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Notes -
How does substack moderate itself?
They seem able to walk the fine line where it's a mostly respected outlet yet allowing heterodox views, and while I've heard the occasional handwringer complain, I've not noticed any serious smear campaigns against it, or it having the 10000 witch issues.
Are any writers being cancelled or quietly deboosted?
They have a "pass the buck" moderation system.
Substack's monetization is done using Square or Stripe. I don't recall which. I'll say Stripe for the rest of this post for simplicity.
But the important thing is Substack never holds the money. The readers pay the author using Stripe. Stripe takes the money and gives Substack its cut.
If an author ever says anything really bad then Stripe will kill their merchant account. Substack doesn't need to get involved.
As a result Substack doesn't need to hire a bunch of people in SF to police the tone of articles. That means that there's no one to push for quiet moderation like deboosting.
If a bunch of angry activists come at them on Twitter they can just point at Stripe.
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