Censorship in the Creator Economy
Spotify and Substack at the center of a storm.
Image: Substack founders: Hamish McKenzie, Chris Best, and Jairaj Sethi
I’m really enjoying the dialogue about censorship in the Creator Economy in early 2022. Joe Rogan is under fire as his guests often have contrarian views on for instance climate change or the Covid-19 pandemic.
One of the reasons I came to Substack was their insistence that they were against platform censorship. I am a old-school believer in Free Speech. Audiences need to decide for themselves what content they wish to consume and what ideological framework they wish to follow.
Algorithms should not be making people think less, just because information can be controversial. I don’t want robots screening content for me, to be attuned to some consensus of mass hypnosis. I don’t want to live in some hypothetical real Metaverse, where even what “truth” is defined as something packaged by experts and product engineers.
I do believe in vaccinations and climate change. But we should never be codifying human behavior or taking out the extremes just because we are under pressure to do so.
I’d go so far as to hope that vaccines will be mandatory in a BA. 2 omicron dominant world. Our healthcare systems actually matter. But who cares what I believe?
Substack Under Fire!
Realistically Substack is read by perhaps thousands of readers in total. Joe Rogan on Spotify likely reaches millions of listeners. It’s a very different matter. The Creator Economy will scale.
It has already on TikTok. TikTok challenges seems moronic to me, but I’m not nineteen either. I’m sure censorship exists on China’s TikTok, called Douyin. But we aren’t China.
We Need Free Expression Platforms
The Twitter comments about Substack’s latest post about Censorship is really eye opening. I agree that the problem isn’t about censorship or misinformation but literacy of your typical American or Canadian reader. People need to be able to have filters where opinions are open and multiple points of view can be possible in content online.
I likely won’t be among the first to sign up to Donald Trump’s alternative to Twitter later next month in 2022 or be active on Gettr. But Substack is agnostic and have created a direct relationship between Creators and their audiences, and this is a luxury on today’s internet.
Corporate journalists or BigTech companies should not be pressuring Substack to censor or modify the behavior of its creators. The Creator Economy needs to be decentralized.
Substack is saying that it is facing growing pressure to censor content published on Substack that to some seems dubious or objectionable.
Whether you are anti climate change or an anti-vaxer I want to hear your opinion, I want to read it and understand the world you come from. Even if I very much believe the lack of vaccinated and global warming is a serious problem.
Neil Young's music is being removed from Spotify after the rock star called for the streaming platform to choose between him and podcaster Joe Rogan. Accusing him of Covid misinformation, Young told Spotify this week: "They can have Rogan or Young.”
As podcaster Joe Rogan faces condemnation from medical scientists for spreading misinformation about vaccines and COVID-19, another interview by the controversial host this week has become the subject of mockery -- this time among climate scientists. Elon Musk is adored by millions of people all around the world, but he isn’t’ exactly a truthful guy, his promises aren’t worth anything history shows.
Canadian clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson appeared on "The Joe Rogan Experience" on Monday, making false and generalized claims that the modeling scientists use to project climate change and its impacts are flawed.
I think in 2022 we are intelligent enough to make up our own minds without censoring people who are talking about things outside their field of expertise. I’m not here to personally judge them or the values of Joe Rogan.
Neither does it bother me if Novak Djokovic is barred from the French Open after being blocked from entering Australia to participate in that country’s Major Tennis tournament.
Substack is a collection of voices, and all those voices matter, not just the ones that understand what science or fact actually is. Accepting diverse opinions is what inclusion is all about, it’s what is the foundation of democracy.
Does it bother me why people like Donald Trump or Elon Musk might make it a habit of lying, maybe a little bit, but at least I try to understand why they do it. We’re all human, we all believe the lies we tell ourselves every day.
Substack’s Policy on Free Speech, Moderation and Censorship
Substack they make decisions based on principles not PR, we will defend free expression, and we will stick to our hands-off approach to content moderation. While we have content guidelines that allow us to protect the platform at the extremes, we will always view censorship as a last resort, because we believe open discourse is better for writers and better for society.
As we face growing pressure to censor content published on Substack, our position remains unchanged: We will always view censorship as a last resort, because we believe open discourse is better for writers and better for society. - Substack Team
The world doesn’t have to be divided in camps, of left vs. right, we all in the end live in the same world. We have friends and family members who may be a different political orientation than ourselves, that is okay.
I won’t respect you any less for being a Democrat or a Republican. In my country that would be a Liberal or a Conservative. Even if you are a radical Liberal or an extreme conservative, I will understand and be educated to your point of view.
The First Duty of the Creator Economy is Entertainment
The Guardian reported on January 27th, 2022 that a group of vaccine-sceptic writers are generating revenues of at least $2.5m (£1.85m) a year from publishing newsletters for tens of thousands of followers on the online publishing platform Substack, according to new research. As someone who cannot wait to get their next booster shot, I say, good for them!
