I think it's a completely solid statement that "giving up over and over is just that", and at some point you have to draw a line and write what you do in the place that you are.
The 'hard to have moral high ground on the internet' reminds me of something The Good Place pointed out: the entire world is far too complicated for any decision to not be negative in some light.
If you buy the wrong fish at the supermarket, you're killing the planet for supporting unsustainable dishing practices. Buy the wrong coffee with the wrong fair trade agreement and you're still supporting the oppression of small farm communities by Big Bean. If you buy nuts, you may be supporting drought in California... etc etc
The point is that continuing to write on Stubstack cannot be reduced to just blanket supporting of Nazi rhetoric because the leadership said something and traffic might go to Nazis now. It is both much more complicated and much less so.
Money and tribalism have done great damage to society. But they can be forces for good.
All of this is to say: I love your writing, and I'd follow you away or I'd read you here. The point isnt the platform, its the person. Make the choice based on what enables you the most.
I'm from Canadaland, so I always find it... odd? Interesting? Definitely a slap in the face, when this comes up, and I really should know better by now.
We have hate speech laws, and this would be open and shut banhammer until the hammer breaks or people get bored and stop making overt hate sites (then they'll go covert, but still, the less noise they can make, the fewer people who will think this is generally acceptable and look into them).
Seeing the Internet ruled by US laws/ideals as the agreed default is weird and unsettling for me. I'm not saying I want Canadian laws to be how things are run, but the sheer amount of smug rolling off the owners makes me feel like "freeze peach" is not anything they actually care about. But other people reading that article will.
Maybe I just don't have the background to understand. I'm not saying this way is better -- gods know I work every day against what feels like impossible rising numbers and maybe an extinction burst. I just don't understand why, online, creators of a site choose US rules. Or maybe just that one. I thought most sites came to the consensus that active moderation is required in a community space, or it will eventually devolve entirely into everything-hating people who would very much like us to all spontaneously combust.
Maybe that was just video game developer sites?
Hate speech laws don't help when you can't tell the neo-Nazis from the police because they're all there on the same side shaking hands and buddy-buddy. But they seem like a really big step away from where the US is, and I don't see it getting any closer.
I mean, we have hate speech laws because we have a lot of hate speech. But they've really made a difference in my life and in the lives of pretty much all of my friends and family. It's nice to know the government officially has my back and says I have a right to not just exist but thrive as myself... even if actually connecting that official talk and policies to reality is more than a bit of a challenge.
I don't know. I read several sites owned just by one author and I'd do that with you. I miss Livejournal, kind of. Maybe not. I miss the communities though. I still have some, but they're tucked away and, yeah, strongly moderated with clear rules. Is that just putting myself in bubble wrap?
I say: STAY. I am done running. I am not famous nor have a following, but I've decided to stay here and at least TRY to stave off the morons taking over. I have over a dozen social accounts already, most of which have turned out to be useless and several have already collapsed. I'm sick of constantly joining the Next Big Thing, only to find more of the same. I really think social is dead - users just haven't noticed yet. I am redirecting my energy to my blog - which I sometimes crosspost here - and I've switched almost all my following to the newsletter format. I think many others are doing this, too. It's the only way to truly curate what you see every day. So, I want you to stay. I've been a reader for YEARS. <3
I think - if you're right, and if they're going to follow everywhere anyway, then leaving also won't help much because then you're right, you'll get stuck in a continuous running and rebuilding and running and rebuilding. Eventually, I think it may come down to picking which dark place to be a light at and staying there. Substack may not be that place! But I think you're right that running every time a bad person shows up isn't the way to address the issue. Because eventually you either pick a spot and dig in or you give up. And giving up...sucks.
Stuck too. Love the tool set, not happy about the policies. Learning something new seems really challenging right now as I’m prioritizing 50,000 other things and thought I had managed to land my newsletter in a good spot. Buttondown works. It’s basic, but it lacks the overlapping community that substack has via recommendations.
