Substackers Against Nazis

December 14, 2023 12:58 PM

Today, December 14, 2023, a group of Substack publishers (also known as creators or writers) sent an open letter to the founders of Substack by publishing it in their individual newsletters. After salutations, the letter begins, "According to a piece written by Substack publisher Jonathan M. Katz and published by The Atlantic on November 28, this platform has a Nazi problem. ... We, your publishers, want to hear from you on the official Substack newsletter. Is platforming Nazis part of your vision of success? Let us know—from there we can each decide if this is still where we want to be. Signed, Substackers Against Nazis."

Dave Karpf, an Internet politics professor and writer of The Future, Now and Then Substack newsletter, wrote a follow up today as well called On Substack Nazis, laissez-faire tech regulation, and mouse-poop-in-cereal-boxes. "Tech libertarianism is, fundamentally, an ideology for people who are both cheap and lazy. That is the great advantage that attracts businesspeople to adopt a libertarian perspective on speech regulation. If your first instinct about content moderation is “I would rather not think about this, it shouldn’t be my problem, and I definitely don’t want to spend any resources on it,” then libertarianism is the ideology for you. And there are contexts where, philosophically, they’re not entirely wrong.

"... I contributed to and co-signed the 'Substackers against Nazis' open letter. I stand behind what we wrote, and if Substack’s leadership decides to ignore the issue, that’s going to be a signal that it’s time for me to move this newsletter to another platform. And, also, the maximum number of internet Nazis that Substack is going to allow on its platform is, in fact, slightly greater than zero."

Historian Heather Cox Richardson, a Substack superstar, is not a signatory of the letter. Neither is Daniel Lavery or a host of other popular Substackers. Thus far about 30 writers appear to be signatories, based on a recent search. From the open letter: "As journalist Casey Newton told his more than 166,000 Substack subscribers after Katz’s piece came out: 'The correct number of newsletters using Nazi symbols that you host and profit from on your platform is zero.' "

posted by Bella Donna (43 comments total)

I'm a Breadbasket subscriber, so I saw this drop into my inbox this morning.

I wish them all the best and I sincerely, eagerly hope they are successful.

I also have extremely low expectations for this effort.

Sigh.
posted by Tomorrowful at 1:09 PM on December 14, 2023 [6 favorites]

Other signers include Discourse Blog, Marisa Kabas (The Handbasket), Kevin M. Kruse (Campaign Trails), Talia Lavin (The Sword and the Sandwich), Melissa Ryan (Ctrl Alt Right Delete), and Teddy Wilson (Radical Reports).
posted by box at 1:20 PM on December 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

Like you, Tomorrowful, I am supportive if not optimistic. Still, I applaud the effort. And if the Substack owners do nothing, perhaps at least some of the writers will decamp to Buttondown. It does not have the network effect of Substack, but it appears to be a wonderful platform. I don't use it but various folks I respect do. It would be great if Casey Newton walked. Writers with smaller audiences have got to be wary of switching. At least one former Substacker took a big hit after leaving a few years ago. But Newton's audience is going to follow him wherever he goes.
posted by Bella Donna at 1:28 PM on December 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

I love this approach. By singling out the most egregious, obvious swastika-forehead-tattoo Nazi motherfuckers on the platform, there can be no prevarication from Substack on whether or not these guys are actually Nazis.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 1:35 PM on December 14, 2023 [7 favorites]

Today in Tabs writer Rusty Foster is leaving. It’s too hard for me to link on my phone but he writes today, in part, “The letter, prompted by Jonathan Katz’s recent discovery that “Substack Has a Nazi Problem,” has more than one hundred twenty co-signers, most of whom are posting it as their newsletter today. … Substack had the chance to handle this issue when it was about transphobes doxxing and targeting transgender people, and they didn’t care then. I don’t expect them to care now.”
posted by Bella Donna at 1:44 PM on December 14, 2023 [9 favorites]

I am a regular reader of Today in Tabs and unusually for me, a non-supporter because I have been unwilling to pass money through Substack, but I am excited to sign up as soon as it’s at a new home.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 1:50 PM on December 14, 2023 [3 favorites]

Niko Stratis, a pop culture powerhouse of writing, often responds to her audience who lambaste her for using Substack by saying she's aware--as is every other trans writer on there--that Substack is not great, but there are decreasingly smaller spaces for them to write and get paid. It is a large matter of payment and moving audiences. In her words:

yeah, it's a real gamble and i see people out here taking it out personally on writers based on which platform they choose to use, like any of us have any real power in these situations too. Like when I looked to move to Ghost, the first website they proudly display on their home page is Quilette.

