A few readers have emailed or commented recently to ask if I’m planning to move this newsletter off of Substack because of, well, “the Nazi stuff.” The short answer is a not-particularly-strongly-felt “no, for now.” My reasoning here is mostly practical and not at all ideological, and I’m not even sure it’s particularly interesting or sophisticated; if I were smart, I would probably just write a short paragraph and move on. But I suffer from an unfortunate brain disease where every few months I feel compelled to write thousands of words on the mechanisms of platforms, and my time at Gawker taught me that excessive transparency in matters like this helps make up for other deficiencies.
Thank you Max. As someone who unsubscribed from paid membership (and who dearly misses it), here are my two cents:
I had been on high alert about Substack ever since they spammed me with an interview of Richard Hanania, as I had learned right here on Substack just how much of a racist creep he was. The interview shamelessly whitewashed his views and presented him as a "centrist", and even after he got exposed as a "former" flat out white supremacist (and McKenzie said he would not have interviewed him _had he known about it_) the interview was left there unedited and unchallenged.
That is the context in which I received the news of the Nazi issue, not just as "they have some Nazis here" (big whoop, it's the internet), but as another evidence that Substack may be more than just a little interested in shifting the Overton window, and not afraid to pull big stunts to do it (they clearly played it fast and lose with their access to everyone's email).
If Substack somehow had a monopoly on newsletter publishing, I could convince myself that it is better to support them through the kind of writing that will counteract their agenda. But given their current weight in the media ecosystem as an emerging but not quite dominant platform, it is hard for me to say whether or not I'm doing more harm than good by giving them money (even if the bulk of it goes to support good writing) instead of refusing to, and urging writers to find other platforms.
And of course, I'll be happy to support you if/when you decide to switch.
Thanks Pablo, I understand (and share) your ambivalence here. I think it's been pretty clear that Substack is functionally right-wing for a while, at least since they were out funding transphobes and anti-vaxxers, and I suppose I made my peace with it less because I thought it was doing more good than harm (though I do think, as is often the case with platforms, there are a lot of publishers on Substack doing consistently cool, fun, playful, creative work that has nothing to do with the profit or ideological motivations of the company, and I'm glad Substack has given those people a chance to produce their work) and more because I think Substack is still quite small and (as a platform/network) un-influential, and my presence and relationship to it were ultimately unimportant to its success or failure. I suppose this is motivated reasoning, and there's every reason to worry that I completely mis-assessed the environment--so I don't begrudge anyone who calculates differently.
"they clearly played it fast and lose [sic] with their access to everyone's email"
Knowing your email address and sending you an email doesn't mean they have "access" to your email. That would mean they can read your emails, which they can't. I'm sure you know that, but you wanted to indulge in a little hysterical harm inflation.
Hanania seems like an idiot, but he's not an actual Nazi. This is exactly why Substack are right to draw a hard line over Platformer's whining: the definition of "Nazi" will gradually expand, just like the definition of "access to everyone's email".
Hanania is more than an idiot - he was an idiot with a seriously racist past (and more quiet-part-quiet present) that Substack, AS A COMPANY, promoted an interview with where they soft-pedaled his racist bona-fides and tried to rehab his public image in the face of being outed as a racist.
They could promote literally anyone writing on the platform, but they chose someone who was having a Media Moment, then spent a bit of social capital making sure everyone was hunky-dory with the piece of shit they found floating in the punchbowl.
I don't think Substack knew he had posted racist stuff 10 years ago when they promoted that interview. He's not an actual Nazi now (I don't agree with him but he's not a Nazi).
However, if you really think Substack knew about his 2013 forum posts and deliberately chose to promote him as a plot to normalise white supremacy, my question to you is: why are you still posting on this Nazi-supporting website? Shouldn't you delete your account right away?
He had posted racist stuff in 2023 ON SUBSTACK, which is why many people were zero percent surprised when he got ✌️exposed✌️ as a ✌️former✌️ white supremacist, and why they correctly pointed out that his non apology was laughable. He only renounced the label, but he retained all of the views.
If you scroll (up? down?), you'll see the top-level comment where I say that I moved my own SERIOUSLY inconsequential Substack to a self-hosted Ghost instance - mostly because I'm a web developer by trade and I consider that both Fun and Enlightening.
And to be clear, I'm not judging anyone for staying or going, subscribing or unsubscribing. I just think that some of the reasons for staying that Max outlined are things I'd also considered and gone the other way on. Then again, I make about 2 Venti Cold Brews a week in subscriptions - so I can afford to.