I left Twitter for three months then went back. I didn’t delete my account during that time. I’m not as active there because most of the users I know have become active on Threads.
And you’re right. We keep retreating and losing community spaces. Where do we make a stand? When do we band together and protect each other from hate instead of making a corporation do it? Which none of them have never had anyone’s best interest at heart - especially in a capitalist world.
In that context, staying feels like the right thing to do. Especially for someone like me not using the subscription model at all.
Haters are going to hate. Let them. I’m not moving this time. I’m done running or falling back. If Substack collapses, I’ll deal with it then. Keep backups of my lists and go from there. Corporations do eventuality fail. That’s the only thing inevitable.
I’m tired of haters making more work for me. I’m tired of running, so to speak.
This. Completely this. There are no "pure" places on the internet. Leaving just gives the platform over to goblins. And where are we to go? Because as you said they will surely follow.
When Substack added Notes last year (which I don't love) I spent ages researching alternatives. Patreon has always confused people, and I've had a hard time getting non Patreon users to subscribe there. At first, I thought the answer was Ghost.org, but after paying for one year at their lowest tier that I realized there are file limit sizes. This means I can't import all of my Substack content - particularly the podcasts. So Ghost is not an option for continuing to create the type of content I do here.
So I'm staying for now. What I see in Substack Notes (oh, the irony that this is playing out in a social media feed!) is a lot of indignation without a lot of solutions. I think the goblins win when we waste our energy villainizing each other over which websites we use. And that we'd be better off using our creative voices to spark change on a human to human level. The corporations will always look out for their bottom line.
I follow a good handful of substack creators and really value their newsletters and the ability to support them financially. I did not know about the nazis here until pretty recently but I guess why am I surprised? I'm canceling several of my subscriptions rn because I don't want to put any more of my money into the pockets of whatever substack overlords are okay with there being nazis here. I haven't migrated to buttondown yet but I'm open to it, I guess, but also skeptical. I really don't want to lose access to these voices I have really valued, and I'd like to be able to continue to send a few dollars a month their way. I'm not sure what the best way forward is either. I never returned from the reddit blackout either, and I still really miss the good and useful and fun parts of those communities. I know that speaking with our clicks and our dollars are the only communication that capitalism values, but leaving these places is a loss for me.
In a way this feels like how I'm feeling about covid lately. My partner and I still wear masks. We still don't go to bars or restaurants or movies. We have a lot of chronic health issues already and this level of caution needs to be our choice. I recognize that in many ways it is a privilege to be able to protect ourselves as well as we have. I also really miss bars, and restaurants, and movies, and hanging out indoors with my friends without a mask on. It is hard not to be kind of mad at the people I know who are (or seem to be) finished with any caution. At the same time I know that this is a systemic problem, not a problem of individual choice. We deserve better from our systems. Like not *still having covid* 3 years later, or not having nazis making money on our community platforms! How much does my individual choice actually matter? And can I be at peace with the consequences that follow it?
I appreciate your thoughts on this, and I'll be interested to see where things go. Be well, kind stranger.
I think the question in part is: does leaving accomplish anything beyond the nebulously defined "doing the right thing"?
I feel people think this will work like a boycott and cause Substack to reverse course, but that's pie-in-the-sky thinking. So if there is no benefit to leaving and leaving actively causes harm to your career, I don't see the point.
I am also thinking that having no distinctions between "there are Nazis" and "this is a hive of Nazis" is an insidious and bad faith argument, particularly as it does not seem to be applied to other spaces like Twitter or YouTube. All this does is silence your voice without making any material impact.
I don't see Substack being a "hive of Nazis." It certainly is far from being like TruthSocial or KiwiFarms. I doubt it even has the amount of harmful rhetoric that YouTube has. So basically, you wouldn't lose my support if you stayed here.
I'm still beating the "we should all go back to Livejournal, but actually go to Dreamwidth because Livejournal has been an FSB honeypot since the late 2000s" drum. I know that might not be feasible for everyone, but hey - Dreamwidth is still not owned by VC, and the LJ format worked for GRRM (until it didn't.)