i've seen more than a few people post "we tried to tell writers to leave but they were worried about getting PAID" and i don't know, maybe we could afford some degree of sympathy to writers in a precarious media market who are barely getting by as it is?
posted by Kitteh at 2:13 PM on December 14, 2023 [11 favorites]

None of this should be surprising to anyone who remember the "Substack Pro" revelations from a few years ago. If you are a Nazi apologist with an audience,
not only do you have a home on Substack but they will pay you an "advance" to entice you to start a Substack newsletter.
posted by muddgirl at 2:17 PM on December 14, 2023 [11 favorites]

there are decreasingly smaller spaces for them to write and get paid

That seems perilously close to "say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, at least imma get paid"?
posted by aramaic at 3:08 PM on December 14, 2023

That seems perilously close to "say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, at least imma get paid"?

Probably best to ask the well-off straight writers to abandon the platform first, rather than making queer writers take one for the team.
posted by mittens at 3:20 PM on December 14, 2023 [26 favorites]

First, they came for the nazis....

[oh wait, right!]
posted by chavenet at 3:25 PM on December 14, 2023 [5 favorites]

Thumbs up to this effort. May be too late for substack though - in my highly subjective estimation anything on the substack domain has over a 50% shot at being some kind of retrograde rightwinger claptrap like eugenics fanboying or equating antizionism and antisemitism. Kind of already a nazi bar by now? Ie nazis are a big part of their income, and non-nazis don't want to be seen there.
posted by Ansible at 3:37 PM on December 14, 2023

Buttondown!! I hope they get business and money from this in a way that only improves and doesn't destroy.
posted by PikeMatchbox at 5:06 PM on December 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

Probably best to ask the well-off straight writers to abandon the platform first, rather than making queer writers take one for the team.

You are entirely correct!

...but I thought I was asking well-off (or not) straight (or not) writers to do the same; it was merely a matter of which specific interlocutor made the quote, not the quote/point itself.

To be clear: anyone that stays on Substack after the inevitable clusterfuck-failure response is, necessarily, OK with Nazis as long as they're getting paid, regardless of their personal circumstance. I would argue that's bad; you may disagree.
posted by aramaic at 5:56 PM on December 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

Trans people, people of color, and their allies have been pointing out that Substack is full of hate speech for literal years now and it drives me nuts that anyone is acting like this is a new problem. Better late than never, i guess!

Unfortunately for them, the owners of Substack are themselves white techbros who may not be Nazis themselves but are Nazi-tolerant and arguably Nazi-curious, so i suspect this will come to nothing.
posted by adrienneleigh at 6:08 PM on December 14, 2023 [10 favorites]

Patreon now has a free tier - I wonder if it'll work as a Substance alternative for newsletters.
posted by creatrixtiara at 6:21 PM on December 14, 2023 [7 favorites]

*substack, thanks autocorrect
posted by creatrixtiara at 6:56 PM on December 14, 2023

Since I am not a huge profit conduit for Substack, I brought this matter up on Substack's Thursday open thread. The moderator merely liked my comment "and nothing more was learned."
posted by DJZouke at 4:59 AM on December 15, 2023 [3 favorites]

for Substack newsletters that I pay for monthly, a shift to a new platform is one thing. For those newsletters where I wanted to show support and went for the yearly sub, there's some sunk costs and additional costs for any new platform. And if they accepted yearly subs, is there a legal contract to play that out on Substack?

this is just me spitballing. I appreciate these writers enough to take the economic hit to keep supporting them, but leaving Substack may have more intricacies than it appears on the surface.
posted by jkosmicki at 5:37 AM on December 15, 2023

Is there any reason writers can’t duplicate their newsletter on another forum during a period where they encourage followers to move and wrap up existing substack subscriptions?
posted by eviemath at 6:00 AM on December 15, 2023

The Atlantic article, set free
posted by chavenet at 6:36 AM on December 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

I really enjoy newsletters but I'm having difficulty finding prominent ones that don't use Substack. I'm glad that Today in Tabs is moving, and I know that some other major ones like She's a Beast and Hellworld left a while ago. Are there any lists of other major newsletters that have decamped for Beehiv, Buttondown, Ghost, or other platforms?
posted by N8yskates at 10:01 AM on December 15, 2023

I guess the good news is that I procrastinated on starting my newsletter long enough that I won't have to migrate away from Substack, and can start on Beehiiv from the get go. Real Soon Now.

