Substack, Censorship, and the Quest for Free Expression

Motivation for revisiting Julian Petley’s 2009 book, Censorship

Before we get started with our discussion proper of Julian Petley’s Censorship, I’d like to start with a brief discussion why that book and why now. I’d like to answer the second question first.

The reason for why now is that recently, I saw in

Holly MathNerd

’s Notes a discussion about censorship that had strong implications that Substack had entered the “content moderation” business because of accusations of Nazis being on this platform. I had some strong feelings on the topic not because I think Nazis or neoNazis should be welcome on the platform but because I knew that was the beginning of a slippery slope. Also, Goodwin’s Law.

It turn out that the drama was started by an article in The Atlantic that almost went unread. That is, of course, until the now-decamped publication Platformer re-upped the story and sent a list of suspected neoNazi accounts to Substack.

Jesse Singal

wrote a solid follow up piece of investigative journalism in which he took both The Atlantic and specifically Platformer to task over their allegations and showed that Platformer was judicious with their facts and economical with the truth and, in fact, the sinking feeling I had about calls for moderation being a slippery slope into censorship were, in fact, correct. The evidence suggests that Platformer conspired if not in fact colluded with The Atlantic.

As those on the non-Censorship side of the fence say, the answer to egregious speech is more speech. While I don’t think anyone should go out of their way to give neoNazis a platform, I also don’t think in this day and age of online bullying from political hacks platforms should be bending the knee and ultimately becoming political pawns.

As I said in a Note at the time, this is the only response that Substack should have given:

It turns out that SubStack did remove a few accounts, but this was from the list of 16. I’m still not happy with that result, but it was limited and thanks to

Jesse Singal

‘s reporting, the truth has seen the light of day.

It turns out that there is another publication that left SubStack over the same issue: Jonathan M. Kat’s The Racket; this was reported by

Samara

of

Liberty Magazine

.

When I first read about SubStack’s actions in Notes without being fully informed, I was devastated because I thought that SubStack had pulled a bait-and-switch by presenting themselves as a company who believed in free speech and voting with wallets but then abandoned principles when put under pressure. Perhaps the claim can still be made even if only one account was removed. As things stand, I think that someone who is against censorship, I should proceed with caution and am willing to give SubStack the benefit of the cover of Terms of Service.

Why Julian Petley’s Censorship?

The reason I wanted to start a SubStack discussion based on Julian Petley’s book Censorship is that nearly–if not exactly–a decade ago, I was in a journalism class and happened upon the book. Details are lost to hazy memory: I can’t remember if it was in the school library or a recommended book in a textbook. I have a vague memory of my instructor wanting to read the book after me, but again, things are hazy.

I recalled I had still had my copy of the book and thought that a decade on, it would be a good time to revisit the book and see how well it held up and how much of a product of it’s time the book is or was. The book is copyrighted 2009, one year after the Bush ‘43 administration. (Or, if you’re pedantic, the year Bushe ‘43 left the White House as the Presidency changes hands in January the following year after an election.) I suspect there’s some anti-Bush rhetoric in the book, but I must confess that, just like in real life, I’m late turning in my work, so I haven’t started re-reading the book yet.

The book seems just as apropos for today as it did in the wake of the Bush/Cheney era, in 2016 and even more in the COVID era.

What will be the structure going forward?

Initially, I thought I’d write a post for each chapter. The book is short–178 pages. However, it’s possible there may be a theme I want to dwell on and therefore a chapter could take multiple posts to get through. Plus, I expect feedback through comments, Notes and Chat which may lead to responses and rebuttals as more posts in this series.

It’s my plan to roughly cover a chapter a week baring life events or dwelling on a particular passage. I expect to start the Chapter 1 discussion later this week; Wednesday would be the most pleasing to me, but my personal schedule may not open up until the end of the week.

Please do let me know if you have any questions before we get into the book proper.

Thank You for your time and attention.

---

Disclosure

I have used affiliate links in this post and will earn a commission if the affiliate links are used.

---