Why Platformer is leaving Substack

We’ve seen this movie before — and we won’t stick around to watch it play out

Jan 12, 2024

AI-generated image of a typewriter in a dusty old newspaper office with a sheet of paper bearing the characters -30-, a journalistic convention indicating the end of an article — “create a somber image displaying these characters: -30-” / DALL-E

After much consideration, we have decided to move Platformer off of Substack. Over the next few days, the publication will migrate to a new website powered by the nonprofit, open-source publishing platform Ghost. If you already subscribe to Platformer and wish to continue receiving it, you don’t need to do anything: your account will be ported over to the new platform.

If all goes well, following the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday on Monday, you’ll receive the Tuesday edition of Platformer as normal. If you have any issues with your subscription after that, please let us know.

Today let’s talk about how we came to this decision, the debate over how platforms should moderate content, and why we think we’re better off elsewhere.

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.

II.

In November, when Jonathan M. Katz published his article in The Atlantic about Nazis using Substack, it did not strike me as cause to immediately leave Substack. All platforms host problematic and harmful material; I assumed Substack would remove praise for Nazis under its existing policy that “Substack cannot be used to publish content or fund initiatives that incite violence based on protected classes.”

And so, after reading the open letter from 247 writers on the platform calling for clarity on the issue, I waited for a response.

The response, from Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie, arrived on December 21. It stated that Substack would remove accounts if they made credible threats of violence but otherwise would not intervene. “We don't think that censorship (including through demonetizing publications) makes the problem go away — in fact, it makes it worse,” he wrote. “We believe that supporting individual rights and civil liberties while subjecting ideas to open discourse is the best way to strip bad ideas of their power.”

This was the moment where I started to think Platformer would need to leave Substack. I’m not aware of any major US consumer internet platform that does not explicitly ban praise for Nazi hate speech, much less one that welcomes them to set up shop and start selling subscriptions.

But suddenly, here we were.

I didn’t want to leave Substack without first getting my own sense of the problem. I reached out to journalists and experts in hate speech and asked them to share their own lists of Substack publications that, in their view, advanced extremist ideologies. With my colleagues Zoë Schiffer and Lindsey Choo, I reviewed them all and attempted to categorize them by size, ideology, and other characteristics.

In the end, we found seven that conveyed explicit support for 1930s German Nazis and called for violence against Jews, among other groups. Substack removed one before we sent it to them. The others we sent to the company in a spirit of inquiry: will you remove these clear-cut examples of pro-Nazi speech? The answer to that question was essential to helping us understand whether we could stay.

It was not, however, a comprehensive review of hate speech on the platform. And to my profound disappointment, before the company even acted on what we sent them, Substack shared the scope of our findings with another, friendlier publication on the platform, along with the information that these publications collectively had few subscribers and were not making money. (It later apologized to me for doing this.)

The point of this leak, I believe, was to make the entire discussion about hate speech on Nazis on Substack appear to be laughably small: a mountain made out of a molehill by bedwetting liberals.

To us, the six publications we had submitted had only ever been a question: would Substack, in the most clear-cut of all speech cases, do the bare minimum?

In the end, it did, in five out of six cases. As all of this unfolded, I spoke twice with Substack’s co-founders. And while they asked that those conversations be off the record, my understanding from our conversations — based on material they had shared with me in writing — was that in the future they would regard explicitly Nazi and pro-Holocaust material to be a violation of their existing policies.

But on Tuesday, when I wrote my story about the company’s decision to remove five publications, that language was missing from their statement. Instead, the company framed the entire discussion as having been about the handful of publications I had sent them for review.

I attempted to write a straightforward news story about all this, and wound up infuriating many readers. On the right, I faced criticism for making a fuss out of Substack hosting a handful of small Nazi publications. On the left, I faced even louder criticism for (in their view) appearing to celebrate and validate Substack’s removal of those same publications. (I wrote Tuesday that “Substack’s removal of Nazi publications resolves the primary concern we identified here last week.” I regret using that language. What I should have said was “Substack did the basic thing we asked it to,” and then emphasized that it did not address our larger concerns. Which I did go on to say, though not with the force that in hindsight I wish I had.)

