On Substack and Nazis (again). After the migrations.#

January 27, 2024

So, Substack had a Nazi problem. And it still has. The story went on but, hey, now I am no longer there. And I’m not the only one quitting.

Now it’s time to evaluate what happened.

Is that Nazi thing really a thing or is it just something that happened in my bubble?

On my part the “no way, get out” had some effects:

  1. I forgot the link to the now-defunct newsletter on GitHub. Had to fix that.

  2. Removing the Substack app etc has logged me out of all the way-too-many newsletters I start following (more on that)

  3. Removing the newsletter gave me issues with WordPress as I imported the contacts here on WordPress. Now I understand when different people who are migrating away from Substack and have a massive presence there say “It will take time”.

Ok, let’s rumble on that.

No more Substack newsletters. Am I missing out?#

Short answer: no. There are already tonnes of other non-Substack newsletters I am following. I am reading them more than I used to.

It was convenient to have a Substack app. It was like a “news” scrolling container. I can get stuff in my inbox and feel up-to-date nonetheless.

There’s a podcast that jumped in. And I am regularly reading 2.5 newsletters.

Every now and then I feel like “Hey, maybe I should check X on that” where X = old Substack newsletter on economics.

I started reading a couple of newsletters in Italian. Gone they are. This was interesting.

I am considering adding them via something like Feedly or similar. But I haven’t made up my mind on that yet. And, besides that, the fact that some of the newsletters I was interested in touched on issues that – from my point of view – do not square well with staying on a Nazi platform, created me issues.

I am checking Mastodon more often (and you should too) and because of that I set up a book home on Bookwyrm.

How are (way bigger) Substack newsletters reacting?#

Since the Substack Nazi-saga started something happened on Substack.

Some spoke up and planned to move. The whole thing happened during the gift, food, and Santa holidays. So if writing newsletters is part of your living and you do have hundreds of subscribers, migrating takes time and calculations.

Molly White moved Citation needed to Ghost, and here is a write up. Same did Paris Marx, moving Disconnected to Ghost.

Some big names of the Substack I used to follow didn’t move or did not even say a word.

In some cases, this is pretty striking, e.g. if you write mostly about topics that do not square well with the Nazis, if your worldview is incompatible with the idea of the world of the Nazis, or if you write mostly about online stuff, in a multi-million dollar “niche” that is mostly online and the sort of thought and discourse you are actively engaging with is again at odds with the Nazi.

Here there is probably a lot to be said both on general principles and personal levels. For example, a hobby or semi-serious newsletter is already a time-toll to be developed. Why bother about the host?

On the more professional and principled ground, there is the “we don’t want to leave this place to the bad guys”. Maybe this was said also before Musk’s takeover on Twitter. I should get more data and analysis (if you have some, please tell me).

My general (biased) impression is that “being on X” and having chances of “interacting with the alt-right” in ways that I do not like nor think I deserve is way too high for me. So, no thanks.