Counting Straws

This is not the post I had planned to finish the year with and wish you all happy holidays. No, I had a post ready about the future of this newsletter, the tweaks I wanted to try, and so on. (Also, what follows was written in a frustrated frenzy, so forgive the typos, etc.)

Then, Substack’s response to the ‘Substack Against Nazis’ letter came along and now I find myself wondering whether this is the final straw for me and for Thinking Ahead.

Short recap: a recent piece in The Atlantic points out how Substack has provided a safe haven for people with white supremacist views.

In response, a lot of writers on this platform signed an open letter to Substack’s leadership, the ‘Substack Against Nazis’ letter. To signal my own bias: I lean left to the extent that it makes me feel like the world is sideways. But that never means I think conservative/right-leaning views have to be banned. I welcome discussion with anyone who can string together a sentence that is more than ‘BIPOC bad’ or ‘LGBTQIA+ evil’.

Substack’s response (and I’m paraphrasing to cut through the slick Silicon Valley salesman talk): “We know, but we’re not going to do anything about it, because money, err… free speech.”

As a proponent of free speech, I find this response, in essence, not terrible. Yet, there are three problems with it:

• Allowing neofascist views validates them in the eyes of their merchants and acolytes. Free speech is great, until it becomes a thinly veiled excuse to promulgate hate speech that incites violence and dehumanizes everyone who is not white, western, and male.

• Substack is pretty strict in not allowing or shadow-banning sexually explicit content on their platform. That, of course, is their right. But this does imply that their ‘allowing freedom of expression’ has its limits. Too bad those limits do not extend to Nazi sympathies. Their freedom of speech flag flies inconsistently. At best, this is a known inconsistency. At worst, this is a deliberate inconsistency.

• Finally, Substack likes to promote the idea that ‘the community’ can do the moderating by reporting publications. What actually happens to those reports, though, is anyone’s guess. It is still Substack that decides. So, their community moderation spiel is disingenuous. I’m not implying that community moderation is the best/only way. What I am implying is that Substack moderation is inconsistent and disingenuous in a way that seems to promote far-right views and hate speech.

And that, that tears me apart.

I like what Substack offers. I like the writing I can do here. I like the interactions with wonderful people I have on or through the platform.

I am so tired.

Fuelled by an elephant-killing amount of caffeine, I’ve been trying to find a good alternative that offers newsletter tools, an online archive, and a solid internal discovery mechanism (Thinking Ahead is a tiny newsletter that needs all the help it can get in a brave new world of mindless auto-generated content). The only decent ones (kind of) require me to pay monthly fees and/or have other restrictions I’m not a fan of.

Or I could stay, shine a little light of nuance in a world full of clickbait, and relentlessly push the value of diversity over (neo)fascist narratives that seek to resurrect an imaginary past out of fear for a future that is more equal than the present. (Then again, maybe that’s just the sunken cost fallacy talking?)

Rock, meet hard place.

All this drama aside, I hope you all have wonderful holidays full of cheer, family, and friends. Hug a loved one, have a good meal, recharge, and - for once - have all the sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows you can get your hands on.