135 Comments

👏 I'm grateful to read about this change and can't wait to re-up my sub as soon as you're on a new platform, even if the price is higher. Thanks Ryan, and this is in my GD hall of fame lines now:

"Meanwhile, one of the best conversion methods for me has been gift subscriptions because, surprise surprise, my own readership is much better at recommending my newsletter than the divorced too-racist-for-LinkedIn losers sharing graphs about phrenology on Substack’s app"

No survivors found from that one.

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you know he uses Twitter which is filled with racists, right

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Seconding this. Most people chiming in on this issue are grossly misinformed. Substack's "nazi problem" is negligible as revealed by outlets like Public News (look up their Substack Nazi article this week).

It's kind of unsettling how people are using this "Nazi problem" as a way to drag Substack down, apparently for no other reason than they dislike their non-Nazi detractors retaining accounts on the site?

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Because I know many people won’t read the Singal piece, the gist of it was:

- Platformer reported six publications to Substack

- Substack deemed 5 of them to be in breach of their guidelines and banned them

- none of the 5 accounts were monetised in the first place, and their collective readership was something like 100 people (correct me if I’m misremembering)

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How many Nazis is too many for you?

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You’re implying it’s not a big deal because it’s “only” five Nazis. What number of Nazis on a platform is too many, in your estimation? For me, one Nazi is too many.

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I would put it differently. The way this controversy has been widely discussed, I would have expected that there were a bunch of monetised newsletters with explicitly racist and fascist content being pushed to people's feeds. The details of this story seem to refute that, which is why I found it interesting.

On a platform of Substack's size, I would be shocked if there wasn't some ugly content. I would also expect that they'd rely on user reports for accounts of that size. So in that sense I would agree that it's not "a big deal".

You can disagree with that of course, but conflating that with my being somehow ok with Nazis is unfair and unnecessarily hostile.

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But the very idea that substack is being “inundated” with nazis is untrue. With that small a number, it is also unreasonable to expect Substack to even know about them.

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I honestly have no idea what you mean.

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You can't say "no nazis" then ban five of the lowest profile ones you can find, but still leave all kinds of homophobic, racist, antiamerican and seditionist crap out there. That's the problem. But, it seems you already fully understand that and chose to side with the nazis.

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Did you read the story Singal wrote, Mr. Uriza? Because it kind of seems like the main points flew over your head.

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He spewed a bunch of smears that he can't define, then blocked me. Classic move. Banning everyone you don't like is quite the Nazi move.

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Nice lie.

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If I wanted to read a nazi's opinion on anything, I'd go read it Fox News in the original German.

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Mr. Uriza, I once again urge you to read Singal 's article, it is not a Nazi opinion piece, but some excellent reporting. Try to have an open mind as you read it.

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Fuck Jesse Singal. No one is going to read his nonsense.

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Hi Laura, I'm sorry you feel that way. Maybe give this particular piece a try anyway with an open mind.

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Nobody likes a sealion.

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Why would anyone who isn’t an absolute rube have an open mind about jesse singal, a faux-reporter who has been caught stretching the truth, confabulating, and outright lying over and over and over and over? Do you think I fell off the turnip truck yesterday?

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Jesse F, could you provide me with specifics on when Jesse Singal has stretched the truth, confabulated, or outright lied? Either some links or some of your own examples? Not asking for every instance, but at least a few examples since he's done it "over and over and over."?

Genuinely willing to revise my thoughts about his reporting based on evidence. Thank you.

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Not our job to educate you, pal.

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If you accuse someone of lying and then refuse to provide any evidence, you’re just gossiping. Nobody who doesn’t agree with you already will take you seriously.

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Being taken seriously by you would be shitty.

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That doesn’t even make sense as an insult

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As you see, tyrants cannot be negotiated with. They'll strawman you, shift goal posts, shift the burden of proof from accuser to accused, insult you & play victim, accuse you of "sealioning" for disagreeing in a public discussion, and so on. All of these tactics can be seen in this very thread.

Ultimately, it's on you to explain your censorship, and why you invade spaces to impose your bigoted beliefs on them. Despite the history of gulags & killing fields, I don't go around censoring leftists, so why should you censor dissidents? You already have cultural dominance, that should be enough.

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I just hope wherever you take this has an audio reader feature because I've basically been experiencing Garbage Day as a podcast hosted by a feminine robot for a while now

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Ironic that it’s a “quitting Substack” comment thread that made me realise Fluxblog is here!