Writing free comments on a public post doesn't help Substack's bottom line one bit - but since you've already decided that putting your money in as a Free Speech Warrior is just as important - so hey, why not spend some quality time engaging in reparteé?
By engaging with me you’re simply increasing the value of my subscription to this Substack and making me less likely to unsubscribe, so if you think about it you’re funding Nazism. The only ethical position if you think Substack is pro-Nazi is to delete your account here.
Thanks, Max. I agree with you top to bottom. I don’t love the platform’s stances, but I love the writers and writing it’s helped me find (you included).
I don’t love everything about my employer, my hometown, or the other digital platforms I use. They’re means to an end though. In Substack’s case, they’ve done much more “good” in the world, by providing a living to many writers I love and allowing them to spread positive info, than damage by hosting some Nazi newsletters.
Any platform you might switch to will eventually be infiltrated by Nazis and other scum (if they haven’t already), and we’ll be in this same shouting match again. No disrespect to anyone who feels differently; I respect you standing for what you believe.
To be clear, I really don't begrudge anyone for making the calculation that they can't stay here and walking away--I'm making the same calculation, just ending up, for now, on the other side.
Hey Max, I feel very aligned with your perspective here. I think America has a Nazi problem and every social media platform I've ever been on has had way too many Nazis. I can't believe how badly the substack leadership has stepped in it with this issue - seems easy to just ban every newsletter in the Atlantic article and be done with it. I suspect you're right that you'll want/need to change later, but I don't mind you staying put. I'd prefer to give less money to substack, but if this helps you keep your newsletter thriving, then do what you need to do and I for one will stick around.
Sorry this ended up so fucking long but I have a 1st print run Read Max hat (with typo) so you are morally obligated to deal with my long winded BS.
Even though I can't necessarily find fault in your reasons I just can't not feel like shit about it. Hamish's weak ass lying statement and their leaks re: Platformer have shown their hand fully as a site that is ready and willing to throw people under the bus for nazi money. and apparently not even that much nazi money! But they have cemented themselves to me and people like me I think, as well as to actual nazis looking to host their shit and make money, as a platform that is happy to capitulate and appease nazis. Every time I receive an email from substack I think about this shit. Which isn't often now, since I'm sad to say you are the only person I read who has decided to stay put.
Like I said before, I can't exactly find fault in you wanting life stability and food for your kid. That's why I paid to sub in the first place! that's that shit I like. But when the time comes to re-up I will not be able to look at my bank account and accept the charge for "Favorite Writer + $6 towards nazi sympathizers"
The one critique I would offer you is that even if it's kinda apples and oranges, I cannot help but think of the people staying and promoting on twitter despite it's recent downfall, saying stuff like "yeah it sucks but the numbers are better here and I need it to keep going." To which I've thought and heard others say, are these the people you want to bring into the fold? Are these the guys who will support you going forward? Do your posts have the same value when put next to an ad for malware or deepfake porn? I truly believe this controversy will bring more nazi shit to the platform, and the benefits of networking now that 50% of your recommenders are on another site cant, I think, outweigh that more and more of the audience who will be seeing your stuff for the first time will have explicitly been brought here because of psycho free speech identity politics. All I'm thinking while reading your piece is, is there actually any evidence these features will continue to work in your favor other than that they have so far? I think what I'm getting at is I feel like you are correctly seeing the good for what it HAS BEEN but you are not correctly predicting what the future will look like for a Substack without Platformer, or Garbage Day, or a huge majority of the content that made the site worth going to. What subscribers are you expecting to pull in now that so many massive Friends of Read Max have jumped ship? Are you just assuming new ones will spring up, or are you open to the idea of reducing your churn by getting subs off recommendations from Schellenberger and co? I'm being harsh now but I don't think it's unreasonable to ask because I genuinely don't see another future for Substack. Is running ads with the money you'd save from not paying substacks 10% fee truly such an insane idea that it's not worth mentioning? Again maybe I'm being too harsh. But as far as I can tell Where's Your Ed At and the rest won't be sending over new recommendations now that they've all moved.
You correctly identified that Substack has drafted you and your readers into this bullshit. But then you kinda back off from saying that matters in any way. You specifically said you wished for a Boring Platform, right after mentioning Ghost specifically, which seems to be just that! Maybe I'm wrong but then again maybe I'm not. You're the only one I like and read who has fallen on this side of the fence so it's hard to know.
FWIW I deleted their app last week and have canceled my recurring sub. I really don't want to but I am too fucking embarrassed by their assertion that demonetization would somehow help the freaks they're openly trying to enable. I'm not giving them my money and data and I don't think you should either. At SOME point risk aversion is capitulation. I don't magically know when and I especially don't have a kid to feed, but I think it's true regardless.
