Your Freedom of Speech Is My Freedom of Distribution

An opinion you are free to hold is not an opinion I am obliged to spread — and a platform can say no without becoming a censor.

By Sebastian Esser (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)

Recently, a German YouTuber named Benjamin Berndt sat down for a four-and-a-half-hour conversation with Björn Höcke. Höcke is the most prominent hardliner of the AfD, Germany's far-right party; a German court has ruled that he may legally be called a fascist. For four and a half hours, softly lit, Höcke muses about his nationalist fantasies — and his host never contradicts him, never adds context, never asks a critical question. The video has been online for about two months and has passed six million views.

Berndt says he is not a journalist. He lets people talk, he listens, and besides, Germany has freedom of speech. After he received a letter from the state media authority of North Rhine-Westphalia — one of Germany's regional media regulators — asking him to add context to a false claim Höcke had made on camera, Berndt has cast himself as the victim of state censorship.

That argument bothers me. I regularly face the same question myself — whether or not I want to help spread a particular opinion — and sometimes I decide against it. I am certain this is not censorship. Here is why.

An opinion doesn't have to be sayable everywhere

The freedom to state your opinion matters; most people can agree on that. It is the freedom to form a view and express it, even a view others find controversial or extreme. But at least in Germany and most of Europe, freedom of speech is not absolute. It has limits. Article 5 of Germany's constitution draws the line at human dignity, and also at the protection of minors, insult, defamation, slander, and what German law calls Schmähkritik — abuse dressed up as criticism. If you don't like where those lines are drawn, you would have to assemble a majority to change the constitution.

But freedom of speech does not mean that every opinion must be sayable everywhere. The right to say something does not oblige anyone else to print it, broadcast it, recommend it, or turn it into money. No one claims that a conservative newspaper violates free speech by declining a left-wing guest column, or the other way around. Newspapers, publishers and broadcasters have political identities — German law even protects that editorial slant; it's called Tendenzschutz. Historically, freedom did not arise because every newspaper had to print everything. Freedom arose because there were many different newspapers.

Censorship is a precise word. It means an authority forbids or suppresses an expression. Someone who is censored can no longer speak. Someone who simply isn't invited onto a podcast can still speak — just not on that particular podcast.

So inviting someone like Höcke, making him look good, and organizing millions of views is of course a political act. Freedom of speech does not require Benjamin Berndt to do any of it. He chose to clear a large stage for Höcke's views. There can be many reasons for that — political, financial, and of course the honest belief that everyone must be allowed to say anything, anywhere, at any time. But that would be a private opinion, not a fact. Benjamin Berndt is not protecting free speech, and he is not threatened by censorship.

"You're not allowed to say that anymore"

I don't want to make this too easy for myself. In 1990, 78 percent of Germans still felt they could express their political opinion freely; more recently, only 46 percent did. Much of what people experience as "you're not allowed to say that anymore" is, as far as I can tell, something else: disagreement, criticism, often a loss of status. We have to endure all of that. Enduring it is precisely what the freedom to disagree consists of.

But cancel culture is real, of course — on the right and on the left. I won't deny that some people experience this new communication culture as a constraint. In certain spaces, extremely strict social expectations now apply. They are simply not the same thing as censorship. These interpersonal rules are set neither by the state nor by any other powerful villain. We are all free not to abide by them.

My channel, my rules

Whoever spreads an opinion carries responsibility — and with it comes a right of its own: the freedom of distribution. No one can force me to spread an opinion, or to help it spread, if I don't want to. As a host, I should make sure everyone knows and follows the rules of the place where opinions are exchanged. But anyone who won't follow them can look for another place, with other rules.

Put differently: freedom depends on a plurality of spaces, not on the neutrality of every space. That does not threaten free speech. It protects it from being destroyed by whoever shouts loudest.

Distribution means shared responsibility

Benjamin Berndt provides a large space on YouTube, and his rules say: people like Höcke get undisturbed, benevolent access to an audience of millions. But that does not release Berndt from responsibility for distributing those views. Whether he admits it or not, his choices shape public debate.

Which brings me to myself.

I am ultimately responsible for the opinions published on Steady — the membership platform I run — as the company's CEO. And over the past few years we have fairly often declined to work with people, even when the content in question wasn't always illegal. I share responsibility for its distribution, and that is why I now insist on my own freedom not to distribute certain opinions.

