“Society has A trust problem,” Substack cofounders Hamish McKenzie, Chris Best, and Jairaj Sethi declared in a joint statement late January. “More censorship will only make it worse.”
Substack, a leading online newsletter company that publishes the likes of polarizing journalist Bari Weiss, Brown University economist Emily Oster, COVID-19 contrarian Alex Berenson, and lefty iconoclast Glenn Greenwald, was reaffirming its hands-off approach to content moderation at a moment of intense pressure to “de-platform” controversial voices. That same week, rocker Neil Young accused Spotify podcaster Joe Rogan of spreading pandemic misinformation and demanded that the platform remove his songs if it continued to offer Rogan’s show; days later, the White House urged Spotify and all other media companies to be more “vigilant” in policing public health news and commentary.
“As we face growing pressure to censor content published on Substack that to some seems dubious or objectionable,” McKenzie and his partners wrote, “our answer remains the same: we make decisions based on principles not PR, we will defend free expression.”
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THE IMPROBABLE RISE OF MAGA-MUSK
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A Free-Range Family
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Educulture Wars
THE CULTURE WAR is costing school districts billions, according to a report released in October 2024 by the UCLA Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access. The report surveyed superintendents at 467 school districts nationwide about extra expenditures they undertook because of increased conflict over culture war issues such as critical race theory, book chal- lenges, gender-related debates, and other politicized topics. The report estimates that such fights cost school districts around $3.2 billion during the 2023-2024 school year.
Q&A Penny Lane
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