Substack vocally and proudly supports and platforms writers of Nazi viewpoints.
If you don’t want to support writers of Nazi viewpoints, don’t give Substack money through paid subscriptions to anyone who publishes there, and certainly don’t publish through them yourself.
If you use Substack to publish your writing, go somewhere else. There are options.
If you read someone who publishes via Substack, encourage them to publish somewhere else and stop your subscription until they do. If you really want to keep reading what they publish without a subscription (if they offer that option), learn how to subscribe via an RSS reader so that you’re not visiting the website and creating impressions that way.
Here’s what Substack said earlier today about their ongoing commitment to freedom of the press:
Elon Musk has been a vocal supporter of free speech. It’s no secret that we haven’t always seen eye to eye, but he deserves a lot of credit for advancing freedom of speech on X, before it was popular and in the face of fierce criticism and opposition….
We will continue to support editorial freedom and the hands-off approach to content moderation that we have had in place since the company was founded in 2017….
As a platform, we are committed to supporting the speech rights of creators and their audiences, so we avoid political or business commitments that conflict with this mission. We buy into the old idea that we can strongly disagree with what someone has to say and still defend their right to say it.
In other words: Paradox of tolerance? Never heard about it, don’t really care.
Other resources on Substack’s ongoing Nazi platforming (with thanks to Imani Gandy for collecting these):
- March 17, 2021, Annalee Newitz in The Hypothesis): “Here’s why Substack’s scam worked so well“:
Substack also seems to have a secret list of writers who are allowed to violate the company’s terms of service. These people dish out hate speech, but remain on the platform with paid subscribers. Among them is Graham Linehan, who was already booted from Twitter for hate speech against trans people, and whose Substack is entirely devoted to the idea that trans women are a danger to cis women and should be stopped.
- November 28, 2023, Jonathan M. Katz in The Atlantic: “Substack Has a Nazi Problem“:
Substack’s leaders also proudly disdain the content-moderation methods that other platforms employ, albeit with spotty results, to limit the spread of racist or bigoted speech. An informal search of the Substack website and of extremist Telegram channels that circulate Substack posts turns up scores of white-supremacist, neo-Confederate, and explicitly Nazi newsletters on Substack—many of them apparently started in the past year.
- November 19, 2024, Anil Dash: “Don’t call it a Substack.“:
Substack is, just as a reminder, a political project made by extremists with a goal of normalizing a radical, hateful agenda by co-opting well-intentioned creators’ work in service of cross-promoting attacks on the vulnerable. You don’t have to take my word for it; Substack’s CEO explicitly said they won’t ban someone who is explicitly spouting hate, and when confronted with the rampant white supremacist propaganda that they are profiting from on their site, they took down… four of the Nazis. Four. There are countless more now, and they want to use your email newsletter to cross-promote that content and legitimize it. Nobody can ban the hateful content site if your nice little newsletter is on there, too, and your musings for your subscribers are all the cover they need.
- December 18, 2024, Marisa Kabas in The Handbasket: “Substack is at it again“:
Nearly 250 Substacks posted an open letter to the founders on their respective sites in mid-December of last year after journalist Jonathan Katz’s piece for The Atlantic revealed an ugly truth: the platform was monetizing Nazis. The open letter campaign resulted in coverage from The New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes, Fast Company, The Verge, Tech Dirt, and others. It was a roar the founders couldn’t ignore, and they responded with a truly baffling post explaining their decision to stay the course.
There are other options than Substack (and more beyond those, I’m sure). Stop supporting businesses that make their money by platforming the worst of humanity.