I’m happy to take my lumps here. I just want to say again that to me, this was never about the fate of a few publications: it was about whether Substack would publicly commit to proactively removing pro-Nazi material. Up to the moment I published on Tuesday, I believed that the company planned to do this. But I no longer do.

From there, our next move seemed clear. But first I wanted to consult our readers, whose advice and support I have been so lucky to rely on over these past few years. Asking readers for their thoughts proved to be surprisingly controversial, especially in the Sidechannel Discord, where some of you wondered whether I was seeking a fig leaf of approval that we could use to justify staying here. But Platformer has as its readers some of the world’s smartest minds in content moderation and trust and safety — I sincerely wanted to get your thoughts before making a final decision.

Over the next 48 hours, the Platformer community raised a variety of sensible objections to how Substack had handled this issue. You pointed out that Substack had not changed its policy; that it did not commit explicitly to removing pro-Nazi material; that it seemed to be asking its own publications to serve as permanent volunteer moderators; and that in the meantime all of the hate speech on the platform remains eligible for promotion in Notes, its weekly email digest, and other algorithmically ranked surfaces.

In emails, comments, Substack Notes and callouts on social media, you’ve made your view clear: Platformer should leave Substack. We waited a day to announce our move as we finalized plans with Ghost and began our migration. But today we can say clearly that we agree with you.

Substack’s tools are designed to help publications grow quickly and make lots of money — money that is shared with Substack. That design demands responsible thinking about who will be promoted, and how.

The company’s defense boils down to the fact that nothing that bad has happened yet. But we have seen this movie before, from Alex Jones to anti-vaxxers to QAnon, and will not remain to watch it play out again.

III. Frequently asked questions about Substack and free speech

We’re still only talking about six newsletters. Aren’t you overreacting?

To be clear, there are a lot more than six bad publications on Substack: our analysis found dozens of far-right publications advocating for the great replacement theory and other violent ideologies.

But until Substack makes it clear that it will take proactive steps to remove hate speech and extremism, the current size of the problem isn’t relevant. The company’s edgelord branding ensures that the fringes will continue to arrive and set up shop, and its infrastructure creates the possibility that those publications will grow quickly. That’s what matters.

What about the fact that censorship will not make extremism go away, and might even make it worse?

We didn’t ask Substack to solve racism. We asked it to give us an easy, low-drama place to do business, and to commit to not funding and accelerating the growth of hate movements. Ultimately we did not get either.

Aren’t you actually helping Nazis here, making their ideology seem alluring by turning into forbidden knowledge?

Genocidal anti-semitism is hardly forbidden knowledge; you can find it just about anywhere. The Nazi worldview is taught in schools, figures prominently in popular culture, and endures in forums all across the internet. I believe Nazi ideology is made more appealing by the people who spread it than it is by the people who choose not to host it.

OK fine, but aren’t calls to ban Nazis a slippery slope? If Substack caves in here, there will be no end to what people like you call for them to remove.

The slippery-slope argument here is based on the fantasy that if you simply draw the right line, you will never have to revisit it. The fact is that we are constantly renegotiating the boundaries of speech based on values, norms, and threats of persecution. The problem is that renegotiating those boundaries is exhausting, expensive, and makes everyone mad, which is why most people prefer to shout “slippery slope!” and then never think about it again.

Previously you said you would submit your findings to Stripe, Substack’s payments processor. Doesn’t it set a bad precedent to lobby for content moderation at the level of payments?

Certainly I would not endorse a move like that in most cases. But as with Substack, I approached Stripe in the spirit of journalistic inquiry. One of its customers appeared to have said Nazis are free to set up shop there. Stripe’s policies forbid the funding of violent movements. How did Stripe’s policy square with Substack’s?

In any case, Stripe never responded to us. But it felt like it was worth sending an email.

Aren’t you going to have this exact same problem on Ghost, or wherever else you host your website?

As open-source software, Ghost is almost certainly used to publish a bunch of things we disagree with and find offensive. But it differs from Substack in some important respects.

