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It seems like most of his problems stem from the comments. He may as well just disable them for good. The vast majority of readers do not comment (I think it's something like 1% of readers will comment), usually the most loyal or committed. There are still userhandles from 2014 commenting on Marginal Revolution. I sometimes skim the comments on his blog (you must pay to comment), and the vast majority of the comments seem pretty civil and in agreement, so I am not sure what he is seeing that I am not. Compared to reddit, he gets way less shit than most people (I took lots of shit from that article I shard a while back about TED Talks). Given how long he has been online and writing for the public, I figured he would have a thick skin.
The trans issue is not even that controversial. If he really wants to annoy his readers, push for higher marginal tax rates on upper middle class and above, which used to be the mainstay democratic position. That is way more contentious. And it affects him. This is why wokeness and trans issues is the opposite of skin in the game. None of these people are going to be affected by it, hence moving away from economics issues to identity ones.
As one of Freddie's subscribers and occasional commenters, prior to his "talking about trans people in the comments of one of my posts about an unrelated subject = instant ban" policy, it really was common for at least one comment thread on all of his posts to end up centering on trans issues, no matter how unrelated the post's subject matter. It was annoying.
I believe that this community experimented with a ban on the HBD topic for a while for similar reasons, and I don't think it was because the mods were anti-HBD per se, they were just tired of it being the only goddamn thing we talked about. That's my memory, anyway.
About the least charitable take I have on Freddie's banning commenting on about trans issues is that he may realize just how badly the social justice left has shot itself in the foot in the last five years with the trans issue, and is tired of having people using it as a generic gotcha attack on social justice politics in general.
I do get that if any and every post ends up being diverted by people in the comments going "So what about this latest trans outrage?" even if it is totally unconnected to the subject of the post, that is bad, and he's perfectly entitled to ban, shut down, and tell them to shut the hell up for doing that. And there are bad actors out there.
But a blanket "this is the official line and I don't listen to anything else" comes across as being censorship, you know, like the bad right-wingers who can't cope with diversity of opinion or anything that challenges their fixed notions of How Things Ought To Be engage in?
Freddie saying "I am fed-up of people dragging in trans issues where it's not pertinent, knock it off or eat a ban" is perfectly fair and his right as the Substack owner. Freddie saying "I'm not discussing this at all because any criticism is only bad-faith right-wingers who are all prejudiced bigots" isn't great. But then again, if he has a trans family member, sure, this is natural human behaviour.
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