Mike
Glenn FleishmanPeople keep making new Substack newsletters. I keep pointing out politely that the founders are terrible enablers of transphobes, hate speech, vaccine denial, and more. They reap their reward from fear, hate, and disinformation.
It's a technically and economically great platform and a terrible moral choice to have to make.
Daniel Morgan@glennf Do you point them to an alternative? Curious what you'd recommend
Jeffrey T. Davis@Danielmorgan @glennf came here to lament the nerdery’s disinterest in Post and its micropayment model. As a reader, I’d be much happier to see subscription newsletters move there and to pay as they interest me or get recommended to me.
@Danielmorgan I’m not running a newsletter (just an infrequent email list), so I don’t have a go-to. Some people love Ghost or Buttondown.
Jessamyn@Danielmorgan @glennf Friend of mine moved off of Substack and has been using Ghost.io and it's pretty good.
John Gruber@glennf Do you feel the same way about WordPress? I feel like Substack is really just a CMS, not a publisher.
griffey
Waldo Jaquith@gruber @glennf Substack *pays* the transphobes et al to publish on their service, giving some of them fat advance checks. That's the difference. https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/18/substack-backlash/ https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/11/business/media/substack-newsletter-competition.html
Bradford Fults
Jason Kottke@gruber @glennf They pay writers to write exclusively for their platform, sometimes in advance. They offer free legal services for writers. They promote their writers’ publications. They’re closer to Buzzfeed or HuffPo (or even NYT) than to WP. But they desperately want people to think they’re a platform, so they can get away with publishing profitable bigotry and dangerous misinformation and keep collecting their cut of the RW grift with minimal moderational effort.
@jkottke @glennf But are these right wingers among those Substack pays in advance? I recall reading about this a year or two back and it seemed like the answer was no.
I guess I do agree though that Substack occupies some heretofore new territory, somehow both publisher and platform. Much less of a top-down editorial structure than regular publishers, but much more of such structure than platforms like WP or Ghost, etc.
thesupermikey@gruber yes. Bari Weiss publication seems to be funded directly by substack
@thesupermikey The Free Press is on the right side of the political spectrum but I see it as very far from rightwing. Also, is The Free Press in Substack’s “pro” tier that’s paid in advance?
@gruber less then a month ago they ran a huge story slut shaming women basketball for taking NIL money because they happened to be attractive.
It’s entire goal was to point out they only get money because of their apparence. It argued their only value is their appearance. Why else would anyone give money to female athletes?
Seeems pretty right wing to me.
Jay 🆘@gruber @jkottke I think the answer may be “yes”: https://buttondown.email/thehypothesis/archive/heres-why-substacks-scam-worked-so-well/
@gruber @jkottke it’s far closer to a publisher than an independent platform. But the real issue isn’t precisely whether it is a publisher, but whether he believes there is any limit to acceptable speech. The company's founders seem to think that there is no limit, and that they should also reap the financial reward from being a site that allows anything to be published, just about. Patreon was in this position several years ago, and they opted to be responsible.
@gruber @jkottke Patreon was on the verge of being a Nazi bar, and Jack wasn’t totally responsive to the criticism about it. However, he evolved, they developed the trust and safety department, they got rid of the Nazis and hate speech, they did not significantly suppress other people’s speech in the process, and they are a vibrant platform that’s been incredibly successful.
@gruber @jkottke for me, the question isn’t are there people with extreme opinions I disagree with using a platform to publish their words? It’s rather, when people engage in behavior that is openly harmful in a way that is easy to document and provable, should a site of any kind be promoting and supporting it, much less hosting it?
@gruber @jkottke So while I disagree with Bari Weiss, for instance, and think she’s an intellectual lightweight and opportunist, I would never say with her current writing that Substack or any platform should ban her. Graham Linehan, however, is actively engaged in harm directed against trans people. Joseph Mercola and Alex Berenson constantly promote disinformation that falls well outside of any vestige of reasonable discourse.
GadgetGav@gadgetgav Yes, it was a real bummer. I started watching Black Books the other day and there's his name on the credits. There was something else I was interested in and, there he is. He really destroyed most of his friendships along with his marriage and his career. (Maybe he's making Substack money but I don't know if he succeeded there.)
Ken Kinder 
@glennf @gruber @jkottke You draw the line between Bari Weiss and Graham Linehan. Someone else may draw it elsewhere. Ultimately I’m not entirely sold on the idea that big companies are ideal regulars for the whole world’s Overton window. And you could apply this argument all the way down to packet routing and peering agreements between networks, which is why CloudFlare is similarly disinterested in moderation.
@gruber WordPress isn't structured as a quasi-publisher, engaged in paying advances, promoting content, and handling payment distribution. WordPress also seems to enforce its rules about acceptable content, which are fairly broad, but which limit the ability of people to disseminate hateful content. Substack isn’t a Twitter or even a Medium. But it appears to pretend it does not derive a significant benefit from the worst aspects of its platform, and does not enforce its rules honestly.
Kirk McElhearn@glennf @gruber Wordpress is certainly heading in that direction.
https://wordpress.com/blog/2022/12/19/write-and-publish-your-newsletter-on-wordpress-com/
And they run Woocommerce.
@mcelhearn @gruber It's a subset of their potential business and I hope they keep enforcing rules!
Dr. Juande Santander-Vela@glennf @mmasnick nitter link just to annoy Melon Tux https://nitter.net/AidanCTweets/status/1372259774012735489
annie gray@glennf
I wasn't aware of that. Yikes. I have run into a couple of antivaxx accounts but otherwise didn't encounter anything awful. Wish there were a good alternative.
I wasn't aware of that. Yikes. I have run into a couple of antivaxx accounts but otherwise didn't encounter anything awful. Wish there were a good alternative.
@snooze_cat Yeah, it's such a quiet company in some ways that each newsletter seems individually like it’s its own thing, an advantage for them in making money off hate, abuse, and other crap
Wigbert B 🎻🏛🎭🎤🗞🎥📚would you mind pointing to a source or research about this (again) ?
@medium / @coachtony may be a valuable alternative (even though it’s a different model)
thank you - I remember reading it, but didn’t know where …
Orca 🌻 | 🎀 | 🪁 | 🏴🏳️⚧️@glennf It's a Nazi bar now ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
https://old.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/12oiq1c/substack_ceo_chris_best_doesnt_realize_hes_just/
https://old.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/12oiq1c/substack_ceo_chris_best_doesnt_realize_hes_just/
@Orca Thanks for reminding me of that great article!
Joseph Kohlmann@glennf Right on, Glenn ✊🏼🔥
@jkohlmann I hate the game not the player! I honestly sympathize enormously with people who turn to Substack as they have honed what they do so well.
Kathy E. Gill 🇺🇦I did NOT know that.
I wrote about Covid on Substack daily for the first four months (March - June) then a few times a week … there were many others by then.
@woolwich1886blog@glennf I hadn't seen that about their founders but had been thinking about moving my blog to substack. Not any more.
@glennf The biggest difference is that Substack publications (almost?) all look the same.