For a long time I argued the exact opposite. Here is how I changed my mind.

After I first made this argument publicly, someone sent me an anonymous reply:

Your opinion piece was completely inappropriate. On top of that, you openly admitted that you intervene in your creators' content on Steady. That alone is reason to keep well away from the platform. You're basically doing exactly what you've accused Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos of in other pieces, if I remember correctly. A shame.

Ouch.

That criticism is harsh, but I'm not hearing it for the first time. I take it seriously, because for a long time I argued exactly the same way. Let me explain why I nevertheless believe our position is right.

How extreme is too extreme?

Let's start with Andrew Tate — the British-American former kickboxer known for his ultra-masculine lifestyle and his misogyny, who radicalizes young men with his videos. Since 2022, he and his brother have faced proceedings in Romania on charges of human trafficking, rape and forming a criminal organization.

Banned from Meta, TikTok and YouTube for hate speech, Tate has been building reach at breakneck speed this year on the newsletter platform Substack. His publication reportedly has close to a million paying subscribers; it ranks number one in the "New Bestsellers" category. On Substack, an extremist like Tate is one of the most visible and most lucrative creators on the platform. At Steady, we would not work with someone like him. Who is right?

Substack's founders see themselves as especially principled defenders of free speech. Substack does have content guidelines, but Tate's content doesn't appear to conflict with them. Substack's line is that what authors and readers accept is what matters most; the operators intervene only in the most extreme exceptions.

I don't fundamentally disagree. Platforms must not become ministries of truth. Independent media makers must not be at the mercy of the operators' personal taste. Otherwise social pressure could push out legitimate minority positions that simply don't suit a majority — and that would restrict free speech. And readers are, of course, perfectly capable of forming their own judgment about what they read.

So in Steady's early years, we held exactly this position: it is not our job to make such decisions.

Or so we thought.

I see it differently today

As I argued above, freedom of speech creates no entitlement that every platform, every newsroom, every venue must distribute, amplify or monetize an opinion. Being legally allowed to say something does not mean others have to spread it.

Because distribution is not neutral. Whoever distributes decides which topics become visible, which content earns money, which communities grow, which norms take hold. A podcast, a newsletter, a publisher, a broadcaster cannot pretend to be a mere technical service provider. The selection itself is already an act. Whoever organizes reach is part of the effect.

That may sound a little glib; it is, of course, complicated. So let me take it step by step. Distribution happens on several levels. I'd distinguish three:

1. There is a kind of base infrastructure: internet access, the hosting of your website, payment providers like PayPal, Visa, Mastercard. These should act largely neutrally. Anyone excluded at this level would effectively be stripped of their freedom of speech.

2. Above that sits a layer of aggregation and recommendation, which I would not count as base infrastructure: Google, Apple's App Store, Chrome, Spotify's rankings. Here selection is unavoidable, and that gives whoever controls these layers an uncanny amount of power. This level needs transparency, consistency and clear procedures.

3. And third, there are editorial spaces. By that I mean traditional media, but also websites, podcasts, communities — and membership platforms like Steady. Here selection is legitimate, even desirable. The closer someone sits to the editorial and community level, the more legitimate it is for them to curate what they distribute.

For media, there are two competing approaches today: platform neutrality and platform plurality.

Neutrality or plurality?

Platform neutrality says: every platform should permit as much as possible, because any restriction would be censorship. Anything legal must be sayable. Hate, intimidation and extremism can be monetized as long as they stay below the threshold of what is legally actionable. In this model, even moderating comments would be a questionable exercise of power.

Platform plurality — which I find more convincing — aims to secure a pluralistic ecosystem. Free speech exists only if there are alternatives, places to express your opinion elsewhere. Those alternatives have to exist, and switching has to be realistic: users, publishers and creators must not be trapped on a single platform. This plurality is the precondition for freedom of speech not being curtailed.

Because distribution becomes a problem when a single channel is so important that being excluded from it effectively means being excluded from the relevant public sphere — for example YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X. Add to that the informal and formal pressure on these companies' decisions — in the United States under Donald Trump, and of course in China. And it all happens opaquely: the algorithms of Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and TikTok decide what we get to hear.

