wants or desires. I mean, what user generated content platform wants less users? Instead, they're pressured by VC's who have "morals" of their own or financial institutions who have heavy handed policies that could severely impact a fledgling company.
There's also a big difference between "sex workers" and "pornography". Would Substack censor an escort for talking about detailed aspects of escorting? That's very different from censoring someone for posting pornographic images or videos which could potentially fall into the following very harmful, hard to moderate, and litigious categories like age and consent.
Sure, but that equally applies to companies following the money when they de-platform somebody over public or internal outrage at being associated with or enriching them. The point is that Substack's market position as "place where you can tell your truth after you get cancelled" is inconsistent with the purported motivation of a higher, abstract ideal or value of free speech. It's consistent with wanting to make money, and it turns out that the stuff that might get you banned on twitter can make a lot of money elsewhere. When the ideal of free speech (can I post porn there?) clashes with the ideal of making money (what if corporate firewalls ban us and our emails go to spam?), the money is preferred. There is no reason to believe the content currently protected there today would remain protected if the financial motivation shifted.
I think it's beneficial to be specific about what you're advocating for and what the problem is. What you expressed is that they are actively censoring sex workers for just being sex workers. If they've taken a moral position on that, but not other things then you're right - they're guilty of selective morality and their statement is moot. If on the other hand, they're censoring images and videos but not stories or identities then that's a different ballgame. In that case, the problem doesn't lie with Substack it lies with other institutions that likely have a lot of influence over Substack and may take time and strategy to overcome. As a long time champion of privacy and anti-censorship, advocacy is not some zero-sum game rife with pots of reductions to strong arm people and institutions into what you want. It's about understanding the root of the problem, which likely was formulated in good faith at some time, and trying to course adjust it to fit our world today.
I guess you're right that I'm less upset about pornography because I'm not a consumer of it. But let me give you my best attempt at a principled answer, too..
I'd say that porn producers have lots of places to go that will cater to them, and that will connect them to porn consumers. As I recall, reddit's r/gonewild is huge, and lots of producers are using it to pull people to their OnlyFans accounts. Someone who is "canceled" for porn at Substack could just go there, and they'd probably be better off because they'd be in a community of people who want to consume porn.
On the other hand, an anti-vax writer (or someone who was publishing accurate concerns about the covid vaccines and was labeled "anti-vax") couldn't just go get a job at Fox to continue their activities after Facebook banned them and their web host stopped hosting them, etc.
Bottom line, I think it's reasonable for a "free speech" platform to specialize in certain kinds of unpopular speech so that they don't have to fight every censor-happy asshole at once. One might say "we specialize in hosting porn and fighting Christian censors" and another might say "we specialize in hosting Trumpers and anti-vaxxers and fighting woke censors" and that's perfectly fine. Ideally, there would be enough such platforms in existence that a writer could choose the proper one for the kind of content they plan to create.
>Censorship happens when a writer is de-platformed, and has nowhere to turn to re-platform themselves. People on HN then give snarky, insincere advice about creating your own web hosting company or whatever.
Substack would be a place for profiling what's happening in the sex worker community, providing news and insight and addressing issues important to individuals within the community. r/GoneWild and OnlyFans don't cater to that; they only want you to post your nude content.
So in your follow up example, there is no other platform that would offer the same kind of service and target audience for sex workers that Substack does.
I agree, and my reading of Substack's content guidelines is that this would be allowed. A sex worker could write on Substack about issues important to their community, and then link to their Onlyfans for the porn. That means people who want to avoid the porn could easily do so, and those who want to see it know exactly where to go.
Given your comments about deplatforming, how do you feel about OP's point about how Substack doesn't take too kindly to sex workers and similar content on it's platform? You seem to have missed that point and took, IMO probably too much, umbrage around the phrase "racists and abusers".
This follow-up question is being down voted for the personal attack at the end, and rightly so, but I would still be curious to see a response to the larger point about that kind of content from someone at Substack.
I think the Substack model gives us a bunch of advantages here: readers are choosing to subscribe to writers they trust, and who they then have a direct relationship with. I don't think that Apple is likely to try to police that too heavily, and if they do there is always web and email that exists as a fallback.