Ironic, yet fitting: Fascist corporate media crafts fake narrative about Nazism on Substack

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With Revenues Declining, Corporate Media Demand Substack Censorship

Claims of rampant Nazism on social media continue to fall apart

ZAID JILANI

AND

ALEX GUTENTAG

JAN 18, 2024

As Public reported earlier this month, the censorship campaign against Substack is largely based on exaggerations and half-truths. Critics claim that Substack has a “neo-Nazi problem,” but the reality is that there are few neo-Nazi newsletters on the platform, and they have a tiny number of readers and subscribers. If anything, Substack’s policy on free expression seems to be successful in marginalizing extreme voices, who are much less popular than more mainstream ideas on the platform.

But new details uncovered by journalist Jesse Singal suggest that the Atlantic article by Jonathan Katz that started the latest anti-Substack campaign was even more flawed than we realized.

Singal caught factual errors in Katz’s article. First, Katz claimed that anyone who is “restricted from making money on Substack” is banned from the platform.

Singal confirmed with Substack that the policy is that if you’re banned by Stripe – which is used to pay writers via Substack – then you can’t monetize your content on the platform.

This is important because of a claim that Katz makes later on in the piece, that white nationalist Patrick Casey is making a comfortable income from Substack.

Singal revealed that what Katz did was selectively quote Casey’s words to make it appear that he has a large revenue stream from Substack. He located the blog post where Casey described his income.

In one paragraph, Casey writes, “aside from the unfortunate realities of deplatforming, my life is going fairly well. I’ve been blessed with a growing network of friends and political contacts, I’m in great health, and I’m able to live comfortably doing something I find enjoyable and fulfilling.”

It’s easy to think he might be talking about Substack in that paragraph. But then in the next paragraph, Casey explains that he’s “been banned from Stripe, which Substack uses for its paid subscriptions.” He instead pointed readers to another service, called SubscribeStar, to financially support him.

Singal confirmed with Casey that since then, he’s been unbanned by Stripe, but Casey told Singal that he “doesn’t have many” paid subscribers through Substack itself. Singal’s revelations led the Atlantic to edit Katz’s article to state that the extent to which Substack helps Casey fund his livelihood “is unclear,” but it did not include Casey’s remarks estimating that he doesn’t make much money from Substack.

Katz didn’t respond to inquiries from Public about whether further corrections are warranted. And yet his article and the larger anti-Substack campaign prompted Casey Newton, who runs Platformer, to recently quit the site and move his publication to the competing newsletter service Ghost.

In explaining the move, Newton wrote that “Ghost founder and CEO John O’Nolan committed to us that Ghost’s hosted service will remove pro-Nazi content, full stop. If nothing else, that’s further than Substack will go, and makes Ghost a better intermediate home for Platformer than our current one.”

The key words here are “hosted service” – this refers to only a portion of Ghost’s content. Ghost’s page on content moderation includes the following paragraph:

Ghost is a freely-released open source publishing platform which anyone can download and use to share their opinions, ideas or viewpoints without intervention, on their own website. Our technology is decentralised, independent software which does not promote, expose or assist any particular content — nor do we have any control or ability to censor, or moderate what is published. The majority of Ghost websites in the world are not hosted by us.

That means that most of what is used by Ghost is completely unmoderated. Newton is protesting what he sees as insufficient censorship on Substack by going to a platform where most of the content is even less censored. Hosted websites, as noted by Newton, are subject to certain rules, including prohibitions on incitement to violence. But Substack itself removed 5 of the neo-Nazi blogs for incitement – rules that it applies to all content on Substack rather than just a few hosted sites like Ghost. Therefore, the case for moving from Substack to Ghost because you want to see stronger moderation of what’s being said is actually very weak.

Newton did not respond to a request for comment from Public.

Although Casey and Katz are independent, their criticisms of Substack have been massively amplified by the mainstream media (see above for a sampling of recent headlines). What is driving the attack on Substack?

AGAIN, I URGE YOU TO SUBSCRIBE TO ‘PUBLIC.’

If I were some kind of cONsPirACy THeoRiSt, I’d think the above attack was SOMEHOW related to this one: X Is Dropping a 'Thermonuclear Lawsuit' Against Media Matters

...(A) Media Matters’ report alleged ads from top corporations were running “alongside white nationalist and pro-Nazi content”—a claim fiercely disputed by X. 

A statement from the social media company argued the left-wing watchdog group “completely misrepresented the real user experience on X, in another attempt to undermine freedom of speech and mislead advertisers.”

The company said it prioritizes free speech even above profit and believes all users should have the right to determine for themselves what content to consume. The statement then offered a rebuttal to the story: 

Here are the facts on Media Matters’ research:

• To manipulate the public and advertisers, Media Matters created an alternate account and curated the posts and advertising appearing on the account’s timeline to misinform advertisers about the placement of their posts. These contrived experiences could be applied to any platform. 

• Once they curated their feed, they repeatedly refreshed their timelines to find a rare instance of ads serving next to the content they chose to follow. Our logs indicate that they forced a scenario resulting in 13 times the number of ads served compared to the median ads served to an X user. 

• Of the 5.5 billion ad impressions on X that day, less than 50 total ad impressions were served against all of the organic content featured in the Media Matters article.

• For one brand showcased in the article, one of its ads ran adjacent to a post 2 times and that ad was seen in that setting by only two users, one of which was the author of the Media Matters article.

• For another brand showcased in the article, two of its ads served adjacent to 2 posts, 3 times, and that ad was only seen in that setting by one user, the author of the Media Matters article.

• Media Matters’ article also highlights nine posts they believe should not be allowed on X. Upon evaluation, only one of the nine organic posts featured in the article violated our content policies, and we’ve taken action on it under our Freedom of Speech, Not Reach enforcement approach. (X blog)

Please note: I’m very suspicious of Musk’s vision for the X app, Neuralink, and his history as a creation of the U.S. Security State. And I’m not thrilled about his cock-blocking Substack links and images. But that’s capitalism, so...FUCK YOU, CENSORSHIP INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX!