{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://www.jacky.wtf//essays/2025/destacked",
  "description": "From Substack LLC's attempt to capture the concept of a\nnewsletter as a verb to their overt encouragement and support for Neo-Nazi\ncontent, don't expect me to post anything on that platform. I explain why.\n",
  "path": "/essays/2025/destacked",
  "publishedAt": "2025-08-04T02:30:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:e2ctbutx6kya6si4if5ngjmm/site.standard.publication/3mniussyp2d2g",
  "tags": "essay",
  "textContent": "Substack is a company that started in 2017 and in less than a decade, has\nbecome ubiquitous with the notion of newsletters. Beyond helping one maintain\nsuch a system; it provides a set of features and an interface that largely gets\nout of the way. This has made it an attractive places for folks who don't care\nor know about DKIM, escrow and handling a website to do what they want to focus\non. This makes it understandable as to why so many people find it to be a\nuseful place to begin a newsletter. However, there's a limit - ideally, in this\nlandscape of platforms optimizing in favor of fascism - that one has to take as\nsomeone who creates things online. This goes almost double if the things you're\nchallenging are being exalted by those same makers of the platform you're on.\n\nLongtime readers of my site's blog will know that I'm a fan of [Justin][]'s\ncompany, [Buttondown][]. I've been using the service since 2018, when I wrote\nmy first entry on it in January &mdash; in [that fashion of New Year\nresolutions][1] to \"get to writing\". That newsletter is _older_ than the\nnow-broken links to my site that it references. However, my use of it is\ncasual: I use it to send out semi-periodic updates. This use-case, while\ndifferent from someone like [Ed's blog on tech][2] or the like, isn't enough\nfor folks to justify moving out of the encroaching nature of right-wing voices\ngrowing on Substack. Why is that?\n\nThe company provides the following:\n\n- At its core, a means of blogging that's restricted to a domain equivalent to\n  less of that of things like Wordpress or Squarespace.\n- Said blog entries get sent over e-mail to a fixed amount of people.\n- Gating access to content by way of a pay-wall with multiple tiers.\n\nAfter this point, the \"uniqueness\" of Substack comes also to be one of its means of value capture:\n\n- Folks can publish short notes: they serve as a way of invoking conversation\n  that can lead to a form of organic discovery within their platform. It's\n  important to note that there's no explicit API to extract these notes or reply\n  to them. This traps users the same way Instagram and TikTok have managed to\n  enclose their communities.\n- Folks can find \"rankings\" of those who speak on particular topics. By seeing\n  folks be associated to _a concept_ like history, fashion or technology, it\n  works to add a level of prestige (if not credence or authority of knowledge) to\n  that topic. This can encourage a snowball-like effect of subscriptions for a\n  publication. For those who aim to use this as their primary source of income,\n  this is something that they'll use to their advantage, and something Substack\n  can game for more engagement.\n\nThe Literal Nazis\n\nSubstack's CEO had no issue &mdash; and continues to not &mdash; with the\nprelevant rise of Nazism on his company's platform. [Ars Technica writes][3]:\n\n> Joshua Fisher-Birch, a terrorism analyst at a nonprofit non-government\n> organization called the Counter Extremism Project, has been closely\n> monitoring Substack's increasingly significant role in helping far-right\n> movements spread propaganda online for years. He's calling for more\n> transparency and changes on the platform following the latest scandal.\n>\n> In January, Fisher-Birch warned that neo-Nazi groups saw Donald Trump's\n> election \"as a mix of positives and negatives but overall as an opportunity to\n> enlarge their movement.\" Since then, he's documented at least one Telegram\n> channel—which currently has over 12,500 subscribers and is affiliated with the\n> white supremacist Active Club movement—launch an effort to expand their\n> audience by creating accounts on Substack, TikTok, and X.\n>\n> Of those accounts created in February, only the Substack account is still\n> online, which Fisher-Birch suggested likely sends a message to Nazi groups that\n> their Substack content is \"less likely to be removed than other platforms.\" At\n> least one Terrorgram-adjacent white supremacist account that Fisher-Birch found\n> in March 2024 confirmed that Substack was viewed as a back-up to Telegram\n> because it was that much more reliable to post content there.