Here's my issue with Substack that isn't true on many platforms:
We don't know which authors they're not just allowing to use the platform, they're also giving large advances. They've so far refused to say who they've paid directly to entice them onto here, which means we don't know which bigots our money is directly funding. (But the reported names aren't great.)
If it was just "they get to use it too" I'd have less ethical issues.
I am a small fry. My two sites (stacks? newsletters?) here are niche, mostly for me to shitpost or to talk Product Management (my chosen career).
I did poke around Buttondown, but I think I will stay.
1. I do not charge for my pages. So, I am a free rider, and every email I send costs Hamish and Chris some of that Nazi money they rake in. My leaving will actually help their bottom line
2. I have noticed that there is a closet community of assholes who follow around anyone who posits that the Nazi's are here with a shit-ton of copy-pasta spam. I have had to ban more people from my ~ 150 total subscribers across my two properties here in the last week than I ever did on Twitter. Really fucking annoying.
3. I left twitter over a year ago, and the only positive thing I can say about Elon Musk is that he finally broke me of my Twitter addiction.
Before October 7 I might have been much more angry with rightwing nazis. But after October 7 all the leftwing nazis had a big coming out party on the dead bodies of my people.
Even if substack kicks out all the Richard Spencer nazis they will welcome the leftwing nazis like Caitlin johnstone and max horowitz who want me just as dead but prefer to claim that they love jews (that agree with them) just like racists live black people (who talk like Candace owens)
So I'm just tired. Also Jewish. I'm very Jewish these days. Feel more Jewish than when I converted and was super excited to study Talmud.
Part of me wants to staunchly hold my ground somewhere, to cling to the old days of "do not engage, block and move on" because haven't we all been, in some way, sharing platforms with bad actors since the Internet became wildly accessible? Occasionally they might have crawled out of their little trash heap and shouted in a respectable restaurant, but for the most part people looked away, and they'd eventually leave. But lately the shouting feels like it comes from all sides. I feel like I'm forever on the verge of being reprimanded by someone before I've built a real audience anywhere.
This is all to say: As a reader, I will follow my favorite authors across platforms. As a wide eyed writer with foolish notions and dreams, I'm starting to wonder if I'll ever figure out a platform before it inevitably collapses, and I'm not sure what I should do either, but I am mad enough about the state of the Internet that I might die on the right hill.
Moderation takes so much stamina, not to mention the ability to withstand direct attacks. I am in awe of every competent moderator. That being said, while I'd follow you to a new platform, I hope you stay on Substack.
I've been having this same argument with myself. There's no guarantee that, should we move to a "good place", that the good place will *stay* a good place. Even if they say *now* that they ban Nazis (and other bad actors) from the platform, suppose it gets sold someday? I've seen that happen to plenty of platforms (hello and goodbye, LJ). So yeah, at a certain point... when the bad actors start to affect functionality and my experience on the site and my followers' experience on the site (as with Twitter), then it's time to leave. But if that's not happening (yet)... Ugh. It's a tangle.
I'm getting old. I'm getting tired. I'm getting the point where I have to pick and choose my battles.
Fighting the good fight on Slack is, to me, not a good place to put my energy. I don't see it as the hill I want to hold. Not when it's supporting the pocketbooks of folks who I don't really want to give money to, anyway.
It's funny how all this has been one big circle, in my experience - self-hosting my own blog and photos and other stuff... then LJ, then Blogger, then Soundcloud/Anchor/Spotify over to substack and now I'm looking at self-hosting again.
If you stay, if you fight here, then good on you and I'll support you. But I'm just not able to muster up enough energy to fight yet another online-turf-war on a place that is going to enshittify itself in obsolescence in 3 to 5 years anyway, so we can all migrate to the next centrally-owned platform to get enshittened.
