A lot of us know by now that Substack has a Nazi problem. It not only profits from fascist voices, it actively promotes their work and recruits them. And it's funded by Silicon Valley anti-democracy billionaires like Marc Andreesen — the same type of people who are, right now, raiding the US government to basically cut funding for social services and scientific research, and to steal money for themselves.

A lot of us know by now that Substack has a Nazi problem. It not only profits from fascist voices, it actively promotes their work and recruits them. And it’s funded by Silicon Valley anti-democracy billionaires like Marc Andreesen — the same type of people who are, right now, raiding the US government to basically cut funding for social services and scientific research, and to steal money for themselves.

Still, a lot of talented writers — including some that I subscribe to — publish on Substack. But others have moved to Ghost, an open source and non-shitty-tech-bro newsletter service. These include Casey Newton’s publication Platformer, Molly White’s newsletter Citation Needed, and plenty of others. From the beginning, 404 Media decided to publish on Ghost because, as I understand it, Substack sucks.

. . .

If you already have a Substack, Ghost has written documentation explaining how to migrate your subscribers (including paid ones) to a new Ghost newsletter. Since both Substack and Ghost use Stripe as a payment processor, your paid subscribers don’t have to do anything to continue paying you.

  • mke@programming.devEnglish
    6·
    1 day ago

    I’ve seen people defend Substack saying it’s not so bad, or the bad is a necessary evil to protect free speech.

    I’m gonna say it: fuck free speech, I like myself some censorship. I sincerely believe some things are too harmful to be allowed to openly proliferate, that there’s often a feasible path to reaching that conclusion, and it’s not that difficult.

    We mustn’t avoid this because “it harms free speech.” Nazis love that argument, and they’re a threat to much more than just free speech. They shouldn’t get to block attempts at censoring them, and they specially shouldn’t get support to do so, because they’re one of the reasons it’s necessary in the first place.

    “But not every case is clear-cut like Nazis,” people will say, “you shouldn’t support censorship, since it can be used for evil. Innocent ideas always get censored, too.” To which I’ll reply, “tell me more about those innocent ideas.” When that happens, tell me. I’ll reach out to people in charge, spread the news, get mad, help you in any way I can to fix it. We’ll do it together. Fucking tell me more.

    But lo and behold, many innocent ideas turn out to be dog-whistles or worse, it’s always the same shit.

    I don’t care if it’s Substack, or Ghost, or Twitter, or Reddit, or whatever. It’s one thing to platform harmful views unaware. I get it, moderation is hard. Once aware, though, if your response is “but free speech,” fuck off. It is moral and correct to censor Nazis. Same for people saying immigrants will eat your pets, or that gays want to sexualize children, change their genders, and harm women. Fuck that.

    Platforms defining themselves on free speech is a red flag. “We’re popular with both extremes” isn’t a defense, it’s a self-report that you’re just a mercenary and like it that way—both sides being users means double the revenue.

    Substack may not be Nazi-central, but it’s surely a product of broligarchy.