I really appreciate this thoughtful comment. I don't think we're that far apart, except I suppose on where the line is drawn and how to weigh the calculation here. There is a point at which my only audience left here is chuds (like some of the guys commenting on this very post), at which point it's not really worth it. Not to be entirely cynical about it, but there's still juice to squeeze here, and I want to get it before I go. This post is not a line in the sand, just a thinking-through of where I'm at. (I also probably should have been clearer about this in the post itself, but many of the people I've heard from who made the switch (not all!) have found their growth plummet and their tech headaches double. Boring tech is even more important than boring politics.)
also I somehow completely missed the trans hate and anti-vaxxer bullshit drama. I only just learned of that shit with this news cycle. so it matters quite a bit to me but I know most people have already moved on and made some kind of peace like you said. just not all of us.
People have become as fanatical as the ideologies they hate "YOI NOT MOVING THEN YOU A NAZI SUPPORTER"
It's like saying "Are you leaving NYC because there are Neo-Nazis in insert neighbourhood". You either have to be for or against everything now. You can't just be like "Well I don't give a shit. I will ban them from my comments" you have to leave the entire platform
I have more than a couple of Substacks that I read on a regular basis, including Platformer and most of the ones you pointed out as having crossover appeal (and I'll be adding Ed Zitron today). I'd venture the following comments on your decision to stay:
1. The decision not to just allow publication, but to give the Nazis both monetization and the same network effects that you draw on is my issue with Substack. Facebook has Nazis, sure. But they're not PAID Nazis. They're not Nazis who can get more paying customers by being recommended by other Nazis "You're into Holocaust denial - here are some other publications you may enjoy!"
2. I have a Ghost publication with a grand total of not-that-many subscribers, self-hosted. You can literally port everything over to Ghost (except the recommendations engine) automagically. If you want technical assistance, I can offer it, but I also recognize that #1 above is doing most of the lifting in your decision to stay.
3. Soft-pedaling Nazis is pro-Nazi - I don't care how many 'libertarian' arguments people throw in the path - Nazis need to be punched, not laissez-faired and hey guys, maybe don't consider the overthrow of liberal democracy, please ... no really guys ... pleeeeeeeZUH. There are hard lines in the world, and when the display of breasts is on THAT side of the line, but straight-up Nazi recruitment is on THIS side of the line, your priorities are fucked up as a company.
im not a writer, but it kinda feels like the days of (positive) network effects are gonna be diminishing going forward. when they refused to acknowledge the complexity inherent to content moderation, the *not nazi* crowd was quick to have their back. hit em with the classic "free speech", mainstream media, morality police, etc. their tacit endorsement of the "nazi" side, or however you want to characterize it, reeks of short sighted hubris a la elon. like...ill be here until everyone else leaves, but i think we've been watching the train crash in slow motion. only a bit faster now
Yeah, I think this is right. I mean, I think it's easy from inside this world to overestimate how much of Substack is about the free-speech life--if you check out the top newsletters in basically any category, they're mostly not IDW-freak shit, and I think the Nazi stuff, such as it is, is probably not reaching any of the readers of that historian who boomers love whose name I forget. But this is exactly what I find so frustrating about Substack's insistence on branding itself as the IDW-and-worse platform--there's a huge array of normies out there and every time they go and defend Nazis they lose a little of the moral cover that all the non-Nazi non-free speech newsletters provide. Eventually they *will* get to the boomer historian readership, and then they're just screwed.
Chiming in, surely less persuasively, from the “free subscriber who really enjoys this newsletter with some chance of being converted in the future” camp: only chance of going paid would be on another platform. No more payments on this platform from me.
I appreciate the delicacy of this post and that you’re trying to write through this. I write a niche (read: not super popular) substack and only had a vague sense of the Nazi stuff, but mostly in the way that I have a vague sense that, as you note, any platform probably has a Nazi problem because America has a Nazi problem. It feels exhausting to think through moving my newsletter to some other platform only to have that platform step in it for Nazi/weird founder proclivity/shady investment/obscure org chart change reasons
I mean you hit the nail on the head. America has a Nazi problem. Any open platform will have to deal with this stuff. As a normie, the user friendliness of mainstream brands like Amazon, Apple and also Substack matters a lot. A flight to ever more niche platforms will only reduce your reach.
Hey, Max. Smarter people than me have made convincing arguments for leaving Substack, so I'll just say that your decision to stick around really bums me out. You may have only lost 20 subscribers to date, but I imagine I'm not the only one who was waiting to see which way you'd go. I hope you'll reconsider, but in the meantime, count me as number 21.