I think it's a completely solid statement that "giving up over and over is just that", and at some point you have to draw a line and write what you do in the place that you are.
The 'hard to have moral high ground on the internet' reminds me of something The Good Place pointed out: the entire world is far too complicated for any decision to not be negative in some light.
If you buy the wrong fish at the supermarket, you're killing the planet for supporting unsustainable dishing practices. Buy the wrong coffee with the wrong fair trade agreement and you're still supporting the oppression of small farm communities by Big Bean. If you buy nuts, you may be supporting drought in California... etc etc
The point is that continuing to write on Stubstack cannot be reduced to just blanket supporting of Nazi rhetoric because the leadership said something and traffic might go to Nazis now. It is both much more complicated and much less so.
Money and tribalism have done great damage to society. But they can be forces for good.
All of this is to say: I love your writing, and I'd follow you away or I'd read you here. The point isnt the platform, its the person. Make the choice based on what enables you the most.
I'm from Canadaland, so I always find it... odd? Interesting? Definitely a slap in the face, when this comes up, and I really should know better by now.
We have hate speech laws, and this would be open and shut banhammer until the hammer breaks or people get bored and stop making overt hate sites (then they'll go covert, but still, the less noise they can make, the fewer people who will think this is generally acceptable and look into them).
Seeing the Internet ruled by US laws/ideals as the agreed default is weird and unsettling for me. I'm not saying I want Canadian laws to be how things are run, but the sheer amount of smug rolling off the owners makes me feel like "freeze peach" is not anything they actually care about. But other people reading that article will.
Maybe I just don't have the background to understand. I'm not saying this way is better -- gods know I work every day against what feels like impossible rising numbers and maybe an extinction burst. I just don't understand why, online, creators of a site choose US rules. Or maybe just that one. I thought most sites came to the consensus that active moderation is required in a community space, or it will eventually devolve entirely into everything-hating people who would very much like us to all spontaneously combust.
Maybe that was just video game developer sites?
Hate speech laws don't help when you can't tell the neo-Nazis from the police because they're all there on the same side shaking hands and buddy-buddy. But they seem like a really big step away from where the US is, and I don't see it getting any closer.
I mean, we have hate speech laws because we have a lot of hate speech. But they've really made a difference in my life and in the lives of pretty much all of my friends and family. It's nice to know the government officially has my back and says I have a right to not just exist but thrive as myself... even if actually connecting that official talk and policies to reality is more than a bit of a challenge.
I don't know. I read several sites owned just by one author and I'd do that with you. I miss Livejournal, kind of. Maybe not. I miss the communities though. I still have some, but they're tucked away and, yeah, strongly moderated with clear rules. Is that just putting myself in bubble wrap?
I say: STAY. I am done running. I am not famous nor have a following, but I've decided to stay here and at least TRY to stave off the morons taking over. I have over a dozen social accounts already, most of which have turned out to be useless and several have already collapsed. I'm sick of constantly joining the Next Big Thing, only to find more of the same. I really think social is dead - users just haven't noticed yet. I am redirecting my energy to my blog - which I sometimes crosspost here - and I've switched almost all my following to the newsletter format. I think many others are doing this, too. It's the only way to truly curate what you see every day. So, I want you to stay. I've been a reader for YEARS. <3
I think - if you're right, and if they're going to follow everywhere anyway, then leaving also won't help much because then you're right, you'll get stuck in a continuous running and rebuilding and running and rebuilding. Eventually, I think it may come down to picking which dark place to be a light at and staying there. Substack may not be that place! But I think you're right that running every time a bad person shows up isn't the way to address the issue. Because eventually you either pick a spot and dig in or you give up. And giving up...sucks.
Stuck too. Love the tool set, not happy about the policies. Learning something new seems really challenging right now as I’m prioritizing 50,000 other things and thought I had managed to land my newsletter in a good spot. Buttondown works. It’s basic, but it lacks the overlapping community that substack has via recommendations.
