The sinister censoring of Substack wrongthink
NIALL MCCRAE
IT’S THE very definition of fascism: corporate entities putting state authoritarianism into practice. If you were in any doubt about the Online Safety Act being a tool for censorship, you can be sure now.
The Daily Telegraph raised concerns after Rod Dreher, a writer who warns against the creep of totalitarianism, had identity checks imposed on his Substack site.
He had posted on a blasphemous art exhibition in Vienna, and included an image of Jesus in a loin cloth. He also made critical comments about Muslims. Readers were barred from access to his articles, unless they either scanned their face for an age assessment, or provided government-issued identity.
Substack does not tell writers what rule they have broken, simply stating that the content is ‘age-related’. This could be sexually-explicit imagery, or it could be that very contemporary phenomenon of ‘hate’. Dreher was potentially offending on both of these conditions.
Following his case, many other acts of censorship (in the name of child protection) have come to light, since Substack began doing Westminster’s dirty work two weeks ago.
And so, yet another online facility for freedom of expression has been nobbled. This is exasperating, because Substack had become a hive of intelligent and insightful writing.
For authors it was a boon because it had the presentation of a learned journal with the dissemination features of social media such as X and Facebook (with likes, comments and reposts). I am using past tense here because I don’t see a future for Substack if it is acting as an agent of Orwellian dystopia.
My Substack account has been strangled in its infancy. I started on the newsletter-publishing platform three months ago, and I’ve gradually gained subscribers, some posts getting more than a thousand views.
Rather than writing specifically for websites such as TCW, Country Squire Magazine and OffGuardian, I now invite editors of those websites to republish my pieces as they choose. It seemed like a good arrangement until I fell foul of the censors.
The first sign of interference was when a friend who regularly comments on my articles was blocked by a ‘no entry’ sign on clicking on the speech bubble icon.
Then another subscriber told me that he was asked for his age before he could access my article ‘Muscular Christianity: a New Crusade’ (republished by TCW). Well, he is just a nipper at 69, so he declined. Then I realised that not only were all readers blocked from commenting, but I too was barred from doing so!
Based in San Francisco, Substack states that it is merely following the law wherever it operates. The government will sit back and say that it doesn’t answer for private companies and isn’t directly censoring anyone.
The penalties threatened by Ofcom are mind-boggling: 10 per cent of a tech company’s worldwide revenue or £18million (whichever is bigger). That was enough to make Substack relent on its promise of free speech.
Journalist Ed West told on Substack of his censoring by the British government. He too is likely to lose readers due to the age restriction on his Wrong Side of History newsletter.
He wrote: ‘The law, originally marketed as protecting children from pornography, was hijacked by various groups to counter “hate”, by which they mean people with opinions they don’t like.’
This is somewhat naive. First, if the government wants to tackle pornography it can do this in other ways, but more importantly the censorial clampdown is not collateral damage but the raison d’etre of the Online Safety Act. Stifling dissent and stopping inconvenient truths from reaching the general public is exactly what the establishment wanted from this draconian legislation. Child safety is just the facade.
The concept of ‘online safety’ is ludicrous when ordinary people are required to scan their faces and send sensitive data to unknown persons in unknown places.
Meanwhile there is the absurdity of Parliament reducing the voting age to 16, while anyone under 18 is prevented from reading about controversial topics (also known as politics). An article about puberty-blockers or hotels accommodating illegal immigrants is not suitable for voting-age teenagers (unless it’s in the Guardian or other mainstream media, where the rules don’t apply).
This is a global boot stamping on the face of humanity. At present, I’m Down Under, where New Zealand is keen to follow Australia in removing children from social media. Keeping children safe is popular, not surprisingly. But what the woolly-minded folk don’t realise is that the worst harm is caused by their government. The digital prison is being built around them, and they cheer it on.
This article (The sinister censoring of Substack wrongthink) was created and published by Conservative Woman and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Niall McCrae
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