That’s splitting hairs. Salespeople who work on commission are keeping an amount of what they make for the company, but I doubt many people would claim they aren’t being paid to sell a product.
Comment on Substack says it will not remove or demonetize Nazi content
mo_ztt@lemmy.world 10 months agoNot exactly. Substack subscribers pay subscription fees, the content author keeps roughly 80% of the fees, and the rest goes to Substack or to offset hosting costs. The Nazi subscribers are paying the Nazi publishers, and money is flowing from the Nazi subscribers to Substack because of that operation (not away from Substack as it would be if they hired Nazis).
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 10 months ago
be_excellent_to_each_other@kbin.social 10 months ago
They are being paid by subscribers, not by substack. I am not on substack's side here, but that detail seems quite relevant if we're interested in painting an accurate picture of what's going on.
If they were putting Nazi content on substack and no individuals were subscribing to read it, they would be earning 0.
Substack is profiting from those same subscribers, no doubt.
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 10 months ago
They are being paid by subscribers, not by substack.
Again- If you sold widgets door-to-door for a 20% commission, would you say you were being paid by the people who buy the widgets? I doubt many would.
be_excellent_to_each_other@kbin.social 10 months ago
In that case I'd be selling something made by the entity giving me commission - what people want and pay for is something made by someone other than me. In this case the people creating the content are the same people drawing the subscribers, so it's more accurate to say substack takes a cut of their subscription income than to say substack pays them.
If I stop selling widgets the company still has the exact same widgets and can get anyone else to sell them. If a renowned nazi writer (bleh) takes their content to another platform, substack no longer has that content (or the author's presence on their platform) to profit from.
TrickDacy@lemmy.world 10 months ago
This ignores that the platform is needed for that income to be possible. But truly you’re just being pedantic
mo_ztt@lemmy.world 10 months ago
How is it pedantic to point out that “will pay for them” means “will get paid by them”?
There’s a perfectly good argument to be made that Substack shouldn’t host Nazis even if they’re making money off them. But that wasn’t your message; your message was, they’re hiring Nazis. It’s relevant whether they’re materially supporting the Nazis, or being materially supported by them.
TrickDacy@lemmy.world 10 months ago
It wasn’t my message, but it certainly made sense to me and still does. whereas your message makes sense but in a totally different way. It’s basically “nuh-uh”
mo_ztt@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Hm. Fair enough. The core complaint I have with banning Nazis from being able to speak, has nothing to do with which way the money is flowing. And I fixed “your” to be “the”; I just hadn’t noticed you weren’t the person I was talking with before.