It's fine to be mad at Substack - in fact, you probably should be. But they're not the start of the problem. The credit card associations are. These organizations, which should simply enable cross border payment according to international law, also enforce very idiosyncratic rules on what classes of business are allowed to receive payment. In those rules, for example
Nazism is fine, but sex work is bad.
It's the rules of Visa, MasterCard and Amex which both enable Substack to host and monetize fascist content, and predicated Wirecard's ascent both to a payments powerhouse AND russia's primary agent in the European finance market and German national intelligence.
So while for sure Substack must be held accountable for their own decisions, and there is no reasonable defense to distributing and monetizing fascism, consider the entirety of the ecosystem. There are parties who are far, far harder to circumvent, but should be held equally of not more accountable.
RT @fraying
https://xoxo.zone/@fraying/111619772734822732
@osma and we really can't overlook governmental contributions to that environment.
Throughout the world politicians have threatened or actually cracked down on different aspects of tech and finance, including sex work to name one.
And that can be even trickier because sometimes there aren't clear rules, only threats, that companies have to do their best to try to live within, sometimes with irrational outcomes.
