The Substack Dilemma: To Stay or Go?

Thoughts on the latest controversy and the tradeoffs of moving to another platform

I’m nervous about writing this newsletter, given it is hosted on Substack, and I am a consumer of other newsletters housed on the platform. It’s Monday, snow is falling outside, and it's quiet. I woke up after dreaming about writing about the latest Substack controversy. Read the story I linked to for those who haven’t been following it. That will give you all the background. 

I wasn’t going to write about it yet; I still had too many thoughts rolling around in my head. But, my subconscious was like, nope, you need to write about it now. I’m not making any announcements in this piece; I'm just telling you how I’m thinking about it both as a practitioner of tech policy and a user.

Then, my anxiety spiked because I knew that my approach to this wasn’t going to match the conventional wisdom many of you and others I respect are going to have. That’s ok, but I worry about threading the needles thoughtfully and carefully. But I’m going to try.

Let’s get a few things out of the way first.

1. Nazis are bad. Yes, they have First Amendment rights, but so do platforms like Substack. They are free to kick them off.

2. Substack handled all of this poorly. They did so in two ways. First was what to do about these publications. Assuming I had the resources to do this (see next point), I would have worked with external experts to develop criteria for determining which violate their terms and which don’t. For those that didn’t, I would have demonetized them, not allowed them to use notes, and not recommended them on any surface. Second was the comms, how they talked about this, and the leaks they did. You can tell they haven’t gone through stuff like this before. You’re always going to lose if you seem to be fighting for the rights of white supremacists - even if that’s not what you are trying to do. See Mark Zuckerberg and holocaust denial. Substack leadership is right in the middle of the five stages of content moderation.   

3. Substack is in a tough spot - I don’t think for a minute this was about making money. (Though I think they have every right to make money from the tools they build. They don’t owe us anything for free.) I do think part of it was about spending money. Content moderation is expensive. Even doing what I mentioned above takes time and money. Once you start reactively taking actions like this, people look for other bad stuff. They want you to be proactive about finding it. That is expensive work. I’m guessing Substack isn’t sitting on piles of money and is trying to hold off on doing this for as long as possible. If you want a sense of how hard this can be, play Mike Masnik’s Trust and Safety Tycoon game.

4. I respect any writer's decision to leave or stay. Every one of us has different considerations to assess when leaving or not. We all have different resources and goals for our writing. I am not here to judge anyone’s decision. This dilemma reminds me of the story that Stanford always leads its tech ethics class with, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” The question at the heart of the story is, do you stay in a place where, in order for everyone to be happy, one child needs to suffer, or do you leave? In the tech world, it’s often framed as do you stay and try to change a company from the inside or leave and do it from the outside?

5. All platforms come with tradeoffs. I doubt anyone will 100 percent agree with every content moderation decision a platform makes - even those in decision-making power at the companies. Moving to a new platform like Ghost or WordPress takes time. Your subscriber growth might slow. Other platforms don’t allow you to own your subscriber list. Paid subscriptions might be harder to do. Some might charge you to use their tools. Because I write about and follow the tech industry, I firmly believe I need to use the platforms I write about.

I spent a lot of this morning thinking about the criteria by which I would want to judge my options as a Substack user and what those options might be. I’ve written before about my decision by traffic light framework that I like to use, and this is a perfect time for it.

Criteria first. In no particular order.

1. Ease of use. This is not my full-time job. I don’t have much time for upkeep, marketing, etc.

2. Operational cost. How much is it to set up and maintain?

3. Paid subscriptions. Are they easy to set up? How much will the platform take?

4. Subscriber growth. Does the platform help get you in front of new people?

5. Writer tools. What do they offer writers to make the process easier? Do they offer a few or many?

6. Is there a vibrant community of writers? I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the community of writers I’ve encountered on Substack and would like to stay a part of that.

7. Company leadership. Do I respect how they are managing their platform? Are they thoughtful when making tough decisions - even if I disagree with them?

8. Platform moderation. Do they invest time and money to ensure a respectful environment for all participating?    

9. Reputational risk. How does being associated with this platform affect my reputation and brand?

I considered adding one around how the platform approaches issues in the United States versus globally. However, I removed that for this exercise as this is more specifically around other newsletter-type platforms versus all online platforms.

My options as I see them now.

1. Stay and change nothing.

2. Stay, but turn off paid subscriptions so I’m not giving Substack any money.

3. Migrate to a new platform like Ghost.

4. Migrate to a platform like Squarespace, where I house my website.

Here’s what it all looks like in the grid. This is my interpretation of what would work for me on all these. Some might say it’s easy to set up your own website. That might be for you, but not others.

It’s clear I don’t want to set something up on my own. Before writing this, I hadn’t looked much into Ghost, but I want to do more research on them. They look interesting, and I’m hearing good things from folks who are migrating. But the cost is a bit much, and I value the community at Substack and the work they put into helping newsletters like mine grow. 

There’s another aspect to this that I need to think about. This has been about what I do with my publication. There’s also the question of whether I stay active on Substack by subscribing to newsletters there (including paid) and stay on Notes. I almost added that, but that would further complicate this grid, and the trick to these is to try to keep them simple. The decision to leave Substack completely must be its own grid with separate criteria and options.

And, frankly, going through this has me thinking about my online footprint overall. I mentioned above how I strongly feel that if I’m going to write about the tech industry, I need to use these tools. That said, there’s more nuance about how I use them, if I give money, etc. I think this is a good exercise for me to do going into this year, and I’ll share more as I work on it.

Let me know what you think about all of this? Are there other criteria I should consider? Are there adjacent topics you’d want me to explore more?

Claire Venus

gave me the good idea to compare how other companies have dealt with these ethical dilemmas. Please let me know.