I left Twitter for three months then went back. I didn’t delete my account during that time. I’m not as active there because most of the users I know have become active on Threads.
And you’re right. We keep retreating and losing community spaces. Where do we make a stand? When do we band together and protect each other from hate instead of making a corporation do it? Which none of them have never had anyone’s best interest at heart - especially in a capitalist world.
In that context, staying feels like the right thing to do. Especially for someone like me not using the subscription model at all.
Haters are going to hate. Let them. I’m not moving this time. I’m done running or falling back. If Substack collapses, I’ll deal with it then. Keep backups of my lists and go from there. Corporations do eventuality fail. That’s the only thing inevitable.
I’m tired of haters making more work for me. I’m tired of running, so to speak.
This. Completely this. There are no "pure" places on the internet. Leaving just gives the platform over to goblins. And where are we to go? Because as you said they will surely follow.
When Substack added Notes last year (which I don't love) I spent ages researching alternatives. Patreon has always confused people, and I've had a hard time getting non Patreon users to subscribe there. At first, I thought the answer was Ghost.org, but after paying for one year at their lowest tier that I realized there are file limit sizes. This means I can't import all of my Substack content - particularly the podcasts. So Ghost is not an option for continuing to create the type of content I do here.
So I'm staying for now. What I see in Substack Notes (oh, the irony that this is playing out in a social media feed!) is a lot of indignation without a lot of solutions. I think the goblins win when we waste our energy villainizing each other over which websites we use. And that we'd be better off using our creative voices to spark change on a human to human level. The corporations will always look out for their bottom line.
I follow a good handful of substack creators and really value their newsletters and the ability to support them financially. I did not know about the nazis here until pretty recently but I guess why am I surprised? I'm canceling several of my subscriptions rn because I don't want to put any more of my money into the pockets of whatever substack overlords are okay with there being nazis here. I haven't migrated to buttondown yet but I'm open to it, I guess, but also skeptical. I really don't want to lose access to these voices I have really valued, and I'd like to be able to continue to send a few dollars a month their way. I'm not sure what the best way forward is either. I never returned from the reddit blackout either, and I still really miss the good and useful and fun parts of those communities. I know that speaking with our clicks and our dollars are the only communication that capitalism values, but leaving these places is a loss for me.
In a way this feels like how I'm feeling about covid lately. My partner and I still wear masks. We still don't go to bars or restaurants or movies. We have a lot of chronic health issues already and this level of caution needs to be our choice. I recognize that in many ways it is a privilege to be able to protect ourselves as well as we have. I also really miss bars, and restaurants, and movies, and hanging out indoors with my friends without a mask on. It is hard not to be kind of mad at the people I know who are (or seem to be) finished with any caution. At the same time I know that this is a systemic problem, not a problem of individual choice. We deserve better from our systems. Like not *still having covid* 3 years later, or not having nazis making money on our community platforms! How much does my individual choice actually matter? And can I be at peace with the consequences that follow it?
I appreciate your thoughts on this, and I'll be interested to see where things go. Be well, kind stranger.
I think the question in part is: does leaving accomplish anything beyond the nebulously defined "doing the right thing"?
I feel people think this will work like a boycott and cause Substack to reverse course, but that's pie-in-the-sky thinking. So if there is no benefit to leaving and leaving actively causes harm to your career, I don't see the point.
I am also thinking that having no distinctions between "there are Nazis" and "this is a hive of Nazis" is an insidious and bad faith argument, particularly as it does not seem to be applied to other spaces like Twitter or YouTube. All this does is silence your voice without making any material impact.
I don't see Substack being a "hive of Nazis." It certainly is far from being like TruthSocial or KiwiFarms. I doubt it even has the amount of harmful rhetoric that YouTube has. So basically, you wouldn't lose my support if you stayed here.
I'm still beating the "we should all go back to Livejournal, but actually go to Dreamwidth because Livejournal has been an FSB honeypot since the late 2000s" drum. I know that might not be feasible for everyone, but hey - Dreamwidth is still not owned by VC, and the LJ format worked for GRRM (until it didn't.)
