Public Reason: Do note that right now we are not arguing over whether SubStack should be muting the reach of Neonazis. We are simply trying to get SubStack to stop boosting the signal of Neonazis.

Which is why something much stronger than “Substack should also constantly be trying to make business and product decisions that are consistent with their desire to be doing minimal content moderation…” is called for here, as a simple morality-mandated exercise of voice by those of us who are not (yet) choosing exit:

Matt Yglesias: Last Mailbag of 2023: ‘Nobody does takes like “Microsoft Word has a Nazi problem” or “Ikea shouldn’t sell office furniture to companies.”… Substack is mostly like that—a software product that I find useful and so do lots of people who have lots of different political opinions…. But… Substack does a lot of little things like recommendations and leaderboards to try to make the platform more valuable and lucrative…. But it does get you into a conversation in which it’s hard to just plead pure neutrality. What if an overtly white supremacist site were number two on the politics leaderboard? That’s a bad look…. Substack should also constantly be trying to make business and product decisions that are consistent with their desire to be doing minimal content moderation… slowboring.com/p/last-mailbag-of-2023