Mike Brock’s piece on Sequoia Capital last week laid out a pretty damning case study: a well-respected COO complains about a partner’s Islamophobic posts, senior leadership invokes “institutional neutrality” and declines to act, she resigns, he stays because he made them billions on SpaceX. Brock correctly calls this out as a choice, not neutrality—a calculation about whose value to the firm matters more.
The thing that struck me about Brock’s piece is that it highlights how there’s a broader pattern here: institutional cowardice from organizations that spout high-minded ideals as a shield to explain their refusal to make a clear decision, while ignoring that doing so is a very real choice with very real consequences.
That’s worth highlighting, because we keep seeing it play out in nearly identical ways. Whether it’s a venture capital firm or a social media platform, the playbook is the same: invoke “neutrality” or “free speech” as a shield, refuse to take a clear stance on bigoted behavior, and then act shocked when the people being targeted decide they don’t want to stick around.
This is the Nazi bar problem, and it keeps happening because people in positions of power either don’t understand it or don’t want to.
We head off into an excursion about paid blogging platforms …
Sequoia took the cowardly way out. It made a choice, but it wouldn’t own it, just like Substack refuses to own its pro-Nazi position. It pretends it doesn’t by saying “we’re staying neutral.” But their version of “staying neutral” and “supporting free speech” is really “bigotry and hatred are welcome” and then, what follows naturally is “the targets of bigotry and hatred must leave.”
And it’s the exact same choice Substack made. When [CEO Chris] Best refused to answer Nilay’s questions, he was saying: we value the revenue from writers who publish bigoted content more than we value the writers and readers who don’t want to be associated with that content.
Just as Balbale felt the need to leave Sequoia, a ton of Substack’s top writers left that platform. Joe Posnanski, Casey Newton, Marisa Kabas, Ryan Broderick, Molly White, Ken White, Audrey Watters, Mark DeLong, and many others have left Substack, with many of them pointing out that Substack’s stance on Nazis makes them feel unwelcome (for what it’s worth, many are also noting they make more money on other platforms).
Hmm. More money, fewer Nazis seems a decent tradeoff.
I don’t see how this relates to free speech. The targets of bigotry don’t have to do anything or go anywhere because bigots are allowed to talk. If the place has free speech, that means whether you give the place to people who hate you is also a choice.
Free speech doesn’t mean free corporate executive positions. If your workplace will fire you for what you say, you don’t have free speech there.
Never believe that corporations ever cared about pesky things like human rights or that all human lives have value.
No, corporations started hiring and selling products to women, to people of color, to LGBTQ+ groups because it made them more money. They never cared about any of these groups at all or their rights. They just knew that not hiring the best workers from each group and not being willing to sell them products was leaving money on the table. They wanted that money more than they wanted to openly exhibit how racist, misogynist, and homophobic they are.
So really the decision here follows from that exact same logic. They hid behind neutrality while keeping the person who made them more money. As sad as it is to say, this is the same logic that got them to accept and sell products to these groups to begin with. In the end, it’s literally always been about money and nothing else. They hide behind lofty values as a PR move, and nothing else deeper than that. It’s always just been propaganda to increase profits.
The only color they care about is green.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
Rush
The thing is, they haven’t chosen not to decide, they’ve chosen to hide behind the rhetoric of not choosing. Substack chose the Nazis, fairly explicitly. And I’m sure Sequoia wouldn’t be neutral if the female COO had been making anti-Israel posts.
Yes… That is the choice. That’s the entire point of the article.
