Hello Nazis, Goodbye Substack

Adios, Substack amigos. Catch you at the next roundup. Source: Midjourney.

When I first launched this newsletter (blogletter?) a year ago I would tell people whom I know in real life, "I've just launched a Substack." And they would invariably scrunch up their faces and ask, "What's a Substack?" So after I while I stopped saying that and just said 'blog', which sounded very 2003 to me. [1]

The lesson I gleaned from this is that very few bipeds outside the worlds of technology and writing have any clue what this publishing platform is, nor do they care. I could say the same thing about the Hellscape Formerly Known as Twitter. "Why do you use Twitter?" is a question I've fielded more than once, and I always struggled to come up with an answer they could relate to. Probably the most genuine answer to that question would be that it was an amusing distraction — heroin for my short-attention-span addiction. (And now I'd doing the same thing on Threads, which is more like methadone.)

Substack in the App Store. The Platformer is the first blog shown on the left. Source: Apple.

The reason I started this newsletter was to have an outlet for my thoughts that wasn't mediated by the needs of a particular publisher, a place where I could have fun writing about things that interest me. I find that writing is a lot like running or other forms of physical exercise — you need to maintain a consistent regimen or you start to get out of shape. Or maybe a better metaphor is a car. If you leave your car in the driveway for a few weeks without starting it, you come home to a dead battery. My actual writing work had slowed considerably a year ago, and I needed to keep my batteries charged.

The reason I chose Substack for this particular exercise in spinning metaphors is that I am lazy by nature. Or rather, I am easily frustrated by doing things that bore me. Setting up a newsletter from scratch, or building a website, sounds like the most tedious thing imaginable. I'm starting to nod off just thinking about it. And the thing about Substack is that they made it super easy to create and distribute a news/blogletter/column. Just add words and stir.

No, we actually did see that coming

Now, like so many other areas of the Internet, Substack has gotten toxic. There is currently an uprising among authors on this platform spurred by the realization that Substack is a little too comfortable publishing and promoting Nazis. This has been brewing for a while, but the controversy shifted into high gear when Johnathan Katz (author of a blogletter called The Racket) published a piece in The Atlantic titled, "Substack Has a Nazi Problem."

Take, for example, Richard Hanania, author of a Substack blog/podcast with 19,000 subscribers. Hanania is described by Wikipedia as "an American political science researcher and right-wing political commentator."

But roughly a decade ago he was Richard Hoste, blatant racist and eugenicist. HuffPost got the scoop on that:

Two days after that story appeared, Hanania posted a mea culpa on his Substack blogletter. He wrote: “Recently, it’s been revealed that over a decade ago I held many beliefs that, as my current writing makes clear, I now find repulsive."

As Natasha Lyonne would say on "Poker Face": Bullshit. Once a racist, always a racist.

Such a nice young man. Bet he looks real sharp in a white hood. Source: Xitter.

But Hamish McKenzie, one of Substack's three bro-founders, had no problem having Hanania as a guest on his podcast, where he interviews prominent Substack authors. [2]

There are more overt supremacists on Substack than Hanania, who has managed to cloak his racism in a shroud of academic quasi-respectability. He's just the most visible example.

Have you punched a Nazi today?

I will not go into all the back and forth that resulted from Katz's article — you, my faithful reader, probably do not give two farthings about the internal politics of this bloglettering platform — but it ended up dividing the Substack universe into two camps: Authors who puffed up their chests and shouted theatrically, "Let the public decide whom they wish to read!" And authors who didn't particularly want to share a platform with Nazis, white supremacists, and other genocidal hate mongers, especially when said platform is promoting these blogs and collecting a percentage from their paid subscriptions. [3]

Tough call, right?

A helpful guide. Source: Threads.

It is a tough call when you've poured time and energy into building an audience, letting them know where to find you, and getting them used to saying words like "Substack." This platform is home to a lot of former journalists who turned to it as a way to make a living, given the extinction event that's going on at the moment among print publications and websites. And a small percentage of them have succeeded wildly.

One of the most successful Substack publications is Casey Newton's The Platformer. Casey was personally recruited by the founders of Substack to start his newsletter three years ago, and he now has 170,000 subscribers.

I've crossed paths with Casey a few times over the years, and he is both a consummate professional and a total mensch. His newsletter, which is about tech platforms like Meta and Xitter, is excellent and incredibly thorough. Casey approached Substack's founders with evidence of blogs that clearly violated the platform's rules against hate speech and violence; they made a token gesture to remove a handful of the worst of the worst, then put the matter to bed.

Casey has decided to leave Substack, taking his 170K subscribers with him. So has Ryan Broderick, author of Garbage Day (68K subscribers). [4] Katz's The Racket left this morning, shortly before I began writing this. Several other prominent Substack blogletter writers have already made the move. I expect more will follow.

It's clear a line has been drawn in the virtual sand: You're either cool with having Nazis as next-door neighbors, or you're not.

Well, shit. I am definitely not cool with Nazis. I think they should be driven to the edge of the Internet and then shoved off. Yes, I know, there's no getting rid of them. But you can stuff them back into the holes they crawled out of. The last thing you want to do is mainstream them and expose them to a broader audience, which is exactly what Substack (and Elon's Xitter) are doing.

So I guess I'll be moving, I just don't know where yet. I don't think this will impact you, my dear reader, very much. I should just be able to migrate your email addresses over to my new host. Along the way, though, I think I'm going to make some other overdue changes. Like a new name for this thing (suggestions welcome) and a broader focus. Roughly 90 percent of my posts have been around AI, and I think I'm going to crank that down closer to 50 percent. Since this is an election year — and quite possibly the last election year in my lifetime — I'll probably focus more on how to deal with the tsunami of mis- and disinformation that's about to engulf us.

Anyway, all of that is to come. And if anyone wants to volunteer to help me figure out this move, where to go and how to do it, I will happily pay you a sum sufficient to buy several combo meals at the fast food establishment of your choosing.

Hope to have this all resolved in a couple weeks. See you then.

OK, suggestions time. What would be a better name for this blogletter? Post your ideas below in the comments field.

[1] A more accurate description of COMYAI is a 'column,' which is really how I approach it. I have written columns for at least half a dozen publications over the years. It's a form that comes easily to me. But columns are not usually freestanding — they have a set location, they act as supports for other objects, they're somewhere. So it begs the question, a column where?

[2] Hanania's previous comments were revealed after the podcast, but McKenzie has written since that he doesn't regret having him on as a guest.

[3] Katz: “Maybe he [McKenzie] does genuinely think that the ideal way to facilitate free expression is to put gender-queer scholars and street-fighting Nazis on the same platform (but not sex workers or pornographers, they’re still banned), and have them hold an essay contest to see which minorities get to live.”

[4] Katz points out that the first examples of blogs shown on the Substack page in the Apple and Google app stores is of The Platformer and Garbage Day. (As in the first screen image above.) So you know that's gonna leave a mark.