\n\nA journalist on Substack noted recently how the _platform_ prompted many users\nof the such:\n\n<blockquote class=\"bluesky-embed\"\n  data-bluesky-uri=\"at://did:plc:wo3lxbcfvdptzxyvq3qt2rgj/app.bsky.feed.post/3lv3dkqphis2e\"\n  data-bluesky-cid=\"bafyreiglpl6vesj5ixt5aibpszqosh6l3qmvppby4gidr5pjwvweztnahe\"\n  data-bluesky-embed-color-mode=\"system\"><p lang=\"en\">The Substack app\n    apparently push alert promoted a Nazi newsletter to several users. Users\n    have complained about it on Substack Notes but the company hasn’t\n    responded. Generally push alert promos are for content a user is likely to\n    interact with<br><br><a\n      href=\"https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:wo3lxbcfvdptzxyvq3qt2rgj/post/3lv3dkqphis2e?ref_src=embed\">[image\n      or embed]</a></p>&mdash; Taylor Lorenz (<a\n    href=\"https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:wo3lxbcfvdptzxyvq3qt2rgj?ref_src=embed\">@taylorlorenz.bsky.social</a>)\n  <a\n    href=\"https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:wo3lxbcfvdptzxyvq3qt2rgj/post/3lv3dkqphis2e?ref_src=embed\">July\n    29, 2025 at 1:07 AM</a></blockquote><script async\nsrc=\"https://embed.bsky.app/static/embed.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"></script>\n\nI'll note that push notifications a bit more varied: that _can_ be for what's\noptimized to a particular user. But it can be for _any_ reason; which is what\ntroubles me more: that the platform _might_ have pushed it because it was\npopular with a _set_ of users and those users have been made the sample of what\nthe _entire_ platform is interested in: an approach commonly taken in content\ndiscovery platforms. Even if you're not interested in that particular topic,\nyou might see it (something Facebook and its sibling apps are very prone to\ndo).\n\nWhat's also not highlighted is Substack's disregard for plagraism. A Black\nwrite on the platform has noted an example that ends up being an experience\nthat platforms that can be weaponized by content farms:\n\n<div class=\"substack-post-embed\"><p lang=\"en\">Muhammad please. Bar for BAR\n</p><p> - Shay ☆</p><a data-comment-link\n    href=\"https://substack.com/@notesonbeingg/note/c-141229115\">Read on\n    Substack</a></div><script async src=\"https://substack.com/embedjs/embed.js\"\ncharset=\"utf-8\"></script>\n\nThis is something that's endemic of _any_ platform that allows you to post\ncontent; it's not the easiest thing to combat either.\n\nThe article goes on to highlight that the problem is _not new_ to Substack. The\nsilent problem is that publications on there who are now \"stuck\" &mdash; be it\nfor fiscal reasons or for reach &mdash; are passively becoming okay with this.\n[Molly White][], at one point in time, was [on Substack herself][4]. She\ninvested some time, with her technical know-how, to move from it to [a\nself-hosted Ghost setup][5] two years later. She also noted the difficulty of\ndoing something like this: companies can insulate you from the headache of\nbeing [an independent publisher on the Web][6]. This demonstrates that it's not\ndifficult for us to escape places that aren't aligned with. But it does take\neffort; as it tends to be with anything worth doing.\n\nThe Middle Ground\n\nMy values and ethics lead my actions. This results in me in avoiding Substack\nas much as possible. Since folks _still_ choose to keep their work there, I\nhave some subscriptions that I support like [J. P. Hill][jph] in a paid\ncapacity. In fact - as of this writing, it's the _only_ subscription [you'll\nfind on my placeholder account][me]. Once they move from that platform, I'll\ndelete my account, as I'll no longer have a reason to stay. The other\npublications that I do subscribe to from Substack live in a folder called\n\"Substack Publications\" in [my RSS reader][rss] of choice; something I found to\nbe the best way to build my own means of subscribing to folks in this capacity.\n\nThis doesn't explicitly solve the issue with funding. Folks like [Molly\nWhite][] and [Kelly Hayes][kh] have found homes with Ghost, a self-hostable\nblogging platform that does most of what Substack provides. Others, like [Paris\nMarx][pm], despite their critical journalism around Big Tech, still chooses to\nremain there, forcing me to place them in my reader. As a reader, the impact\nand interface is minimal but for writers, the difficulty of funding oneself\nremains.\n\n[justin]: https://jmduke.com/\n[buttondown]: https://buttondown.com/\n[molly white]: https://www.mollywhite.net/\n[jph]: https://www.jphilll.com/about\n[me]: https://substack.com/@jackydotwtf\n[rss]: https://www.freshrss.org/\n[kh]: https://organizingmythoughts.org/\n[pm]: https://www.disconnect.blog/about\n[1]: https://buttondown.com/jackyalcine/archive/week-one-done-only-51-to-go/\n[2]: https://thetechbubble.substack.com/\n[3]: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/07/substacks-nazi-problem-wont-go-away-after-push-notification-apology/\n[4]: https://www.citationneeded.news/a-shift-to-substack/\n[5]: https://www.citationneeded.news/substack-to-self-hosted-ghost/\n[6]: https://www.citationneeded.news/i-am-my-own-legal-department/",
  "title": "Destacked: Why I Avoid Substack As Much as Possible"
}