What is Truth?

What is Truth?

What is Truth? Quite a philosophical question for a weekly newsletter about technology and venture capital. But this week's content seems to require the question.

Substack is accused of hosting Nazi content; Casey Newton's Platformer announced first that it is staying on the platform, then said it is leaving. Much of the reason rests on reader feedback in between the two decisions. Jonathan Katz, writing in the Atlantic, has stated:

The newsletter-hosting site Substack advertises itself as the last, best hope for civility on the internet - and aspires to a bigger role in politics in 2024. But just beneath the surface, the platform has become a home and propagator of white supremacy and anti-Semitism. Substack has not only been hosting writers who post overtly Nazi rhetoric on the platform; it profits from many of them.

Below, you will find accusations that this characterization is, at best, exaggerated and, at worst, intentionally malicious.

It turns out Katz almost entirely fabricated what is perhaps his most damning anecdote about Substack's approach to extremism. After I lay out, in detail, how he did this, I'll explain how The Atlantic (and Katz) responded to my critique. Then I'll close with a discussion of the difficulty of developing consistent content moderation guidelines, drawing on several Substack competitors' deeply troubled attempts to do so.

Similar events unfolded concerning Carta, the company that hosts the share tables of many tech startups.

The CEO of one such company, Linear, posted a long X piece outlining that Carta had approached an investor in the company to assess their readiness to sell their shares in a secondary transaction.

First of all, I posted this publicly because I suspected there is a broader systematic issue with Carta. A company that is dealing with extreme trust, corporate cap table and other private matters, should take safe guarding confidential information seriously .

Since then I've learned from multiple companies that this has been going on for months or even years where investors or employees of private companies are solicited by Carta employees to put their shares on sale. These people haven't opted in to this and companies haven't approved these sales.

If Carta and Carta Marketplace employees have free access to company information and cap table information in order to generate secondary sales (which companies often don't want) it all starts to seem rotten.

Carta responded quickly and asserted that the incident was a one-off impacting three companies and was instigated by a rogue employee going outside their protocols. CEO Henry Ward then posted that Carta would exit the secondary sales market due to trust issues. There was a lot of back and forth between those two endpoints. During one of them, Ward accused the CEO of Linear:

Henry Ward, Carta's CEO, acknowledged the mistake but questioned Saarinen's continued use of Carta despite his public criticism. "But despite feeling so upset about our mistaken email that you are calling for the end of Carta, and eliminate 2,000 jobs and strand 40,000 customers, you didn't ask to cancel your contract with Carta," tweeted Ward. "It seems you are still planning to stay with us despite all of the public bashing? I don't understand? Was this just to firebomb us for your personal twitter and LinkedIn exposure?"

The truth in all of this is hard to find. But Ward questioning Saarinen's motives came close to suggesting he was not wronged, even though he clearly was.

Normal debates in social media are often carried out with accusations of "fake news" and counter-accusations of lying. "You're lying" has become a sufficient response to a view that one disagrees with. It goes alongside the weaponization of words as a bullying tactic. "Nazi" is now routinely used to describe almost any conservative view. Holocaust is used to describe any violence toward any group of people when it clearly means the extermination of an entire group deliberately and for no other reason. Intolerance and language intertwine to create a culture where discussion and difference cannot exist.

The real world is not as "clean" as we would all like. The desire to cleanse it of views we find intolerable is a very illiberal instinct. And "lying" or "fake news" are simply cleansing mechanisms, not real discussion or debate.

Frank Furedi has this week's essay of the week for opening up a discussion of these issues. He examines the Davos World Economic Forum publication - The Global Risk Report 2024.

The Global Risk Report 2024 more or less claims that misinformation and disinformation constitute the greatest risk facing society in the period ahead.

And quotes from it:

..emerging as the most severe global risk anticipated over the next two years, foreign and domestic actors alike will leverage Misinformation and disinformation to further widen societal and political divides

Furedi concludes:

At the heart of the discussion about Fake News is the questions of who gets to decide what is false and what is real. And that is a roundabout way of saying who gets to decide what is true. One of the most important ways that a society comes to a consensus about what is true is through argument and debate and political struggle. Democratic elections are not just about choosing specific policies but also about deciding whose view of the world should prevail. In recent elections the hitherto hegemonic status of the globalist worldview has come under challenge by newly emerging populist and anti-status quo movements, many of whom have gone from strength to strength. It is the fear of the outcome of the many impending elections that have motivated the authors of the WEF report to brand misinformation as a global existential threat.

His point about the need to debate to decide choices and outcomes is clearly right. Shouting down an opponent or accusing them of lying is a bullying tactic of a poor debater. But more importantly, it threatens democracy if speech can be bullied.

The attempt to force Substack to close down publications that are within its terms of service is a form of bullying. To the founder's credit, they are not prepared to abandon their belief in reason and open discourse.

They may not like the association based on their mutual history, but Elon Musk's attitude to speech on X is similar. And also worthy of support.

As adults, we can all read and make up our minds about what we believe without needing discourse to be cleansed of views outside a narrow range.

There will be no video this week as Andrew is traveling. Back in full next week. Enjoy. There is a lot to make you think in the works below.

Essays of the Week