And what would those arguments be? The Atlantic was completely misleading and full of outright lies. You had one or two writers trying to create a crisis out of nothing, too many people who can’t read past a headline, and voila, a moral panic made out of thin air.
As though legacy media doesn’t feel threatened by writers success on Substack.
Which is funny, because the only way you'd think my article was full of "outright lies" is if either a) you didn't read past the headline of Singal's hatchet job or b) were too slow to understand what he was doing.
Neither of those things are true. It was a tendentious deep dive into a single anecdote in the eight paragraph of a 28-paragraph story. And I have repeatedly addressed it directly: All he did was add even more evidence that the thesis of my story was accurate. What else you got?
lol. You made the claim to manufacture this Substack “crisis” and can’t give a figure. No surprise there. What % I consider acceptable is completely irrelevant.
At least thousands, and probably tens of thousands. And both I and the Atlantic I did respond to his criticisms. They were bunk, with one extremely minor exception, which we rectified in the story.
The Atlantic had a formal response. Here was yours:
“The rest of your claims here are either misleading or simply incorrect.” I asked him which of my claims were incorrect. “It’s Friday afternoon ahead of a long weekend,” he replied. “Don’t have time to help you right now, sorry.”
You replied to him. You didn’t respond to his criticisms. Where’s your response?
And considering such a deep dive you did on this Nazi problem, I’d expect you to have a hard number of paid subscribers not a guess. Even if it’s the thousands you’re pulling out of thin air, that’s not even 1% of total paid subscribers.
I'd definitely call Public and Signal's smear attack that. My favorite part was when they lied yesterday--and that's the word--and I said I hadn't gotten back to them with comment.
Hey, Max. I've recently subscribed, so I cancel out this guy's cancellation. Thanks for your balanced analysis of Platformer's hysterical grandstanding.
> I think Substack should ban Nazis as a matter of course and am glad they eventually did so, but I am not particularly worried about the current level of Nazis on Substack
...is that, no, they did not. This is from three days ago:
Absolutely with you on this. Josh’s post came straight to mind. There continues to be a problem with hate speech on this platform. Writers stay if you must, but don’t minimize the problem.
This doesn't rise to an "I'm unsubscribing" level because I remember what happened to blogs, but I don't think this is a great effort - feels a bit to me like buying into Twitter in late 2022. Sure it hadn't become its current hellscape yet, but the signs were there that it wanted to be. I'm following Garbage Day - which was the network effect through which I ended up here - to Ghost. I hope you'll reconsider, so I can be pretty much done here.
I find Richard Hanania abhorrent but I support free speech (especially after the past few months of seeing pro-Palestinian voices get de-platformed in different places) and support Substack in hosting and monetizing off of voices like these unless there are specific threats of violence. The scale of publications that crossed that line is unclear to me, but I suspect it is rather small relative to Substack's total readership. I am happy to change my mind on this if the number of publications that crossed that line without Substack doing anything is material.
Yeah, I think part of my reaction here is an understanding that the scale of *Substack itself* is in fact quite small and uninfluential relative to, say, Twitter, let alone to the true platform giants like Facebook and TikTok--and then, in turn, the "gray-area" newsletters (by which I mean not even the explicit white nationalists but the conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, whoever) are a smaller portion of that. I wish I had a better sense of the true scale, and of Substack's own internal workings--how much are its recommendations introducing readers to wholly new political worlds, and how much are they just putting extant marks in touch with a new set of grifters? It's possible that the problem is much worse than I realize or fear, and I'm certainly motivated to believe it's small. But for now it's relevant to my ability to sleep at night, so...
Max--I've read through the comments and there are many reasoned takes from "normal" people who are choosing to opt out, and then there is Ben (a comedian, apparently) who is choosing to opt in. I prefer the company of the former (I suspect Ben is the type of chap whose entire set I would spend daydreaming of ear-punching), so I am going to cancel as well. Send an email when you make the jump and I'll be back in.
Thank you Max. As someone who unsubscribed from paid membership (and who dearly misses it), here are my two cents:
I had been on high alert about Substack ever since they spammed me with an interview of Richard Hanania, as I had learned right here on Substack just how much of a racist creep he was. The interview shamelessly whitewashed his views and presented him as a "centrist", and even after he got exposed as a "former" flat out white supremacist (and McKenzie said he would not have interviewed him _had he known about it_) the interview was left there unedited and unchallenged.
That is the context in which I received the news of the Nazi issue, not just as "they have some Nazis here" (big whoop, it's the internet), but as another evidence that Substack may be more than just a little interested in shifting the Overton window, and not afraid to pull big stunts to do it (they clearly played it fast and lose with their access to everyone's email).
