Be Aware of Content Guidelines on Substack, Etc.

I was thinking of putting Joe Rogan in the title. But that would be misleading. This post is mainly about content guidelines and you.

This is Joe Rogan. He’s got a podcast on Substack Spotify.

Perhaps you too have content on the internet.

Spotify felt that Joe Rogan’s content was worth $100 million. (I feel your content is worth ten times more! If I had a billion dollars... 🙂)

But whether you’re Joe Rogan or an “average Joe,” you agree to the terms of the service you’re using. Maybe the terms will be applied differently to Rogan than to the average user. Maybe, like Substack, the service will take a hands-off policy in general. But even Substack has limits on content. In any case, content guidelines are available for anyone to cite in favor or against a user’s actions.

These terms typically include what Substack calls “Content Guidelines,” Spotify calls “User Guidelines,” etc. They describe what you may not (or may) post.

A service could change its content guidelines, explain them, and enforce them in various ways.¹ It also might incorporate a parent’s service’s guidelines.² In any case, a conscientious writer or concerned reader should know about the service’s guidelines.

Unlike Joe Rogan, most content creators won’t make headlines for possible guideline violations or removal of content. Neither you nor the head of the service might make public statements about an alleged violation.³

But an allegation against you – or by you, as a reader – may matter a lot to you. And public statements in controversies such as Rogan’s might be relevant to the allegation in your case.

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Here are content guidelines from several popular services on which users post content:

• Blogger: https://www.blogger.com/content-policy

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards/introduction

• Gab: https://gab.com/about/tos

• Ghost: https://ghost.org/terms/

• Instagram: https://help.instagram.com/477434105621119

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/legal/professional-community-policies

• Mailchimp: https://mailchimp.com/legal/acceptable_use/

• Medium: https://policy.medium.com/medium-rules-30e5502c4eb4

• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/policy/guidelines

• Reddit: https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy

• Rumble: https://rumble.com/s/terms

• Spotify: https://www.spotify.com/us/legal/user-guidelines/

• Substack: https://substack.com/content

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/community-guidelines

• Twitter: https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-rules

• WordPress: https://wordpress.com/support/user-guidelines/

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/howyoutubeworks/policies/community-guidelines/

Perhaps someone will create a chart comparing the content guidelines of some of these services. I’m reluctant to do this, since guidelines may be revised over time⁴ and may differ from how they’re enforced.⁵ (But if there’s enough interest, I could try.)

I suppose the main thing is to be aware of the content guidelines (and official commentary on the guidelines) for the service you’re using at the time. (I covered content guidelines for Substack in a previous post.)

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If you’re making an argument or allegation regarding a service’s guidelines, you might be interested in how the guidelines have changed. You can find older versions of a web page on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. I found three versions of Substack’s guidelines⁶:

• Effective date: November 24, 2021

• Effective date: November 20, 2020

• Effective date: March 26, 2020

As long as the text hasn’t been significantly reordered, you can use a page comparison (or “diff”) tool to view changes between two versions.⁷ Copyscape’s free comparison tool shows that Substack’s content guidelines don’t differ much from March or November 2020 to present. But some of the changes might be illuminating. For example, while the guidelines previously said

Substack cannot be used to publish content or fund initiatives that call for violence, exclusion, or segregation based on protected classes. Offending behavior includes serious attacks on people based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability or medical condition.

they now say

Substack cannot be used to publish content or fund initiatives that incite violence based on protected classes. Offending behavior includes credible threats of physical harm to people based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability or medical condition.

(emphases added)

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If you don’t mind saying, have you experienced or come across any noteworthy (or comment-worthy) controversies about content guidelines on Substack or elsewhere? How did the controversy turn out – or is it still going on?

1. If you just looked at Substack’s content guidelines, you would be missing out on its blog posts discussing them, which may be significant to your case.

2. Twitter’s guidelines are incorporated in Revue’s. TinyLetter’s policies are links to policies of its parent companies Mailchimp and Intuit. Instagram, though owned by Facebook/Meta and incorporating some of its terms, has a separate page of content guidelines.

3. In response to the Rogan controversy, Spotify also published internal rules and announced a covid content advisory.

4. TikTok notes that it will be updating its guidelines on March 7, 2022.

5. Neil Gaiman recently tweeted, “I wish Substack enforced their terms of service instead of offering a haven for people who trade in hate and abuse.” I imagine Substack has a different view on whether, or to what extent, they enforce their terms of service.

6. It appears that Substack’s content guidelines before March 26, 2020, weren’t in a separate document but rather were part of Substack’s terms of use.

7. The Wayback Machine has a comparison tool called Changes. But it wasn’t working properly with versions of Substack content guidelines.