Substack might be facing a showdown with the authoritarian left soon. The blogging and newsletter platform has recently come under fire for its decentralized moderation model, which allows a wide range of voices – including offensive ones – to express their ideas on the site.

The founders of the company have been dedicated to upholding the principle of free speech, much to the consternation of members of the progressive crowd, who prefer stifling ideas that contradict their own.

In a statement on Substack, co-founder Hamish McKenzie wrote:

I just want to make it clear that we don’t like Nazis either—we wish no-one held those views. But some people do hold those and other extreme views. Given that, we don't think that censorship (including through demonetizing publications) makes the problem go away—in fact, it makes it worse.

We believe that supporting individual rights and civil liberties while subjecting ideas to open discourse is the best way to strip bad ideas of their power. We are committed to upholding and protecting freedom of expression, even when it hurts. As @Ted Gioia has noted, history shows that censorship is most potently used by the powerful to silence the powerless.

Our content guidelines do have narrowly defined proscriptions, including a clause that prohibits incitements to violence. We will continue to actively enforce those rules while offering tools that let readers curate their own experiences and opt in to their preferred communities. Beyond that, we will stick to our decentralized approach to content moderation, which gives power to readers and writers.

McKenzie’s comments come after a report indicated that Nazi content was being published on the platform.

The response came weeks after The Atlantic found that at least 16 Substack newsletters had “overt Nazi symbols” in their logos or graphics, and that white supremacists had been allowed to publish on, and profit from, the platform. Hundreds of newsletter writers signed a letter opposing Substack’s position and threatening to leave. About 100 others signed a letter supporting the company’s stance.

The report noted that the founders’ stance on free speech “elicited waves of outrage and criticism.”

Of course, it did. In fact, this might be just the beginning.

Several writers who use the site have expressed opposition to allowing free expression of ideas on Substack. “Why do you choose to promote and allow the monetization of sites that traffic in white nationalism?” read a letter signed by about 200 Substack users. The document also highlighted folks like white nationalist Richard Spencer, who uses the platform. It also noted that people who promote the Great Replacement Theory or “The Jewish question” are using the service. The letter concluded:

We, your publishers, want to hear from you on the official Substack newsletter. Is platforming Nazis part of your vision of success? Let us know—from there we can each decide if this is still where we want to be.

This might have been a tricky situation for Substack’s founders. On one hand, they want to allow people to use their platform to speak their minds. Conversely, the publishers also have the freedom to associate with whomever they want. Of course, it is also important to remember that those seeking to shut down Nazi ideology have no plans to stop there. To these people, everyone to the right of Lenin is a Nazi, so it stands to reason that giving in on the Nazi question won’t actually solve the problem. In most of these types of situations, it seems better to err on the side of liberty regardless of what the authoritarian progressives say. It’s not like banning Nazis and white nationalists will ever satisfy these people anyway, right?