The only Buttondown one I get is Hillel Wayne. Spencer Ackerman is on Ghost and if I recall correctly switched over the last round of Substack chicanery.
posted by ob1quixote at 11:50 AM on December 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

I’m supportive of these folks but let’s just say I hope no one posting here or signing there is still on X. Same problem, but magnified !
posted by caviar2d2 at 2:57 PM on December 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

Rusty Foster from Today in Tabs is apparently moving to Beehive. I will note that I write on Substack, I do not take pay, and I don't expect to move because I benefit from the network effect of the communities that have grown around Anne Helen Peterson's newsletter, Culture Study, and Men Yell at Me by Lyz Lenz. The other publishing platforms do not (yet) have the exact same feature set that Substack does. The existing networks and built-in marketing that occur whenever someone signs up for a newsletter, free or paid are important to growing readership, in my inexpert opinion. Like, I sign up and I am given three other newsletters to sign up for that have been recommended by the author of the newsletter I am subscribing to (if the author has chosen to endorse any). That is powerful stuff. I understand why people who have built their livelihood via Substack may not choose to leave it.

Also, the Substackers Against Nazis aren't even asking for Nazis to be kicked off the platform. They're just asking the company executives to stop promoting Nazis in the company newsletter and podcast (while banning porn and writing by sex writers). As best I can tell, the Substack execs are simply ignoring the open letter. Anyone else know more?
posted by Bella Donna at 7:29 AM on December 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

Substack has responded. I had rock bottom expectations and still I’m somehow disappointed. Like, I expect them to be Nazis, but I also expected them to at least pretend not to be, for business reasons.
posted by Kattullus at 9:20 AM on December 21, 2023 [3 favorites]

“Newsletter, Untethered,” Ernie Smith, Today in Tedium, 19 March 2021

There’s no real reason you have to use a platform like Substack to send email. If you want to get into making a newsletter of your own, understand your options.

posted by ob1quixote at 2:22 PM on December 21, 2023 [4 favorites]

Kattullus: “Substack has responded”

The congratulatory responses from apparent fascist scum to this wet-fart of a Note by Hamish McKenzie will have one good effect: I'm going to spend the money I would have spent subscribing to Chartbook and The Present Age on upgrading my Ableton Live. Sorry Adam and Parker, but you can't even see the line from where Hamish is.
posted by ob1quixote at 2:31 PM on December 21, 2023 [5 favorites]

“In case you or someone you know is interested in moving your newsletter: we can migrate _everything_ for you. Subscribers, posts, paid subscriptions, images, the whole nine yards. It takes minutes, not hours.”—@[e-mail], Dec 21, 2023, 13:37
posted by ob1quixote at 3:44 PM on December 21, 2023 [3 favorites]

John Ganz, writer of the Unpopular Front substack, has a characteristically thoughtful response. The irony of the call for unsubscribing is that it will only punish anti-Nazi writers. No Nazi substackers will be harmed.
posted by mittens at 7:00 AM on December 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

“to pressure Substack about its supposed platforming of Nazis”

I’ve enjoyed John Ganz’ writings, but the word ‘supposed’ is doing a lot of work here and for the rest of his argument.

I find it so baffling that people whose opinions I respect and consider thoughtful find ways to rephrase a really simple and clear situation.
posted by Kattullus at 7:30 AM on December 22, 2023 [3 favorites]

Isn't the point of unsubscribing (to paid newsletters) that it also hurts Substack?
posted by sagc at 7:32 AM on December 22, 2023 [3 favorites]

Does it hurt Substack? I guess I'm not clear on that, which is coloring my reaction to the effort. I see how it can hurt writers (by losing subscribers who leave b/c of Substack, or by losing subscribers b/c of a transfer to a new system), but I don't understand the platform's finances well enough to know how the loss of subscriptions compares to the revenue brought in by their problematic top guys (and their readers) who aren't going anywhere. (Are the big accounts profitable for Substack, or are they loss leaders?)
posted by mittens at 11:31 AM on December 22, 2023

I enjoyed this take.

Here's what this all seems to be omitting: the money.