If a clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson wants to claim on Joe Rogan’s Podcast that climate modelling can’t account for “everything”, I’m okay with that too. It’s hilarious. I almost want to go on Spotify and hear it, it’s good publicity for Joe Rogan to be honest.
The only people who should have the right to censor stuff online are the Chinese Government Party, because well that’s how they roll. I get it. I’m not going to say democracy of free speech is necessarily even the best system, but it is something that we currently have in place. We need to abide by it if that’s what our system chose to be.
Inclusion comes with acceptance, if we live in an era of moral relativism than all points of view have some value, and if they are unfactual or absurd, perhaps they can at least be entertaining to us?
People who aren’t steeped in science may say many things, and that’s okay. It’s their job in the Creator Economy, to also entertain and amuse, not just inform. We all have diverse backgrounds and educational levels that have changed our world view and even our own interpretation of the facts or our vulnerability to misinformation.
Substack says it allow writers to publish what they want and readers to decide for themselves what to read, even when that content is wrong or offensive, and even when it means putting up with the presence of writers with whom we strongly disagree.
Substack says they believe this approach is a necessary precondition for building trust in the information ecosystem as a whole. The more that powerful institutions attempt to control what can and cannot be said in public, the more people there will be who are ready to create alternative narratives about what’s “true,” spurred by a belief that there’s a conspiracy to suppress important information. When you look at the data, it is clear that these effects are already in full force in society.
The Substack Executives created an interesting title for their censorship article its:
Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse.
I have to agree that trust in government, leaders, politicians, institutions and the media is at an all-time low. Trust in BigTech platforms are also at an all-time low. Censorship doesn’t fix the trust problem and the misinformation dilemma, smarter people do.
Just like young people are immune to many Ads, they become so by experience. They need to grow up with so many kinds of Ads that they achieve, well Ad-immunity.
With misinformation, I believe it may be a similar thing.
Substack states:
Trust in social media and traditional media is at an all-time low.
Trust in the U.S. federal government to handle problems is at a near-record low.
Trust in the U.S.’s major institutions is within 2 percentage points of the all-time low.
Personally I don’t even think enough readers read Substack for misinformation to be a huge issue. It’s not as if it’s YouTube or Spotify scale. It’s not as if it’s TikTok, it’s a baby of the Creator Economy and not one that grows up very fast. Corporate journalists really may not belong on Substack at the end of the day. They can join live-streaming News platforms (like Salesforce is creating).
Journalists aren’t indie creators who must fight for just a scrap of our collective attention. They don’t even know the plight of Creators who struggle just to pay the bills. I just don’t believe they are the same breed at all from an indie creator.
Declining trust is both a cause and an effect of polarization, reflecting and giving rise to conditions that further compromise our confidence in each other and in institutions. - Substack
The first duty of the Content Economy is entertainment. We aren’t trained journalists, I didn’t get a Masters in Communication. Fin-Fluencers on TikTok aren’t necessarily trained in the stock market. That is okay, we understand this. This is the internet.
Substack’s Core Values?
On their job/careers site Substack states.
What we believe
We believe that what you read matters, so we hire people who care deeply about reading and writing.
We believe that subscriptions are better than advertising. The business model matters – subscriptions put readers and writers in charge, and they create an incentive system that fosters great work.
We believe in the free press and in free speech – and we do not believe those things can be decoupled. You can read more about our views on content moderation here.
We have a culture of service. We're here to serve readers and writers, so we build the things they need to be wildly successful. That's why everyone in the company does customer support, so we can stay close to the readers and writers who use Substack.
We bias to action. We work fast, make bold bets, and then course-correct as needed.
We believe great things are built by small groups of exceptional people. We assemble tight-knit teams and give them clear, ambitious goals and the autonomy they need to succeed.
What is your opinion about all this?
What new consensus can we gather from the Twitter comments to the Substack blog on this?
We know that misinformation is more viral in an algorithmic world where sentiment is amplified for profit. As the public I think we can recognize what sentiment amplification looks like and which channels weaponize it. We as individuals can make value based decisions on how much to trust sentiment amplification, like clickbait or non-experts making bold claims.
But no matter the outcry of the righteous, free speech still matters.
Nobody is righteous on an internet that’s based primarily on digital advertising to be honest. Even Google search is not an objective source.
It too has its own biases. AI itself and algorithms have considerable bias, they were primarily made by white younger males.
Sometimes we forget what the internet really stands for. It’s not the manifestation of the idealism of the 90s in the valley. The internet was built for profit. The good guys didn’t win.
It wasn’t built for education or to be an objective place full of little truths. It is a mirror of our collective state of humanity. That is not right or wrong, left or right, that is simply my opinion about how the Creative Economy operates.
The Internet already modifies our behavior at a critical mass, for profit.
Ultimately as a consumer and creator, I don’t want to live in an algorithmic silo, or only read and listen to people whose world view confirms and conforms with my own, or operate in an echo bubble pretending I’m free.
I want to live free in the real world, full of the chaos of opposing opinions. People have the right to assemble and congregate, even if we personally don’t approve of what those groups are talking about.