If Substack somehow had a monopoly on newsletter publishing, I could convince myself that it is better to support them through the kind of writing that will counteract their agenda. But given their current weight in the media ecosystem as an emerging but not quite dominant platform, it is hard for me to say whether or not I'm doing more harm than good by giving them money (even if the bulk of it goes to support good writing) instead of refusing to, and urging writers to find other platforms.
And of course, I'll be happy to support you if/when you decide to switch.
Thanks Pablo, I understand (and share) your ambivalence here. I think it's been pretty clear that Substack is functionally right-wing for a while, at least since they were out funding transphobes and anti-vaxxers, and I suppose I made my peace with it less because I thought it was doing more good than harm (though I do think, as is often the case with platforms, there are a lot of publishers on Substack doing consistently cool, fun, playful, creative work that has nothing to do with the profit or ideological motivations of the company, and I'm glad Substack has given those people a chance to produce their work) and more because I think Substack is still quite small and (as a platform/network) un-influential, and my presence and relationship to it were ultimately unimportant to its success or failure. I suppose this is motivated reasoning, and there's every reason to worry that I completely mis-assessed the environment--so I don't begrudge anyone who calculates differently.
"they clearly played it fast and lose [sic] with their access to everyone's email"
Knowing your email address and sending you an email doesn't mean they have "access" to your email. That would mean they can read your emails, which they can't. I'm sure you know that, but you wanted to indulge in a little hysterical harm inflation.
Hanania seems like an idiot, but he's not an actual Nazi. This is exactly why Substack are right to draw a hard line over Platformer's whining: the definition of "Nazi" will gradually expand, just like the definition of "access to everyone's email".
ben said "akshually 🤓🤓🤓" and destroyed pablo(woke 👎) with facts and logic
If you think Substack has access to your email you better delete your account before it’s too late
Hanania is more than an idiot - he was an idiot with a seriously racist past (and more quiet-part-quiet present) that Substack, AS A COMPANY, promoted an interview with where they soft-pedaled his racist bona-fides and tried to rehab his public image in the face of being outed as a racist.
They could promote literally anyone writing on the platform, but they chose someone who was having a Media Moment, then spent a bit of social capital making sure everyone was hunky-dory with the piece of shit they found floating in the punchbowl.
I don't think Substack knew he had posted racist stuff 10 years ago when they promoted that interview. He's not an actual Nazi now (I don't agree with him but he's not a Nazi).
However, if you really think Substack knew about his 2013 forum posts and deliberately chose to promote him as a plot to normalise white supremacy, my question to you is: why are you still posting on this Nazi-supporting website? Shouldn't you delete your account right away?
He had posted racist stuff in 2023 ON SUBSTACK, which is why many people were zero percent surprised when he got ✌️exposed✌️ as a ✌️former✌️ white supremacist, and why they correctly pointed out that his non apology was laughable. He only renounced the label, but he retained all of the views.
If you scroll (up? down?), you'll see the top-level comment where I say that I moved my own SERIOUSLY inconsequential Substack to a self-hosted Ghost instance - mostly because I'm a web developer by trade and I consider that both Fun and Enlightening.
And to be clear, I'm not judging anyone for staying or going, subscribing or unsubscribing. I just think that some of the reasons for staying that Max outlined are things I'd also considered and gone the other way on. Then again, I make about 2 Venti Cold Brews a week in subscriptions - so I can afford to.
Writing free comments on a public post doesn't help Substack's bottom line one bit - but since you've already decided that putting your money in as a Free Speech Warrior is just as important - so hey, why not spend some quality time engaging in reparteé?
DISCOURSE!
By engaging with me you’re simply increasing the value of my subscription to this Substack and making me less likely to unsubscribe, so if you think about it you’re funding Nazism. The only ethical position if you think Substack is pro-Nazi is to delete your account here.
We really don't need to litigate this here. Lots of other places online to pick these fights.
This exchange was certainly helpful to know to never, ever touch anything you're associated with!
dog brain comment.
And yet we all, yourself included, knew exactly what they meant. Grow up.
Thanks, Max. I agree with you top to bottom. I don’t love the platform’s stances, but I love the writers and writing it’s helped me find (you included).
I don’t love everything about my employer, my hometown, or the other digital platforms I use. They’re means to an end though. In Substack’s case, they’ve done much more “good” in the world, by providing a living to many writers I love and allowing them to spread positive info, than damage by hosting some Nazi newsletters.
Any platform you might switch to will eventually be infiltrated by Nazis and other scum (if they haven’t already), and we’ll be in this same shouting match again. No disrespect to anyone who feels differently; I respect you standing for what you believe.
