Substack announced on Wednesday a brand new characteristic known as “Reply Guidelines,” designed to present creators larger management over how their audiences are capable of reply.
With the characteristic, creators can set up particular pointers for feedback on their posts, in Notes, or in Chat. These pointers may embrace requests to remove AI slop or profanity, or one thing foolish like solely requiring replies in haiku type.
Substack explains that the system learns from customers’ actions, comparable to once they conceal replies, and can robotically filter out feedback that don’t match the creator’s preferences. Creators preserve visibility over these hidden replies and have the choice to unhide them if they modify their minds.
At the moment, Reply Guidelines can be found for all English-language publications.
Substack has at all times gone for a decentralized moderation method, the place writers are accountable for policing their very own communities. Creators have entry to instruments comparable to the choice to lock posts or threads to forestall extra feedback, remark deletion, and the flexibility to ban or droop customers when essential.
The brand new characteristic might cut back the necessity for creators to sift by means of each remark manually.
Nonetheless, it’s necessary to notice that Substack has confronted criticism relating to its content material moderation practices, particularly relating to far-right newsletters. Critics argue that the platform’s extra lenient method permits dangerous rhetoric to thrive. In in the present day’s announcement, Substack appeared to deal with this and underscored its dedication to fostering various on-line communities, regardless of the challenges this entails.
As Substack places it, “Since its founding, Substack has sought to create the absolute best circumstances for cultures of many types to flourish on-line. Reaching this typically includes troublesome trade-offs, however alongside our core mannequin — the place we solely earn when writers, artists, journalists, musicians, and others earn — we’ve managed to carve out a novel path relative to different platforms.”
This yr, Substack has rolled out a number of updates to its platform, together with a built-in recording studio for creators to pre-record and publish movies. It additionally launched a TV app for subscribers to observe video posts and livestreams on their front room screens.
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