Here's my issue with Substack that isn't true on many platforms:
We don't know which authors they're not just allowing to use the platform, they're also giving large advances. They've so far refused to say who they've paid directly to entice them onto here, which means we don't know which bigots our money is directly funding. (But the reported names aren't great.)
If it was just "they get to use it too" I'd have less ethical issues.
https://doyles.substack.com/p/in-queers-we-trust-all-others-pay
I am a small fry. My two sites (stacks? newsletters?) here are niche, mostly for me to shitpost or to talk Product Management (my chosen career).
I did poke around Buttondown, but I think I will stay.
1. I do not charge for my pages. So, I am a free rider, and every email I send costs Hamish and Chris some of that Nazi money they rake in. My leaving will actually help their bottom line
2. I have noticed that there is a closet community of assholes who follow around anyone who posits that the Nazi's are here with a shit-ton of copy-pasta spam. I have had to ban more people from my ~ 150 total subscribers across my two properties here in the last week than I ever did on Twitter. Really fucking annoying.
3. I left twitter over a year ago, and the only positive thing I can say about Elon Musk is that he finally broke me of my Twitter addiction.
Before October 7 I might have been much more angry with rightwing nazis. But after October 7 all the leftwing nazis had a big coming out party on the dead bodies of my people.
Even if substack kicks out all the Richard Spencer nazis they will welcome the leftwing nazis like Caitlin johnstone and max horowitz who want me just as dead but prefer to claim that they love jews (that agree with them) just like racists live black people (who talk like Candace owens)
So I'm just tired. Also Jewish. I'm very Jewish these days. Feel more Jewish than when I converted and was super excited to study Talmud.
Part of me wants to staunchly hold my ground somewhere, to cling to the old days of "do not engage, block and move on" because haven't we all been, in some way, sharing platforms with bad actors since the Internet became wildly accessible? Occasionally they might have crawled out of their little trash heap and shouted in a respectable restaurant, but for the most part people looked away, and they'd eventually leave. But lately the shouting feels like it comes from all sides. I feel like I'm forever on the verge of being reprimanded by someone before I've built a real audience anywhere.
This is all to say: As a reader, I will follow my favorite authors across platforms. As a wide eyed writer with foolish notions and dreams, I'm starting to wonder if I'll ever figure out a platform before it inevitably collapses, and I'm not sure what I should do either, but I am mad enough about the state of the Internet that I might die on the right hill.
Moderation takes so much stamina, not to mention the ability to withstand direct attacks. I am in awe of every competent moderator. That being said, while I'd follow you to a new platform, I hope you stay on Substack.
I've been having this same argument with myself. There's no guarantee that, should we move to a "good place", that the good place will *stay* a good place. Even if they say *now* that they ban Nazis (and other bad actors) from the platform, suppose it gets sold someday? I've seen that happen to plenty of platforms (hello and goodbye, LJ). So yeah, at a certain point... when the bad actors start to affect functionality and my experience on the site and my followers' experience on the site (as with Twitter), then it's time to leave. But if that's not happening (yet)... Ugh. It's a tangle.
I'm getting old. I'm getting tired. I'm getting the point where I have to pick and choose my battles.
Fighting the good fight on Slack is, to me, not a good place to put my energy. I don't see it as the hill I want to hold. Not when it's supporting the pocketbooks of folks who I don't really want to give money to, anyway.
It's funny how all this has been one big circle, in my experience - self-hosting my own blog and photos and other stuff... then LJ, then Blogger, then Soundcloud/Anchor/Spotify over to substack and now I'm looking at self-hosting again.
If you stay, if you fight here, then good on you and I'll support you. But I'm just not able to muster up enough energy to fight yet another online-turf-war on a place that is going to enshittify itself in obsolescence in 3 to 5 years anyway, so we can all migrate to the next centrally-owned platform to get enshittened.