To be clear, I really don't begrudge anyone for making the calculation that they can't stay here and walking away--I'm making the same calculation, just ending up, for now, on the other side.
Hey Max, I feel very aligned with your perspective here. I think America has a Nazi problem and every social media platform I've ever been on has had way too many Nazis. I can't believe how badly the substack leadership has stepped in it with this issue - seems easy to just ban every newsletter in the Atlantic article and be done with it. I suspect you're right that you'll want/need to change later, but I don't mind you staying put. I'd prefer to give less money to substack, but if this helps you keep your newsletter thriving, then do what you need to do and I for one will stick around.
Thanks Brad, I really appreciate you saying that!!
Sorry this ended up so fucking long but I have a 1st print run Read Max hat (with typo) so you are morally obligated to deal with my long winded BS.
Even though I can't necessarily find fault in your reasons I just can't not feel like shit about it. Hamish's weak ass lying statement and their leaks re: Platformer have shown their hand fully as a site that is ready and willing to throw people under the bus for nazi money. and apparently not even that much nazi money! But they have cemented themselves to me and people like me I think, as well as to actual nazis looking to host their shit and make money, as a platform that is happy to capitulate and appease nazis. Every time I receive an email from substack I think about this shit. Which isn't often now, since I'm sad to say you are the only person I read who has decided to stay put.
Like I said before, I can't exactly find fault in you wanting life stability and food for your kid. That's why I paid to sub in the first place! that's that shit I like. But when the time comes to re-up I will not be able to look at my bank account and accept the charge for "Favorite Writer + $6 towards nazi sympathizers"
The one critique I would offer you is that even if it's kinda apples and oranges, I cannot help but think of the people staying and promoting on twitter despite it's recent downfall, saying stuff like "yeah it sucks but the numbers are better here and I need it to keep going." To which I've thought and heard others say, are these the people you want to bring into the fold? Are these the guys who will support you going forward? Do your posts have the same value when put next to an ad for malware or deepfake porn? I truly believe this controversy will bring more nazi shit to the platform, and the benefits of networking now that 50% of your recommenders are on another site cant, I think, outweigh that more and more of the audience who will be seeing your stuff for the first time will have explicitly been brought here because of psycho free speech identity politics. All I'm thinking while reading your piece is, is there actually any evidence these features will continue to work in your favor other than that they have so far? I think what I'm getting at is I feel like you are correctly seeing the good for what it HAS BEEN but you are not correctly predicting what the future will look like for a Substack without Platformer, or Garbage Day, or a huge majority of the content that made the site worth going to. What subscribers are you expecting to pull in now that so many massive Friends of Read Max have jumped ship? Are you just assuming new ones will spring up, or are you open to the idea of reducing your churn by getting subs off recommendations from Schellenberger and co? I'm being harsh now but I don't think it's unreasonable to ask because I genuinely don't see another future for Substack. Is running ads with the money you'd save from not paying substacks 10% fee truly such an insane idea that it's not worth mentioning? Again maybe I'm being too harsh. But as far as I can tell Where's Your Ed At and the rest won't be sending over new recommendations now that they've all moved.
You correctly identified that Substack has drafted you and your readers into this bullshit. But then you kinda back off from saying that matters in any way. You specifically said you wished for a Boring Platform, right after mentioning Ghost specifically, which seems to be just that! Maybe I'm wrong but then again maybe I'm not. You're the only one I like and read who has fallen on this side of the fence so it's hard to know.
FWIW I deleted their app last week and have canceled my recurring sub. I really don't want to but I am too fucking embarrassed by their assertion that demonetization would somehow help the freaks they're openly trying to enable. I'm not giving them my money and data and I don't think you should either. At SOME point risk aversion is capitulation. I don't magically know when and I especially don't have a kid to feed, but I think it's true regardless.
I really appreciate this thoughtful comment. I don't think we're that far apart, except I suppose on where the line is drawn and how to weigh the calculation here. There is a point at which my only audience left here is chuds (like some of the guys commenting on this very post), at which point it's not really worth it. Not to be entirely cynical about it, but there's still juice to squeeze here, and I want to get it before I go. This post is not a line in the sand, just a thinking-through of where I'm at. (I also probably should have been clearer about this in the post itself, but many of the people I've heard from who made the switch (not all!) have found their growth plummet and their tech headaches double. Boring tech is even more important than boring politics.)
also I somehow completely missed the trans hate and anti-vaxxer bullshit drama. I only just learned of that shit with this news cycle. so it matters quite a bit to me but I know most people have already moved on and made some kind of peace like you said. just not all of us.