Whoever profits from hate is not neutral

Which brings me back to that anonymous message, and the charge that I behave like Elon Musk by intervening in creators' content. On the level I'm actually responsible for, I don't think it holds. Steady is one platform among many. Anyone who isn't comfortable with us can easily find a new home at Substack, Patreon, Ghost, Beehiiv, Kit — or Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini. There are options.

We would never alter content, or even so much as comment on our customers' content. Plenty gets published on Steady that I personally disagree with completely. We tolerate that without difficulty, and we have a spine sturdy enough to protect opinions that deviate from the mainstream. But in extreme cases we do end the business relationship — not arbitrarily, abruptly and for public effect, but according to transparent rules and a fair process.

Substack, by contrast, has repeatedly had to admit that it hosts far-right newsletters and earns money from them; in 2024 it removed a number of neo-Nazi publications only after a user revolt. Earlier this year, the Guardian reported that Substack continues to make money from newsletters spreading Nazi ideology, white supremacy and antisemitism.

Substack is a competitor of Steady's, so perhaps I have a credibility problem here. Even so, the direct comparison raises a fundamental question: where does free speech end, and where does complicity begin? Substack's position is that bad ideas lose their power in open debate. My answer: that may be true of debate. But whoever provides the payment infrastructure, the reach and the monetization enables not just the debate, but the business model behind it.

We made this mistake too

We had exactly this problem ourselves. A few years ago there were publications on Steady whose content we, as founders, could not reconcile with our values. But our community guidelines at the time drew such imprecise lines that we had no good arguments for acting against them.

I won't name specific examples here, because even when I no longer want to work with a partner, it is not my place to spread the details in public. Steady is not a bar you throw someone out of for misbehaving. We are a payment infrastructure with membership management, a publisher community, a business foundation and a space of trust for the media makers who work with us and whose livelihoods depend on it. Destroying that business overnight is not only legally problematic; it would destroy the trust of every one of our customers.

In any case, we took public criticism that was justified. So a few years after founding the company, we expanded and rewrote our community guidelines.

Not everything that's allowed is okay

The basic stance: Steady has rules, and anyone who follows them is welcome. Anyone who doesn't, we ask to publish their content elsewhere. Not because we deny them the right to free expression, but because our space is not the right one for that content. There are plenty of other spaces — Substack, for instance — that are less choosy.

Steady does not draw the line only where criminal law kicks in. Like other far-right figures, Höcke is practiced at approaching those limits without quite crossing them. A piece of content can be legal and still not fit our community standards. Our guidelines spell out what we don't want to distribute: systematic intimidation, hate as a business model, misogynist or racist content, extremist propaganda, fraud, pseudo-scientific health promises, the exploitation of vulnerable people. And, importantly: these community guidelines are not legal rules. In the end they are subjective judgments about content that we have to make at our own discretion.

There are economic reasons for this stance, too. As a provider that handles payments, we are subject to obligations well beyond criminal law — for instance the requirements of our payment providers around know-your-customer checks against money laundering, sanctions lists and fraud risk. Legality was never the only limit. Our providers' compliance forces stricter standards on us.

More important still is the trust we depend on. Steady's model rests on members entrusting us with their payment data and publishers entrusting us with their income. A platform seen as a monetization channel for hate damages the business foundation of every other publisher on it. So our approach doesn't protect society in the abstract — it protects our other customers, concretely.

When we say no, we do it fairly

None of this is censorship. We forbid no one to speak. We decide whom we give our infrastructure, our brand and our reach. Not every rejection is a ban on speech — it is only the end of a business relationship. When we don't want to work with someone, that doesn't mean: you may not say this. It means: we are not the right partner.

So yes, Steady draws lines — but we have committed to a procedure that keeps the process fair. I am not the one who decides. A committee of three rotating colleagues does: prompted by a user's report, they compare the flagged content against our guidelines and judge whether a publication violates them. Ending a collaboration demands particular care — early warning, predictability, a stated reason, proportionality, a chance to correct course, a transition period, portability of data and members, no public humiliation, and immediate measures only in especially acute cases.

These rules have worked smoothly since 2020. Every so often we have declined or wound down our work with a particular publication. The processes have mostly been civil ever since, even when we strongly disagreed with the content.

What I've learned from all this: platforms are allowed to say no — though not lightly. That doesn't make me Elon Musk.

Translated from the original German by AI.