I'm not going to be emailing you from Substack anymore

Skip to the bottom if you don't care why, and just want to know what it means for us

Substack notably has a problem with hate speech. This is interesting, given that they have a terms of service which prohibits hate speech, and they’re all too eager to enforce those terms with an iron fist when it comes to other content (i.e. content published by sex workers, for example). If promoting literal genocide is not considered ‘incitement to violence’ by Substack, I don’t know what would be.

Of course this is not exactly unsurprising for people in the know. They strongly hinted at the fact that racism would have basically nothing to do with their moderation policies almost a year ago. At the time it was something I decided I could live with, a dubious decision to be sure, but the difference then was that Substack was more of a service provider, less of a platform: An easy and free way to build an email list and share posts with people, with newsletters which are largely isolated from each other.

Lately, however, Substack has increasingly been blurring the lines between service provider and social media platform, with an increased focus on their app, the Notes Twitter-alternative, and actively promoting various writers on their platform. Because of this increase in social activities I’m not a fan of, and their recent, clearer reaffirmation that nazis are A-OK here, I no longer think Substack is the neutral platform they claim to be, and I no longer feel like using it.

I dislike hypocrisy, and Substack proclaiming themselves to be a bastion of free speech online while clearly favoring some content over others is ridiculous to me. The fact is that platforms like Substack and Twitter are not “town squares” of the internet. The internet is the town square of the internet, and these platforms are but tiny shops within which can be easily ignored, if we’d like.

I dislike nazis even more than hypocrisy though, so even if Substack was consistent in making the platform a messy free-for-all, I would still be making the decision to move today. Therefore, I’ve created my own blog which I host myself, so that I never have to deal with bigger platforms doing absurd things like this ever again.

Control over the platform which you publish to is important. I’ve occasionally fallen into the trap of adopting shiny, new platforms like Substack because they promise privacy and control before. What can I say, I’m a tech nerd at heart, and I want technology to be good. These promises never last though, whether its YouTube, Twitter, Substack, or whatever else, these companies will always make you regret trusting them in the end.

Where I’m Moving To

I don’t have too many active subscribers here on Substack. If you’ve been opening my emails and reading my posts, thank you. I’ve added your email to my new newsletter list on my self-hosted blog, so that we can continue to stay in touch. I didn’t bother importing the ~70% of people who haven’t read in a while, a bit of cleanup is never a bad thing :)

Earlier today, I posted Age Verification is Incompatible with the Internet to my blog. If you received that notification, you’re already subscribed to my new self-hosted newsletter, so you don’t have to do anything.

If you didn’t receive that email, but you’re reading this one now, I would love for you to continue following my work. If you subscribe to my new email list at https://www.jonaharagon.com/subscribe/ you’ll continue to receive updates whenever I post a new blog or video, and you can leave comments without needing to create a full account, the old-school blog way 😎

Either way, this is the last email you’ll be receiving from me via Substack. You’re welcome to unsubscribe from my mailing list, just ignore it, or do whatever else you want.

Thank you all for reading,

~Jonah