So... Substack...

On moral quandaries, practical considerations, and other tangles

A few weeks ago, I co-signed an open letter to Substack’s founders asking them to not platform Nazis. Their response was… not great. The Paradox of Tolerance in action, really. And I could go into a big thing about the dangers of free speech absolutism and how it’s really just permission for terrible people to be more terrible more openly, but, y’know, that’s all been said a billion times. “Don’t welcome Nazis” really should not be a controversial viewpoint, yet here we are.

As a result of the founders’ statement, a fair number of both creators and supporters are leaving Substack. Even more, I think, are trying to decide whether to do so. A.R. Moxon and Catherynne Valente have said, more eloquently and thoroughly, the things I’m thinking and wrangling with, but I did want my readers to hear from me directly on this.

I don’t have a large following here. I wouldn’t be sacrificing a lot in direct income by leaving, but also, Substack would not miss me or my paltry contribution to their coffers.

I could, in fact, close down the paid memberships entirely, just make everything freely accessible, and suggest that people who want to support my work do so through Ko-Fi or Venmo or Paypal or whatever. (And if you are one of my paid subscribers, I’d genuinely love to hear your thoughts on whether you’re staying here, what platform you generally support writers and artists on, and such). Then I remove monetary support for Substack… but, I’m still driving traffic, which from some perspectives still makes me part of the problem.

I’ve had a Patreon for several years, as many of you know (and also support), but it’s been in decline for a while, because people who aren’t already familiar with the platform aren’t likely to join it, while people who only used it for my content tend to just not even notice when their card gets declined and they get bumped out of subscription. When you’re a creator trying to get support, you want to make it as easy on folks as possible—and Patreon is not currently that easy. And, frankly, about once or twice a year, Patreon also does some dumbassed thing that makes me consider leaving them. (That I haven’t is because they tend to reverse course when their creators raise a fuss, but their financial practices have been steadily getting worse over the years).

Moving platforms could very well cost me money, in actual expense, not just lost income, especially to get the features I have here—features that I want my followers to have as an option, like the sub-divided subscriptions I just introduced! (Sigh.) And leaving here would risk losing some followers, whom I value regardless of whether they’re paid or free subscribers. I’d also lose a lot of discoverability, since this platform is an active one. But on the other hand, if I stay, I might also lose people who are choosing to leave this platform entirely.

It’s a mess! And, like other writers have opined, I’m pretty sick of being chased off of platforms by bad actors. The Decline and Fall of the Twitter Empire has materially hurt me and my career. It drastically reduced the number of people I’m able to reach and build community with. In that case, I finally left for good (after, y’know, Elon tried to kick me off for making fun of him) because the experience on the platform itself became intolerable. That isn’t (yet, at least) the case here.

Moving somewhere else is also no guarantee that a new platform won’t also face the same problems someday, forcing yet another move. I’m a child of the LiveJournal age; I remember how it started, and I remember what happened when it got sold. Very few sites seem to have long-term viability without corporate backing, and the increased corporatization of the internet is most of the reason I think the internet peaked in 2007. Every site is potentially in danger. Just because Buttondown or other platforms are promising good behavior now doesn’t mean anything if leadership or ownership changes (citation: Twitter). As Moxon and Valente both pointed out in their essays, abandoning every site that fails a virtue test means giving all our playgrounds over to the Nazis, and I’m not sure I’m okay with continuing to do that.

So, my current answer to “Are you staying on Substack?” is “I don’t know.” If I do move, it won’t be immediately, because I do not have the bandwidth right now to sort out the details of doing so. If you are leaving, I respect that. At this exact moment, I’m probably leaning the most toward shutting down the paid subscriptions but keeping my activity here. But I’m not 100% there, and my feelings may change as I contemplate further.

In the meantime, I hope that readers will be willing to extend grace to all the creators who are, once again, having to perform these calculations of finance, ethics, and comfort on behalf of ourselves and our careers.