Mastodawn

Jeff Kelley Feb 8

#Substack openly platforms—and profits from—#Nazis. And not just nudge-nudge-wink-wink types of Nazis, but literal black-swastika “NatSoc” Nazis. And they recommend Nazi writers.

If you are still on Substack either as a reader or publisher, please seriously consider leaving the platform. It’s a Nazi bar. You don’t want to give them your money or your attention. I hear ghost dot org is a great, Nazi-free alternative.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/feb/07/revealed-how-substack-makes-money-from-hosting-nazi-newsletters

Revealed: How Substack makes money from hosting Nazi newsletters

Exclusive: Site takes a cut of subscriptions to content that promotes far-right ideology, white supremacy and antisemitism

The Guardian

SetouchiExplorer

@drahardja Ghost is awesome and part of the Fediverse (so are WriteFreely and MicroBlog)

@drahardja @David I would love to have the people I follow on substack move elsewhere, but my voice alone won't move them. Is there an organized group pushing for publishers to move off of substack that I could join?

SetouchiExplorer

@david42 @drahardja First, moving out of Substack yourself is a first step, even as a subscriber only (if there are newsletters that you really can't stop following, you can follow them through RSS without subscribing).
Your voice may make them realize that they shouldn't be there. Explaining why you're unsubscribing in a comment may not bring Substack down, but may help some writers realize they're in the wrong platform.

Elton Cora (Honorary)Feb 8

@drahardja @jwz this has been a thing for a long time.

The pattern is that someone notices, people complain loudly, protest peters out, more anti-nazi or just otherwise decent people hold their noses and start blogs there anyway, expect subscribers to pay the tithe while not acknowledging the conflict at all, wash rinse repeat.

It’s almost like protesting without naming names is ineffective, and rationalization is complicity.

One doesn’t fight nazis by subsidizing nazis, and bu choosing to produce or consume on the platform, that is effectively what one does.

🏳️‍⚧️Feb 8

Also like literally half of the accounts they recommend following if you register an interest in social issues are TERFs (and proud of it).
It's ridiculous the extent to which the platform actively promotes bigots

salguod, man 🍂🍁 lazysupper Feb 8

This is the quite stance:

"We don't like Nazis either, but they're not going away. So we might as well make money off them."
– Substack founder Hamish McKenzie

Paraphrasing slightly. But barely.

Don Hawkins - W7DAH Feb 8

@drahardja
WriteFreeley?

Karl Auerbach Feb 8

@drahardja Just a moment ago I posted a question here on Mastodon asking whether sites - such as Substack, that take a piece of the revenue from content posted by others - are protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996?

It seems that in such cases (and this also includes youtube) that the premises underlying immunity in Section 230 are not met, that the website is not a mere conduit, but is, rather, an active partner in the content and thus ought to share liability with the creator.

I'm not a Section 230 expert and would be interested to hear an expert's point of view on this.

Jonathan Kamens 86 47 Feb 8

@karlauerbach @drahardja whoever told you that is mistaken

Mary Mazzocco Feb 8

@karlauerbach @drahardja I mean, who tf knows with the current court and their absolute contempt for precedent, but imo as someone who has had to teach media law, that would really be a stretch. It should take more than getting paid for providing publishing tools, Substack would have to exercise editorial control. You could argue their bad behavior is actually evidence they don’t.

Karl Auerbach Feb 8

@mazz @drahardja Thanks for that feedback.

I agree with the lack of "editorial control" notion in Section 230.

But here I am thinking that there is a grey area in which there is something different than control, something more akin to mutual influence between the website and the content author.

If the website charged a flat rate for publishing, even if measured by clicks or views, then I would have no qualm.

But it is the requirement that the content provider pay a portion of its revenue to the website that begins to give me some discomfort.

That discomfort is vague but it arises out of a sense of implicit collaboration.

This is particularly true when content is presented to third party viewers based on the website's "algorithmic" evaluation of the content.

By analogy - copyright does not include compendiums of facts. But ordered and managed compendiums of facts are copyrightable. I feel a similar sense of "authorship" and responsibility when websites share money with authors.

Mary Mazzocco Feb 8

@karlauerbach hmm. I’m chewing on this, but I think if they can describe how their algorithm works in a viewpoint-neutral way, they can still get away with it. E.g., boosting “sticky” content is not editorial control, while boosting “conservative” content might be. (I’m considering how Caltrans rules on overpass protests had to be worded; I’m not aware of any decisions specifically about algorithms.)

✶Rayotron✶Feb 8

Ghost charges $15 USD monthly (minimum) so it isn't for people who can't spare $180 per year. It's free to use if you run it on your own server.

If you have a Wordpress blog you can use a plugin called "Activitypub for Wordpress" to integrate it with the fediverse. It's had some good recent updates and looks pretty functional. Haven't tried it, though.

@drahardja @rayotron Running your own server generally isn't free either. But if you're a small publisher, Ghost can presumably share a server with whatever else you use your server for.

@drahardja no money to those on substacks. I don't want my money to fund questionable content (and when I say questionable I'm moderating myself)

Mark Levison Feb 8

@drahardja I deleted my substack account several years ago.

From time to time, I ask authors to consider leaving.

Only one win so far