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Freddie nailed it. Combine that with Jesse Singal's piece... game, set, match. Unless of course you have washed your own brain.

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Nope, not even in the same timezone as the correct perspective. Nose right up nazi asshole on that one.

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Calling Freddie deBoer a "nazi" is kind of hilariously proving the point that substack's "nazi problem" is really mostly an "accounts that I don't like that aren't nazis" problem.

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that was a weirdly edifying explanation, thank you

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The "hereditarian left" is just a reactionary way of saying "My parents were socialists but I'm a rebel who went to the far right instead, but am embarrassed to say it". Best case scenario you get out of that is Ned Flanders.

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who called him a nazi? were you literally unable to read the previous sentence?

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oh whoops I misread his sentence as describing him as a "nose right-up" nazi asshole, assuming that "nose right-up" was a weird/American description I hadn't come across before.

I thought the user was saying something like he had his nose up in the air and was a nazi asshole lol. a bit like the xkcd ass-car phenomenon.

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Jan 10·edited Jan 10

There is going to be some absolutely cursed gibberish in here.

As you mentioned, Substack leadership is stupid as dirt. Easiest thing in the world to see coming without the hubris and grievance in the way.

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is it cursed gibberish to point out that his reasoning about Ghost makes no fucking sense at all? "This other place has no moderation either, but they don't have discovery tools, so they're good"? That does not make a lick of sense. At all.

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I will disambiguate.

Ghost is open source blog and newsletter software; my understanding is that the newsletter part came second. Like other open source projects, such as the note-taking and organizing software I use (Obsidian), they generate financial support to continue development from (a) providing a "we host the software for you" option (known as Ghost Pro) and (b) selling technical support contracts.

My understanding is that Ghost Pro does in fact provide moderation of the ancient and well-known kind that removes comment spam or links to malware. That said, it's perfectly possible to use Ghost for one's blog and newsletter and never give Ghost-the-software-company money for moderation or anything else; Molly White put up a post going over the technical details of migrating from Substack to self-hosted Ghost:

https://citationneeded.news/substack-to-self-hosted-ghost/

In such a case the newsletter author/owner would be wholly responsible for moderating their site and free to make whatever arrangements they wanted. There's no implied relationship between Ghost sites that I can see. Here, 404 Media discusses their use of Ghost Pro and the amount of site control they are able to exercise:

https://www.404media.co/behind-the-blog-open-source-impact/

To contrast, Substack has offered itself as a newsletter service to the public. As far as I know, the only way to use Substack as an author is via substack.com. Some authors have received subsidies to write their newsletters, presumably in order to increase Substack's mindshare/marketshare among newsletter authors and readers. Substack takes a 10% cut of newsletter revenue and also has some volume transaction fees (rather than, for example, a hosting fee or per-seat license), so is incentivized to sign up as many paying customers as their infrastructure permits.

The situation as I saw it a couple years ago was clear enough: Substack determines who can open up a newsletter and post via their Terms of Service. (For instance, sex workers are not OK; Nazis and Communists are OK.) Newsletter authors/owners are responsible for moderating the content in the newsletters and the comment sections that appear beneath them. As a reader, the connection points between the newsletters are very limited. Speaking just for myself, I very much prefer it that way.

Email newsletters, blog software, billing platforms, and comment sections are all mature technology at this point. Robust competition from other players could eat away at the marketshare dearly bought by a16z's seed money, subsidized creators, and the free-service tier. So Substack began to more explicitly leverage the network effect: now they send me weekly email suggestions (and even make them on the website) about "similar" newsletters to read. There's live chatrooms in there somewhere. And they have launched a Notes feature (I get email about that too) that effectively puts all the site's users in one big room with each other in the manner of Twitter, so that now blog posts like this one attract comments from Conor Friedersdorf and Freddie deBoer along with the sprinkling of antivax link-spam and weird bigotry.

Using Substack nowadays means that you must take its editorial and moderation decisions along with your own _and justify them to your supporters_. Ryan, apparently along with a growing list of others, looked at this situation, saw the steadily increasing difficulty of doing so, and decided the relationship wasn't worth it.

Anyway, this Substack is done now. Look in your spam folder if you missed the newsletter about it.

