Q&A with Substack CEO Chris Best about Notes, asking for investment without sharing financial details, and more, as he evades some content moderation questions
Can Substack handle the wrath of Elon Musk and the pain of content moderation? — It is fair to say that Substack …
The VergeNilay Patel
Context & Ripple Effects
Chris Best has given The Verge this kind of interview before — back in December 2020 he explained why Substack insists it is not a media company even as it fielded the same moderation questions. That posture was codified soon after, when the company published its policy of resisting public pressure to suppress voices and then detailed guidelines on harassment and doxxing in early 2021.
The new wrinkle is Notes, which pushes Substack beyond email newsletters into a feed-based social product — territory where it now collides with Elon Musk's Twitter, per the article's framing. In the same conversation Best is soliciting investment without opening the books, and declining to answer some moderation questions outright, which suggests the 'authors first' ideology from the 2020 Q&A era is getting harder to hold as the product surface widens.
First-order effects
Prospective investors are being asked to underwrite Substack on narrative rather than disclosed numbers, with Best withholding financial details in the same breath as the pitch.
Best's refusal to answer certain moderation questions marks a visible retreat from the transparency of the company's earlier published policy statements, right as Notes puts user-generated feeds at the center of the product.
Second-order effects
Writers using Substack now face an unresolved question about which rules govern Notes content, since the company's stated hands-off stance was written for newsletters and has never been reconciled publicly with a feed product.
Competition with Musk's Twitter raises the stakes of distribution for newsletter authors who straddle both platforms, making each platform's moderation and reach decisions directly material to their businesses.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, subscription publishing platforms drift from neutral tools into social networks, and with that shift comes pressure toward standardized moderation accountability regardless of founder ideology — trust becoming infrastructure rather than a positioning statement.
The trend: Newsletter platforms are evolving into full social feeds, forcing their founders to confront content-moderation accountability they had long positioned themselves outside of.
This week, @decoderpod host @reckless asked Substack CEO Chris Best the tough questions about whether racist speech should be allowed in their new consumer product, Substack Notes. https://twitter.com/...
content moderation. He is right not to step on this slippery slope. Why answer hypotheticals when it will boomerang back on Substack with demands for more moderation? There are groups who will never accept anything but total control over language and expression https://twitter.co…
Nilay Patel: “I just want to be clear, if someone shows up on Substack and says, ‘all brown people are animals,’ you're going to censor that?” ... Substack CEO: ... <waffles> .... “I'm not gonna get into gotcha content moderation questions...” This is... quite an exchange. https:…
It's really easy for ceos to pretend moderation is something to figure out as we go along, when it doesn't impact them personally. https://twitter.com/...
Substack is free to take this decision. If they can live with it. But they should be willing to stand behind it, and they really should stop claiming that they invented a business model they prevents hate speech. https://twitter.com/...
A curious conceit of the media is that if they have decided to write a hit piece you as the subject are socially obligated to oblige them. Media training teaches you to not indulge this preference. This *enrages* reporters. Unusually clear example: https://www.theverge.com/...
this is absolutely brutal and shows how ridiculous substack's stance is on these issues. i think it's easier to get away with its right-wing framing of “free speech” when it's a publishing platform, but much harder when it's launching a social media platform alongside it. https:/…
Every tech guy thinks they're so smart that they can build a network that doesn't need moderation and they always end up sounding like a 15 year old who thinks they've cracked the code to a society without rules https://twitter.com/...
if I was one of the writers who joined substack when they were doing their “we're not just for TERFs!!!” pr push, I would be, perhaps, embarrassed https://twitter.com/...
what you gain from listening to the audio is how unprepared he sounds when asked to think about the more complex side of content moderation (which requires having a value system and creating policies — whatever they may be — that uphold that system). reminiscent of somebody else!…
a question I have been asking myself a lot recently bc of the hubbub around chatgpt is “have we learned anything since 2016?” and the answer is apparently “some people have not” https://twitter.com/...
What I'm coming to understand is that Twitter pre-Elmo was actually much more authentically attempting to grapple with this shit as flawed as it was. I look to the Twitter employees who are building things as the next possible havens because this is nonsense. https://twitter.com/…
Classic interview strategy 101 here, when presented with a question you don't wish to answer, just stare blankly at the interviewer and remain silent. Checkmate. https://twitter.com/...
If you are creating any kind of social media platform at this point, you have to be prepared to have an answer on content moderation and what speech you will and won't allow on the site. https://twitter.com/...
This is an embarrassingly bad response. Look: in 2023, if you are in the content business at all, you need a content moderation strategy. It is not something you can figure out ex nihilo as you go https://twitter.com/...