One, its terms of service ban content that “is violent or threatening or promotes violence or actions that are threatening to any other person.” Ghost founder and CEO John O’Nolan committed to us that Ghost’s hosted service will remove pro-Nazi content, full stop. If nothing else, that’s further than Substack will go, and makes Ghost a better intermediate home for Platformer than our current one.

Two, Ghost tells us it has no plans to build the recommendation infrastructure Substack has. It does not seek to be a social network. Instead, it seeks only to build good, solid infrastructure for internet businesses. That means that even if Nazis were able to set up shop here, they would be denied access to the growth infrastructure that Substack provides them. Among other benefits, that means that there is nowhere on Ghost where their content will appear next to Platformer.

I actually reached these conclusions way before you did, and moved off Substack a long time ago. Is there anything you would like to say to me?

Good job! Thank you for your leadership.

IV.

I want to end on a note of gratitude.

We rarely see boom times in media, but these days the mood is particularly bleak. From smaller publications to giant ones, it can seem like almost everyone is laying people off and shrinking their ambitions. Against that backdrop, Substack has been a bright spot. Each week, some of the best things that I read are on the platform. It has made a meaningful, positive contribution to the culture, while also committing to allowing writers like me to leave when we want and take our customers with us when we do.

That takes talent, hard work, and principles. It counts for something. And I’m grateful to Substack for all the help it has given me and Platformer.

But over the past three years, another wonderful thing happened in media. Other publishing platforms sprung up featuring more robust content moderation policies, and with terms friendlier to business. (Platformer will save tens of thousands of dollars a year by no longer having to share 10 percent of its revenue with Substack.)

Meanwhile, as our paid readership grew into the thousands, we became less dependent on the goodwill of our host. So many times over the past two weeks, readers have written to say that they will follow Platformer anywhere it goes. Messages like yours have given us the confidence that, whatever challenges we might face as we leave this network, Platformer will endure.

Substack deserves credit for kicking off a revolution in independent publishing. But the world it helped to birth is now much bigger than its own platform. Next week we will move to a new home in that world. One where readers can feel confident their money is not going to accelerate the growth of hate movements. And one where we are no longer called upon constantly to defend an ideology we do not believe in.

I’m sad our time on Substack is ending in this way. But I’m also hopeful that, years from now, we will look back on today as a new beginning for our journalism.

And in the meantime, whatever else this decision turns out to mean for Platformer, I am certain in the knowledge that it is the right thing to do.

On the podcast this week: Kevin interrogates me about the decision to leave Substack. Then, the Wall Street Journal’s Kirsten Grind stops by to discuss her investigation into Elon Musk’s drug use. And finally, researcher Felix Wong joins us to explain how AI helped his team identify a new class of drugs that could potentially treat MRSA.

Talk to us

Send us tips, comments, questions, and questions about Ghost: casey@platformer.news and zoe@platformer.news.

Sponsor a Newsletter

Gordon Strause

Jan 12

Too bad. I think Substack's policies are the right ones, and I think Casey's beliefs about content moderation are both shallow and mistaken (that said, I do respect his willingness to back his beliefs with actions).

For those interested in wiser perspectives on both the Substack debate and content moderation more generally, I would recommend the following pieces:

- Elle Griffin's open letter: https://www.elysian.press/p/substack-writers-for-community-moderation

- Ben Dreyfuss: https://www.calmdownben.com/p/substack-doesnt-have-a-nazi-problem

- Freddie DeBoer: https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/you-cant-censor-away-extremism-or

(Freddie also wrote this https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/these-rules-about-platforming-nazis, which is specifically about the current controversy but combines some points I agree with a bunch of personal attacks and invective that I don't; to be clear, I think folks like Jonathan Katz and Casey are sincere, just misguided).

It's also worth reading Jesse Singal's piece about Casey, which he alludes to but doesn't link: https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/platformers-reporting-on-substacks

Finally, I will just add one point. Casey's fundamental case for switching to Ghost from Substack is his belief that Substack's features beyond hosting means it will "accelerate the growth of hate movements." Given that we're 3+ years into Substack's existence and there is literally no evidence that this is the case would, one would think, give Casey reason to reconsider whether his beliefs about content moderation are true. But apparently not.

Expand full comment

2 replies