Understack was announced on Wednesday, a new feature called “Response Rules,” designed to give creators more control over how their audience can respond.
With the feature, creators can set specific guidelines for comments on their posts, Notes, or Chat. These instructions might include requests to eliminate profanity or AI profanity, or something silly like only requiring responses in haiku form.
Substack explains that the system learns from user actions, such as when they hide replies, and will automatically filter out comments that don’t match the creator’s preferences. Creators retain visibility of these hidden answers and have the option to hide them if they change their mind.
Currently, Response Rules are available for all English language versions.
Substack has always followed a decentralized moderation approach, where authors are responsible for policing their communities. Creators have access to tools such as the option to lock posts or threads to prevent additional comments, delete comments, and the ability to block or suspend users when necessary.
The new feature may reduce the need for creators to review each comment manually.
However, it is important to note that Substack has faced criticism regarding its content moderation practices, especially regarding far-right newsletters. Critics argue that the platform’s more lenient approach allows harmful rhetoric to thrive. In today’s announcement, Substack appeared to address this and underscored its commitment to fostering diverse online communities, despite the challenges this entails.
As Substack puts it, “Since its inception, Substack has strived to create the best possible conditions for cultures of many varieties to flourish on the Internet. Achieving this often involves tough competition, but alongside our core model – where we only win when writers, artists, journalists, musicians and others win – we’ve managed to carve out a uniquely relevant platform.”
This year, Substack rolled out several updates to its platform, including a built-in recording studio for creators to pre-record and publish videos. It also launched a TV app for subscribers to watch video posts and live streams on their living room screens.
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