Navigating Content and Controversy on Substack

Exploring the delicate balance of freedom, responsibility, and the monopsony effect in the world of digital publishing.

Substack was founded in 2017 by Chris Best, Hamish McKenzie, and Jairaj Sethi, and it emerged and grew at a crucial time in the history of communication and the web. Substack is an online platform that allows writers and content creators to publish and monetize their work through newsletters. It has become particularly popular among journalists, writers, and independent creators for various reasons, including the ability to quickly launch a publication and monetize their content. Everything is extremely simple; there's no need for technical skills. You start your publication and you need to just write (and add some logo and color by the way).

Great ideas never go unnoticed. In 2019, Andreessen Horowitz, the well-known venture capital firm, invested in Substack. This is the beginning of a great success. Substack becomes the home for independent authors who are read by thousands of people. They start their own publication, are read and followed, and offer monthly or annual subscriptions for exclusive contents.

At the same time, Substack is also the home of millions of readers, people who find a new place to read the content they love and to support the creators and writers.

I always liked Substack but, I always avoided it. Don’t know why, probably I didn’t like the lock-in factor and the graphic interface sounded to me a little confusing (now it’s way better and easier). I tried other platforms starting from WordPress (where I have a great experience building blogs and websites) to Ghost to Beehiiv and other self publishing options. None of these met my expectations of graphic minimalism and pleasure. At the end, Substack is the more robust if you just want to write, hassle free, with no need to worry about infrastructure, plugins and customization. It has the most expensive price if you decide to put your content behind a paywall thought but it is really hassle free; that’s a win.

This is not the story of Substack, and this is not the story of newsletters. There are plenty of articles and publication of it and it’s not in scope of this publication. But this is the story of the company that changed the way premium newsletters work and how it tried to respond to a social problem that arise not from regulators, not from government but from news media that influenced the opinion of Substack’s most important writers.

It all started on November 28, 2023 when The Atlantic posted an column with the name “Substack Has a Nazi Problem“.

From The Atlantic:

Substack, founded in 2017, has terms of service that formally proscribe “hate,” along with pornography, spam, and anyone “restricted from making money on Substack”—a category that includes businesses banned by Stripe, the platform’s default payment processor. But 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. These are, to be sure, a tiny fraction of the newsletters on a site that had more than 17,000 paid writers as of March, according to Axios, and has many other writers who do not charge for their work. But to overlook white-nationalist newsletters on Substack as marginal or harmless would be a mistake.

and yet

At least 16 of the newsletters that I reviewed have overt Nazi symbols, including the swastika and the sonnenrad, in their logos or in prominent graphics. Andkon’s Reich Press, for example, calls itself “a National Socialist newsletter”; its logo shows Nazi banners on Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, and one recent post features a racist caricature of a Chinese person.

From this time on, Substack had a problem, the Nazi problem. Media recognized the problem, writers recognized the problem, Substack just avoided an answer.

Was this attitude right or wrong? Were they completely taken aback by this? Nobody could have the right answer. The most important writers on Substack threatened to leave it, while some of them did it, moving to alternatives such as Buttondown.

By example Casey Newton, from The Platformer, a publication which enjoys a broad readership among prominent leaders in the technology industry, said that they were considering leaving the platform based on the company’s recent statement that it would not demonetize or remove openly Nazi accounts. They posted this newsletter explaining that Substack is at a crossroads and this because the company evolved to become more than an infrastructure.

From the Platformer post:

By 2023, in other words, Substack no longer could claim to be the simple infrastructure it once was. It was a platform: a network of users, promoted via a variety of ranked surfaces. The fact that it monetized through subscriptions rather than advertising did not change the fact that, just as social networks have at times offered unwitting support to extremists, Substack was now at risk of doing the same.

And in one key respect, Substack is even more vulnerable to this criticism than social networks had been. Extremists on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube for the most part had been posting for clout: those platforms made it difficult or even impossible for them to monetize their audiences.

The statement to which Casey Newton was referring is the note from Hamish McKenzie, founder of Substack where he addresses the platform's content guidelines and moderation policies. McKenzie emphasizes Substack's commitment to enforcing rules against incitements to violence while allowing readers to curate their experiences and join preferred communities. He advocates for a decentralized approach to content moderation, empowering readers and writers, a stance supported by many, including notable writers and academics. This approach, McKenzie asserts, is essential for understanding influential voices in various fields, despite disagreements with their viewpoints.

The note was a response of Substack to the letter from over 200 Substack authors where the article from The Atlantic was quoted.

On January 8, Substack said to The Platformer that it will remove Nazi publications from the platform. This is not representing a reversal of its previous stance, but rather as a result of reconsidering how it interprets its existing policies.

On January 12, 2024, The Platformer announced the intention to leave Substack.

The issue does not lie in content moderation or the lack thereof. I agree with an article from the Financial Times, which aptly states, “The platform needn’t make political judgments about how publishers use it any more than a postal service would.”

From the Financial Times:

But for those of us who have been in the newsletter business somewhat longer than Substack has existed, this story is no surprise at all. One of my many hobby horses is that the newsletter business is not “new media” at all — email is more than half a century old, and the business of newsletters closely resembles that of independent zines and mail-order publications.

It’s certainly true that original thinkers and enthusiastic hobbyists have used newsletters either to impart insight or share best practice — that’s precisely what make them fun to read, whether on Substack or elsewhere. But the history of the newsletter business is also the history of cranks.

People complaining that Substack has brought the email newsletter to neo-Nazis have got the causality the wrong way round. Independent publishing, whether it’s words sent by post or now via email, has always been where discredited and extreme ideas have found a home.

Unfortunately, sometimes we must endure a monopsony effect where the gap between a company’s strategy and the inevitable occurrences that shape its history becomes apparent. This holds true when the success of a company depends on the success of the individuals using its product. These individuals, gaining more power as the company grows, can try to influence the company’s decisions. However, the problem arises when, even for honorable reasons, there is an assumption that everything should function like a platform or intermediary capable of discerning good from evil and aiding the average reader in this distinction. This overlooks the fact that we give too much importance to mere capitalist tools (the companies themselves), often attributing them to a heroic connotation.

Substack should not be accused of being a vector of hate and spreading misinformation, just as no one has ever accused the email protocol or postal mail of being vectors of violence, unless Substack proves otherwise. It’s true that the internet has facilitated the wider spread of news, opinions, and ideas that are ethically wrong or downright bizarre. Common sense must always prevail, respecting individuals and civilization. Yet, worrying about our existence as a publication here or there over an issue that belongs to our world should not happen. Perhaps this shows that we pay too much attention to issues beyond our control instead of focusing on how we can truly make the world a better place.

I like to remember this article from the Intelligencer published in 2021: Substack Is a Scam in the Same Way That All Media Is. The issue was an intriguing aspect of Substack’s business model that came to light with the disclosure that the platform actively recruited prominent columnists, offering them an enticing financial incentive. Specifically, Substack guaranteed these select writers a minimum income for their inaugural year, effectively ensuring a stable and lucrative start for their ventures on Substack. This strategy highlights Substack’s commitment to attracting top-tier talent and fostering a diverse range of voices within its community.

One stop at a time, we are taking part in the evolution of media. By sure we can contribute to make them better, making them aligning with the best social impact they can have (to benefit the world), but nobody could be so stubborn to be convinced to control them all, as he/she/they want.

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That’s all for today,

Andrea