Leaving Substack
Letting Nazis spout hatred on a platform is not my idea of free speech.
Update: Hi friends! I'm sharing this exit post here on my new home so anyone landing here for the first time has a bit of context as to why I made this move. I think it's important that people know where Substack stands on the matter of moderation and "free speech", so you can make an informed decision as a user.
I’ve always struggled with Substack. Every time I open the app on my phone or visit the site on desktop, I draw a blank.
What should be a creative safe haven has always felt a bit…off.
I’ve written previously about how 15 year old me used to blog three times a day with gay abandon on sites like WordPress, Tumblr and Blogger, so the fact that Substack left me stumped was a mystery to me.
Part of the problem I think is that Substack doesn’t know who or what it wants to be.
What started out as a promise of a utopia for writers to build a platform and get paid for it with full ownership, has turned into some weird mashup of Twitter meets Instagram meets…LinkedIn??! It feels gross every time I look at the Notes feed.
I’ve entertained the idea of leaving the platform before but I didn’t really give it too much serious thought because I had no idea what the alternative might be and the whole idea just felt overwhelming.
And then I read David Farrier’s piece on Webworm about why he is leaving the platform:
Back in January of 2024, I sent out a newsletter called “When Good Dogs Do Bad Things”. In it, I explained how, as well as hosting newsletters like Webworm, Substack also hosted newsletters by some Nazis.
Not borderline alt-right types, but full-blown Nazis.
Substack has an incredibly hands-off approach to moderation, and at first wasn’t going to do anything. Then, after pressure from writers (and readers) like me who weren’t Nazis, Substack deleted a bunch of them, deciding they did violate one of their T&C’s by including “credible threats of physical harm”.
Back then, I decided to stay on Substack — hoping things would get better. I have had open dialogue with their founder, Hamish McKenzie, which I found somewhat reassuring.
I hoped things would get better.
They didn’t.
Last month, Substack sent out a push notification to users encouraging them to subscriber to a full blown Nazi newsletter:
As Taylor Lorenz reported on July 29:
Substack sent a push alert encouraging users to subscribe to a Nazi newsletter that claimed Jewish people are a sickness and that we must eradicate minorities to build a “White homeland.”
NatSocToday describes itself as “a weekly newsletter featuring opinions and news important to the National Socialist and White Nationalist Community.”
Substack’s response to all of this is to defend Free Speech.
But what they seem to forget is that freedom of speech is not freedom from consequence. And one of those consequences is writers choosing to leave a platform that will defend Nazi propaganda and in the same breath, inexplicable censor images of Palestinian children being starved to death in a genocide carried out by Israel:
Substack is not some writer’s utopia. It’s a social media platform with rich investors who at some point will be expecting to see serious return on those investments, which means that enshittification will also inevitably ensue, (more than it already has) with algorithm changes, ads and paid sponsorships slowly creeping into the platform.
So I’m leaving.
But the good news is that there is a genuine alternative out there called Ghost, that has rigorous moderation processes in place to ensure Nazi BS and misuse of their platform is shut down right away.
I began the migration process last night which included exporting my content and subscriber list to Ghost and I received this email from their tech team, further evidence of their strict policies:
This email only reinforced that I had made the right decision to move to Ghost.
In terms of what that means for you, the reader, my new home on Ghost will feel exactly like it did on Substack (minus the weird Notes homepage and hate speech of course):
It even looks cooler!!!
You can find me at my usual domain: www.sicksadlit.com or here.
This does mean that I won’t have Substack’s algorithm recommending my page, so if you like what I do please share with others, it means the world.
