Spoiler: it’s the Nazis.
This has come up surprisingly often lately on several blogs I’ve been casually reading or linking up with or visiting via weekly linkups, leading to me actually deciding to add a couple of points to my commenting policy banning promotion of Nazism on my blog (including promotion of Substack). It seems that there’s still a fair few people in the world who don’t realise that Substack provides Nazis with a platform, makes money from Nazis and promotes Nazis. At least, I hope that’s what it is, and that people aren’t choosing Substack knowing that!
I’m not going to browbeat people for not knowing about Substack’s policies here; the temptation is there, but though it feels like the news has been out there a long time, whether you’ll come across it depends on the circles you run in, how proactive you are in looking up this kind of thing, and also on general life stuff. If something horrifying came up about a service I use, it’s quite possible I wouldn’t have noticed during my busy last few weeks… or even in general, given sometimes I just prefer to stick my head in the sand and read books instead.
But I do want to be clear: if you know about Substack’s Nazi problem and you keep on using Substack, and giving them your content to help legitimise their Nazi content, then other people might well wonder about what other compromises you’re willing to make. It’s one thing to know that a site has a far-right presence when promoting Nazism is at least against its Terms of Service, even if that ToS is difficult and time-consuming for the website to enforce. I’ve been part of a content moderation team, and user content is an exhausting firehose and you can never be sure something hateful hasn’t slipped the net and piled up in some corner.
But it’s quite another thing to know that the service in question proudly and deliberately hosts this content. That it has actively sent out a push notification to random users with a Nazi swastika and text inciting hatred against Jewish people (they later claimed this was a mistake, but that doesn’t fix the underlying problem that they host this content on purpose, leading to the possibility of such errors). That the service makes money off antisemitic content, and allows Nazis to earn money from posting their views on Substack. That they’re okay with hosting it on their servers and paying Nazis money for the privilege, because it brings them clicks and gets them money, even as it connects Nazis to other Nazis, gives Nazis money to fund their movements, and radicalises more people to become Nazis.
If you really think this is about Substack being all for free speech, I’ve got a bridge or two to sell you. Three, if you’re game.
And of course it’s not just Nazis: it’s other forms of bigotry as well. Of course it is: it all goes hand-in-hand. And it’s all allowed on Substack.
So, gently and with love: I believe firmly that book blogging does not belong on a platform where people will run into it side-by-side with posts calling for genocide, where that is permitted and promoted by the management. I’m aware that lots of people make different choices, and prefer to close their eyes to this truth.
But now I’ve said it, and you know; people who’ve read this post know. I’ll leave it to your imagination what I think people should do about it.
