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The most egregious part comes about 2/3 of the way down; you can skim until you see a massive block of bold text. Substack Notes is the brand new Twitter-like service that Substack is rolling out. Nilay Patel, interviewer: No, I really want you to answer that question. Is that allowed on Substack Notes? “We should not allow brown people in the country.” Chris Best, Substack CEO: I’m not going to get into gotcha content moderation. NP: This is not a gotcha... I’m a brown person. Do you think people on Substack should say I should get kicked out of the country? CB: I’m not going to engage in content moderation, “Would you or won’t you this or that?” NP: That one is black and white, and I just want to be clear: I’ve talked to a lot of social network CEOs, and they would have no hesitation telling me that that was against their moderation rules. CB: Yeah. We’re not going to get into specific “would you or won’t you” content moderation questions. [...] NP: You have to figure out, “Should we allow overt racism on Substack Notes?” You have to figure that out. CB: No, I’m not going to engage in speculation or specific “would you allow this or that” content. NB: You know this is a very bad response to this question, right? You’re aware that you’ve blundered into this. You should just say no. And I’m wondering what’s keeping you from just saying no. CB: I have a blanket [policy that] I don’t think it’s useful to get into “would you allow this or that thing on Substack.” |