Chris Best

We don't have an editorial position.

We think that freedom of the press is important.

We think that you should have your own editorial position.

Your Substack has your view.

and that we should support freedom of the press, freedom of association.

If you don't like that thing, you don't have to subscribe to it.

You have the power to remove yourself from it.

But there is a school of thought, and I think maybe especially earlier on in Substack's life, there's a school of thought that says, that's not enough actually.

And if you make a platform where somebody can say thing X, Y, Z that is bad or harmful or dangerous or offensive, and you're not actively censoring that or actively taking it down, you are in fact condoning it.

No, no.

Just to be clear, it would be impossible to condone everything on Substack.

There's such a wide variety of things of all stripes and types.

And I wouldn't want to run a platform that I condone everything on.

I don't think that I'm qualified for that job.

I don't think I'm qualified to be the arbiter of what's true or what's good.

And the people who are...

who ask tech platforms like ours to do that sometimes are,

perhaps well-intentioned, but are mistaken in their belief that that's a good thing.

No.

And that sense of independence is part of the appeal, I think.