Instead of a debate about free expression, this is more about whether customers feel good about a company that is profiting from Nazis. That feels a whole lot more simple: Substack is likely making money from these Nazi blogs, some of which are monetized and have paying subscribers, of which Substack takes a 10% cut.

That's one of the nice things about money: You don't have to accept it from Nazis. Money has a way of making things a lot more clear. Content has moral ambiguity; money doesn't.

You either take the Nazi money or you don't. Substack is apparently choosing to take it.

posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 11:44 PM on December 22, 2023 [6 favorites]

Just going to link here to a post from two days ago about the most recent developments in this story, which attracted a lot of comments yet was deleted for being a double. (Personally, I'm not thrilled about that, because this is an important story in webland and seems worth update threads on new developments, just as many political stories get... but I don't fancy taking it to MeTa on Christmas Day.)

Anyway, lots of further links and discussion there, if you want 'em.
posted by rory at 5:51 AM on December 25, 2023 [4 favorites]

I was wondering why that post needed to go up (and repeat various discussion points already covered here) while this one was still active, but deleting so late, once it had gained a lot more traction than this one, seems counterproductive.
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 7:13 AM on December 25, 2023 [5 favorites]

“On Substack’s Nazi Problem, and Ours,” Thomas Zimmer, Democracy Americana, 02 January 2024
posted by ob1quixote at 9:32 PM on January 5 [1 favorite]

I wasn’t paying attention and it sucks that the other one got deleted. Thanks for the link, rory!
posted by Bella Donna at 3:53 AM on January 6

Substack said it would remove some Nazi newsletters but actually it's only 5 newsletters with a combined subscribership of about 100.
posted by Nelson at 10:22 AM on January 9 [2 favorites]

“It's time to leave Substack,” Ryan Broderick, Garbage Day, 10 January 2024
posted by ob1quixote at 1:54 PM on January 10 [1 favorite]

Why Platformer is Leaving Substack. Casey Newton is ghosting. Excerpt:

When I launched Platformer on Substack in 2020, it was not in the belief that we would be here forever. Tech platforms come and go; in the meantime, they can also change in ways that make staying there impossible for the creators that rely on them. For this reason, I almost launched Platformer on a custom-built stack of services centered on WordPress, the way my inspiration Ben Thompson had done for Stratechery.

But Substack had some compelling advantages of its own. It was impressively fast and easy to set up. It paid to design Platformer’s logo. It offered me a year of healthcare subsidies, and ongoing legal support.

I also felt a personal connection to Substack’s co-founders, who believed that Platformer would succeed even before it had a name. They convinced me that I could thrive on their platform, and offered me a welcome boost in confidence as I considered leaving the best job I ever had to strike out on my own.

In the three years since, Substack has been a mostly happy home. Platformer has grown tremendously over that time, from around 24,000 free subscribers to more than 170,000 today. Our paid subscribers have allowed me to create new jobs in journalism. I’m proud of the work we do here.

Over that same period, Substack has faced occasional controversies over its laissez-faire approach to content moderation. The platform hosts a wide range of material I find distasteful and offensive. But for a time, the distribution of that material was limited to those who had signed up to receive it. In that respect, I did not view the decision to host Platformer on Substack as being substantially different from hosting it on, for example, GoDaddy.

But as I wrote earlier this week, Substack’s aspirations now go far beyond web hosting. It touts the value of its network of publications as a primary reason to use its product, and has built several tools to promote that network. It encourages writers to recommend other Substack publications. It sends out a weekly digest of publications for readers to consider subscribing to. And last year it launched a Twitter-like social network called Notes that highlights posts from around the network, regardless of whether you follow those writers or not.

Not all of you use these features. Some of you might not have seen them. But I can speak to their effectiveness: In 2023, we added more than 70,000 free subscribers. While I would love to credit that growth exclusively to our journalism and analysis, I believe we have seen firsthand how quickly and aggressively tools like these can grow a publication.

And if Substack can grow a publication like ours that quickly, it can grow other kinds of publications, too.

posted by Kattullus at 10:45 PM on January 11 [4 favorites]

And Taylor Lorenz and Will Oremus report on Newton's decision for the Washington Post, giving more context.
posted by Kattullus at 1:37 AM on January 12 [1 favorite]

“Migrating from Substack to self-hosted Ghost: the details,” Molly White, Citation Needed, 13 January 2024

I migrated Citation Needed from Substack to self-hosted Ghost. Here is exactly how I did that.

posted by ob1quixote at 2:11 PM on January 13 [4 favorites]