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It has come to my attention that followers of Communism, a political philosophy that killed even more people than the evil, abhorrent Nazis, publish here on Substack, and on Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms I use. And I am going to keep using those platforms anyway, because there is great value in a hands-off approach to content moderation.

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Well said, Conor. There are many plagiarists on Substack too, like Ryan who got fired from BuzzFeed and Princeton professor Kevin Kruse who is also leaving. I will be shocked if my comment doesn't get deleted: https://nypost.com/2020/06/27/buzzfeed-senior-reporter-ryan-broderick-fired-for-plagiarism/

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Yes, Nazis and plagiarists, the two most dangerous groups in America. Conor needs to go back to his cage in the town square where children poke him with a stick with a quarter, i.e. the one job he is actually qualified for, and you need to figure out why people like Nazis less than plagiarists.

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Glad you are making the move. I have to say that what ameliorated Casey Newton at Platformer's concerns was pretty weak sauce, once the details surfaced.

The moment they bolted on the think ship of social media (feed, the app, notes, and following instead of subscribing) they went from being infrastructure to a platform, and this was the going to happen sooner or later.

I will add that the founders/leaders have been just awful. They really need to hire a comms team that handles things like this, and to LISTEN to them, instead of relying on their infallible libertarian instincts.

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One possible reason for the lack of paid subs coming via the app is that (at least on iOS) you can’t actually manage your subscriptions in the app. 🤦🏻‍♂️ Presumably to avoid Apple’s cut, but it’s still friction that’s having a fair impact.

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Agreed, it’s a pain.

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I'll admit that I love the substack app because it lets me read longform newsletters without the distraction of every other email I have to respond to (I use substack on an iPad that I don't have an email app installed on). No clue if there's a way to do that with Ghost or TinyLetter or GoblinDong or whatever people are moving to.

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If someone doesn’t creat GoblinDong now, I’ll be sorely disappointed in the internet as a whole.

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Sounds like any platform with proper Atom or RSS support works for you, and what you need is a good feedreader.

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How do you do paywalls with RSS?

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Jan 10·edited Jan 10

You don't. Paywalls are antithetical to the web and blogging in the first place, you're looking for a bookstore or Patreon.

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There's a great app called Stoopinbox that allows you to subscribe on any platform

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It's so funny that I just downloaded the app after being content with reading emails for a couple months. The only reason was to share an article and they don't even have a copy link. I have spent months, and days, agonizing over deleting apps that I've used for years because it is worse for me than good. I went through with it and I feel so good about it. It is so good for me and I don't give a f about the loss of networking, marketing opportunities, etc. I'm sick of a lot of shirt and I'm just refusing. All yalls can have it. I'm so done. I just want to read quality, interesting stuff. I show up hoping there's a better situation and I see the crap that I don't want to see. No, I can't replace my social media with social media. I'm waiting for a big change. Less crap, less creep, more something I'm too tired to articulate at the moment.

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i also had moved over to the app due to my email situation being terrible, so that was annoying on the user end - i polled the GD discord and have switched over the newsletter stuff to Omnivore. you can create an email for it to receive messages, and then either subscribe to newsletters with that address or forward messages from your existing email. the web and app UIs are pretty nice, and the whole thing is open source.

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I’m sorry you built this beautiful thing and then Substack ruined it! Will follow this wherever you take it!

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what in the fuck is happening in this comment box and who let all these weird conspiracy people vhuds in?

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Hmm this is all very interesting. I read substack most days and I don’t see a single nazi-supporting publication. I have an account on X and my feed is moderated by me. I follow and see what I’m interested in. I have a TikTok account and what I watch and engage with is what I’m shown. Am I doing something wrong here? Or should people be self-moderating their SM effectively?

I work with so many different people in a single year, closely travelling together for long periods etc and sometimes I find out they hold views that would get them ‘cancelled’ yet I still have to share space with them and can’t escape being exposed to words they say that I don’t agree with. That’s real life. When I can choose I don’t associate with them, when I can’t I must.

I don’t understand why people think they should be able to control what other people are in heart and mind. And in low key activities like writing words. (As opposed to harmful physical acts for which we have laws and police to ‘moderate’).

What do people want? To control other people to a level that represents their own values? What if we just can’t agree?

Just ignore the ‘Nazi’ bastards, like I do when I have to sit next to one.

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Problem is if you ignore it, it grows. If you feed it, it grows. It's like an unwanted blackberry bush.