People have become as fanatical as the ideologies they hate "YOI NOT MOVING THEN YOU A NAZI SUPPORTER"
It's like saying "Are you leaving NYC because there are Neo-Nazis in insert neighbourhood". You either have to be for or against everything now. You can't just be like "Well I don't give a shit. I will ban them from my comments" you have to leave the entire platform
I have more than a couple of Substacks that I read on a regular basis, including Platformer and most of the ones you pointed out as having crossover appeal (and I'll be adding Ed Zitron today). I'd venture the following comments on your decision to stay:
1. The decision not to just allow publication, but to give the Nazis both monetization and the same network effects that you draw on is my issue with Substack. Facebook has Nazis, sure. But they're not PAID Nazis. They're not Nazis who can get more paying customers by being recommended by other Nazis "You're into Holocaust denial - here are some other publications you may enjoy!"
2. I have a Ghost publication with a grand total of not-that-many subscribers, self-hosted. You can literally port everything over to Ghost (except the recommendations engine) automagically. If you want technical assistance, I can offer it, but I also recognize that #1 above is doing most of the lifting in your decision to stay.
3. Soft-pedaling Nazis is pro-Nazi - I don't care how many 'libertarian' arguments people throw in the path - Nazis need to be punched, not laissez-faired and hey guys, maybe don't consider the overthrow of liberal democracy, please ... no really guys ... pleeeeeeeZUH. There are hard lines in the world, and when the display of breasts is on THAT side of the line, but straight-up Nazi recruitment is on THIS side of the line, your priorities are fucked up as a company.
There’s some good points here, but also, let’s not forget that deez nutz can also leverage network effects to drive growth.
and don't forget bofa
im not a writer, but it kinda feels like the days of (positive) network effects are gonna be diminishing going forward. when they refused to acknowledge the complexity inherent to content moderation, the *not nazi* crowd was quick to have their back. hit em with the classic "free speech", mainstream media, morality police, etc. their tacit endorsement of the "nazi" side, or however you want to characterize it, reeks of short sighted hubris a la elon. like...ill be here until everyone else leaves, but i think we've been watching the train crash in slow motion. only a bit faster now
Yeah, I think this is right. I mean, I think it's easy from inside this world to overestimate how much of Substack is about the free-speech life--if you check out the top newsletters in basically any category, they're mostly not IDW-freak shit, and I think the Nazi stuff, such as it is, is probably not reaching any of the readers of that historian who boomers love whose name I forget. But this is exactly what I find so frustrating about Substack's insistence on branding itself as the IDW-and-worse platform--there's a huge array of normies out there and every time they go and defend Nazis they lose a little of the moral cover that all the non-Nazi non-free speech newsletters provide. Eventually they *will* get to the boomer historian readership, and then they're just screwed.
Chiming in, surely less persuasively, from the “free subscriber who really enjoys this newsletter with some chance of being converted in the future” camp: only chance of going paid would be on another platform. No more payments on this platform from me.
Understood!
I appreciate the delicacy of this post and that you’re trying to write through this. I write a niche (read: not super popular) substack and only had a vague sense of the Nazi stuff, but mostly in the way that I have a vague sense that, as you note, any platform probably has a Nazi problem because America has a Nazi problem. It feels exhausting to think through moving my newsletter to some other platform only to have that platform step in it for Nazi/weird founder proclivity/shady investment/obscure org chart change reasons
I mean you hit the nail on the head. America has a Nazi problem. Any open platform will have to deal with this stuff. As a normie, the user friendliness of mainstream brands like Amazon, Apple and also Substack matters a lot. A flight to ever more niche platforms will only reduce your reach.
highly disagree.
Hey, Max. Smarter people than me have made convincing arguments for leaving Substack, so I'll just say that your decision to stick around really bums me out. You may have only lost 20 subscribers to date, but I imagine I'm not the only one who was waiting to see which way you'd go. I hope you'll reconsider, but in the meantime, count me as number 21.
I get it. I'm sorry to disappoint!
I'm staying a paid subscriber! Really enjoy your honesty and frankness on this issue (and lol'd at your Harvard post). I
And what would those arguments be? The Atlantic was completely misleading and full of outright lies. You had one or two writers trying to create a crisis out of nothing, too many people who can’t read past a headline, and voila, a moral panic made out of thin air.
As though legacy media doesn’t feel threatened by writers success on Substack.
No one's falling for this, schmuck.
Which is funny, because the only way you'd think my article was full of "outright lies" is if either a) you didn't read past the headline of Singal's hatchet job or b) were too slow to understand what he was doing.
Singal has a very detailed critique of your article and you ignored it completely. God forbid you have the courage to face that head on.
Neither of those things are true. It was a tendentious deep dive into a single anecdote in the eight paragraph of a 28-paragraph story. And I have repeatedly addressed it directly: All he did was add even more evidence that the thesis of my story was accurate. What else you got?
Funny how you couldn’t respond to any of his criticisms, but have time to pop into these comments. What a hack you are.
See above
lol. You made the claim to manufacture this Substack “crisis” and can’t give a figure. No surprise there. What % I consider acceptable is completely irrelevant.
How many paid subscribers again for “Nazi” writers?
And you didn’t respond to his criticisms outside the usual snark.
At least thousands, and probably tens of thousands. And both I and the Atlantic I did respond to his criticisms. They were bunk, with one extremely minor exception, which we rectified in the story.
“At least thousands, and probably tens of thousands.” (paid subscribers)
At this point it would be helpful if you’d
share your definition of ‘Nazi’.
Thanks for admitting though that you lied when you said I didn’t respond to his story.
The Atlantic had a formal response. Here was yours:
“The rest of your claims here are either misleading or simply incorrect.” I asked him which of my claims were incorrect. “It’s Friday afternoon ahead of a long weekend,” he replied. “Don’t have time to help you right now, sorry.”
You replied to him. You didn’t respond to his criticisms. Where’s your response?
And considering such a deep dive you did on this Nazi problem, I’d expect you to have a hard number of paid subscribers not a guess. Even if it’s the thousands you’re pulling out of thin air, that’s not even 1% of total paid subscribers.
“Lies” is such a harsh word. Let’s call it misinformation.
I'd definitely call Public and Signal's smear attack that. My favorite part was when they lied yesterday--and that's the word--and I said I hadn't gotten back to them with comment.
Hey, Max. I've recently subscribed, so I cancel out this guy's cancellation. Thanks for your balanced analysis of Platformer's hysterical grandstanding.
Max, the problem with this statement...
> I think Substack should ban Nazis as a matter of course and am glad they eventually did so, but I am not particularly worried about the current level of Nazis on Substack
...is that, no, they did not. This is from three days ago:
https://badnewsletter.substack.com/p/all-the-garbage-i-found-on-substack
And this...
> but “white nationalists are on Substack” is not a problem I’m actively worrying about at the moment
...is profoundly depressing from a writer of your stature. This entire post is extremely disheartening. Count me out.
Thanks for this link, I hadn't seen it. I'll need to think about it.
Absolutely with you on this. Josh’s post came straight to mind. There continues to be a problem with hate speech on this platform. Writers stay if you must, but don’t minimize the problem.
This doesn't rise to an "I'm unsubscribing" level because I remember what happened to blogs, but I don't think this is a great effort - feels a bit to me like buying into Twitter in late 2022. Sure it hadn't become its current hellscape yet, but the signs were there that it wanted to be. I'm following Garbage Day - which was the network effect through which I ended up here - to Ghost. I hope you'll reconsider, so I can be pretty much done here.
I find Richard Hanania abhorrent but I support free speech (especially after the past few months of seeing pro-Palestinian voices get de-platformed in different places) and support Substack in hosting and monetizing off of voices like these unless there are specific threats of violence. The scale of publications that crossed that line is unclear to me, but I suspect it is rather small relative to Substack's total readership. I am happy to change my mind on this if the number of publications that crossed that line without Substack doing anything is material.
Yeah, I think part of my reaction here is an understanding that the scale of *Substack itself* is in fact quite small and uninfluential relative to, say, Twitter, let alone to the true platform giants like Facebook and TikTok--and then, in turn, the "gray-area" newsletters (by which I mean not even the explicit white nationalists but the conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, whoever) are a smaller portion of that. I wish I had a better sense of the true scale, and of Substack's own internal workings--how much are its recommendations introducing readers to wholly new political worlds, and how much are they just putting extant marks in touch with a new set of grifters? It's possible that the problem is much worse than I realize or fear, and I'm certainly motivated to believe it's small. But for now it's relevant to my ability to sleep at night, so...
I wonder how many subscribers you will lose for sounding utterly reasonable, the worst crime one can commit within online discourse?
Max--I've read through the comments and there are many reasoned takes from "normal" people who are choosing to opt out, and then there is Ben (a comedian, apparently) who is choosing to opt in. I prefer the company of the former (I suspect Ben is the type of chap whose entire set I would spend daydreaming of ear-punching), so I am going to cancel as well. Send an email when you make the jump and I'll be back in.
With friends like these...
I support your right to post this violent hate speech!
Enlighten me.