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The problem about moderation is that all moderation has already been weaponized as a powerful censorship propaganda machine that killed millions by denying access to COVID and post-vaccine cures

30 Spike Protein Treatments (COVID+Vx)

https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/covid-treatments

https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/the-super-drug

Also, they censored how lethal the COVID vaccines were, to the point they are banned in Northern Europe and Florida, while Texas is suing Pfizer:

COVID was designed as a primer for even more lethal COVID haccines:

https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/the-real-covid-timeline

https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/not-vaccine-not-gene-therapy-just

https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/what-do-bioweapons-have-to-do-with

- Wake up videos:

https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/wake-up-videos

https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/2050-youll-go-nowhere-and-youll-be

Depopulation or EXTERMINATION? (finest quotes):

https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/depopulation-or-extermination

So, after the global stealth coup, we are in a point that no moderation is advisable. At most, a small banner saying that the content is questionable and why, like X.com is trying.

Substack, with Gab.com and few others, are the only platforms for really free speech (X uses shadow banning)

Let's fight for Substack to remain free! I'm anti-Nazi but a realist!

16 laws we need to exit Extermination Planet

https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/laws-to-exit-planet-prison

If we don’t succeed, prepare for their 6-sword lethal plan fully exposed here:

https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/the-plan-revealed

Beware of what you ask for, because you are going to get it.

For example, anyone questioning the brutal murder of thousands of Palestine children by Israeli bombing is being classified as Nazi by mainstream social media:

https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/all-we-are-saying-is-give-peace-a

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This comment is a great example of why it's time to leave.

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Your comment is a great example of why masons think that those who die, are the unfittest ones, and that they DESERVE to be culled:

Why is food poisoning legal?

How Rumsfeld forced the approval of Aspartame.

Artificial sweeteners, MSG, PFAS, Glyphosate ... go organic!

https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/why-is-food-poisoning-legal

War on food

https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/war-on-food

Water poisoning

https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/water-poisoning-they-drink-perrier

Not fast food, PFAS food:

https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/fast-food-or-pfas-food

War on poultry and cattle:

https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/war-on-poultry

Wake up! this video (all you need is 10 secs in the middle, who doesn’t have 10 seconds for you):

https://odysee.com/@ImpossiblyWackedOutWorld:f/WTC-7-Free-Falling:8

(caveat about the beginning: pot destroys your brain + “Raises Risk of Heart Attack and Stroke”)

9/11: two "planes", yet the third tower (WTC7) imploded, free falling on its footprint like in a controlled demolition. It was out of reach, and all 7 World Trade Center towers needed to be rebuilt, not the closer towers not belonging to World Trade Center... and the “owner” took an insurance policy for the WTC against terrorism, just months before, when no one was taking them … he didn’t show up for work precisely on 9/11 … just as his 2 grown up siblings (they never skipped work before). The inside information about the FUTURE 9/11 event helped masons make trillions by shorting the stock exchange: the records were deleted by the SEC so they wouldn't be prosecuted !!!

Watch amazing short and more evidence here:

https://scientificprogress.substack.com/p/911-2-planes-3-towers

Please watch all of this! Your life depends on it, because there's a plan to murder 95% of the global population by 2050… written on the masonic Georgia guide-stones: “Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 … ”:

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> My man, you’re not supposed to acknowledge actual Nazis are using your product.

This is such a strange absence of an argument masquerading as a point. Presumably Nazis use lots of products. Like I assume they use toothpaste. And Google. What power does acknowledging this have?

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Do you make it a point to highlight your worst customers?

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I think they are just responding to the highlights of others.

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Normal businesses fairly universally do that by dropping the nazis.

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Use, in the case of substack, is very different than using toothpaste. Use here entails getting paid via the site itself to post nazi content, and having this content be disseminated by the site.

According to Hamish (as noted in this post), they not only acknowledge these users, but they are defending the explicit choice to profit from their content.

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And yet Broderick openly acknowledges in this piece that the other potential newsletter hosting options also have far-right stuff on it, and yet that is OK because... reasons. Reasons like "this is all just another in-group signaling game among media elite types to polish their reputations and try to rake in more subscriptions."

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I think the major problem with all the AI hardware we’re seeing so far is that for some reason it’s all primarily voice controlled and I’m sorry if I’m on the subway I’m not walky-talking into my game boy asking it to do something for me (and I sure as shit don’t trust whatever Sharper Image level interaction Humane’s got going on)

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