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Jerod Harris

One of the newsletter platform Substack’s most prominent writers is abandoning the platform over its decision not to moderate praise for Nazis and pro-Holocaust material.

Casey Newton, a technology journalist and founder of <a href="https://www.platformer.news/about" target="_blank">Platformer</a>, announced the decision <a href="https://www.platformer.news/p/why-platformer-is-leaving-substack" target="_blank">in his newsletter</a> on Thursday, after weeks of back-and-forth with the company over its bare-bones content moderation policy.

“We can no longer stay in good conscience,” he wrote.

The departure of a publication with about 170,000 subscribers, which is widely read among influential technology industry leaders, is among the most significant yet in a writer revolt that began in November. It signals that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/01/10/substack-bans-nazis-newsletters-controversy/" target=_blank>Substack’s recent move to ban</a> five small, openly pro-Nazi accounts has failed to quell a backlash from writers who have called on it to crack down on expressions of support for white supremacy.

Substack is a platform that allows anyone to start their own publication and send it to subscribers as an email newsletter. The writer keeps 90 percent of any subscription fees, while Substack collects 10 percent.

The site has gained prominence and attracted some big-name journalists and authors at a time when traditional news outlets have been shuttering and cutting staff. While it has attracted writers of all kinds, its hands-off approach to moderation has made it especially popular with writers who felt “canceled” or shunned by mainstream media outlets for their politically incorrect views.

But Substack has been reeling from writer discontent since <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/11/substack-extremism-nazi-white-supremacy-newsletters/676156/" target=_blank>the Atlantic reported in November</a> that the company was hosting “scores of white-supremacist, neo-Confederate, and explicitly Nazi newsletters,” some of which the company was profiting from. In December, about 250 Substack writers, including Newton, signed an open letter titled “<a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-IFF6pyxKkgG3CWuyNmZVE8L1EL6Khxo3QPAqrHOTaw/edit" target=_blank>Substackers against Nazis</a>,” calling on the company to explain its stance.

The outcry intensified after Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie, one of the company’s three leaders, <a href="https://substack.com/@hamish/note/c-45811343" target=_blank>wrote a Dec. 21 response</a> suggesting that the company’s tolerance of extremism was intentional. While “we wish no one held those views,” McKenzie wrote at the time, “we don't think that censorship (including through demonetizing publications) makes the problem go away — in fact, it makes it worse.”

Newton’s announcement comes days after Substack said it would <a href="https://www.platformer.news/p/substack-says-it-will-remove-nazi" target=_blank>ban five Nazi-affiliated accounts</a> that it had found in violation of its policy against incitement to violence against specific minority groups. While some Substack writers cheered the move, others told The Washington Post they found it inadequate, given that it left in place much larger and more influential extremist accounts.

“While I broadly share Substack's support of free speech values, I also believe that platforms that build viral recommendation engines have a duty to act responsibly,” said Newton. “Among other things, that means proactively removing pro-Nazi content and taking steps to ensure that the company is not funding and accelerating the growth of extremist movements. But Substack doesn't see it that way, and so we can no longer stay in good conscience.”

Though Newton follows other writers including crypto chronicler <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/05/29/molly-white-crypto/" target=_blank>Molly White</a> and online culture writer <a href="https://www.garbageday.email/p/its-time-to-leave-substack" target=_blank>Ryan Broderick</a>, in leaving the platform, many Substack newsletter writers support the company’s maximalist approach to free speech. To support the company’s laissez-faire stance in the wake of its recent controversy, McKenzie cited a post from another Substack writer, Elle Griffin, that defended the platform’s approach of leaving content moderation largely to its individual writers.

That post, titled “<a href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-139757629" target=_blank>Substack shouldn’t decide what we read</a>,” was signed by a number of other Substack writers, including the right-leaning former New York Times columnist Bari Weiss and the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins.

Noam Galai

Substack did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Platformer launched in 2020 and quickly became one of Substack’s most high-profile success stories. It amassed more than 170,000 free subscribers and thousands of paid readers, while becoming a respected news source in Silicon Valley. In 2022, Newton expanded his team, hiring the technology journalist Zoe Schiffer from the Verge to be its managing editor.

Substack, buoyed by writers like Newton, also expanded. It went from a simple newsletter hosting service to a robust social network with a <a href="https://on.substack.com/p/introducing-notes" target="_blank">Twitter-like feature called Notes</a>, which launched in April 2023. It has also added various content recommendation features, such as allowing newsletter writers to cross-promote content across their network and even earn affiliate revenue from subscriptions they generate for other newsletters on the platform.

But recently, the platform has been at a crossroads. Several other well-known writers have quit the app in the past week because of its stance on Nazi speech. Newton said that until recently he was confident that Substack would make a genuine public effort to proactively remove pro-Nazi material, but he no longer believes that to be true.

It was the platform’s social features that gave Newton pause. In his blog post announcing the decision, he said the company’s evolution beyond mere hosting of newsletters came with a responsibility to institute more robust community guidelines. Newton met with the founders this week to discuss his concerns but ultimately found the company unwilling to budge on its policies.

Newton said that before pulling his outlet from the platform he sought input from his readers, some of whom work in content moderation and trust and safety for major tech companies. He said the overwhelming response was that they preferred to support Platformer elsewhere.

Newton stressed that it wasn’t simply a handful of Nazi newsletters that made him leave. Platfomer’s analysis found dozens of far-right publications advocating for the “great replacement” conspiracy theory and other violent ideologies. Newton also said he was troubled by the founders’ “edgelord branding” or their tendency to appear welcoming to extremists, which he believes has attracted more bad actors to the platform.

On Monday, Platformer will migrate to Ghost, an open-source newsletter platform. Newton said he was heartened that Ghost’s <a href="https://ghost.org/terms/" target=_blank>terms of service</a> bans content that “is violent or threatening or promotes violence or actions that are threatening to any other person.” And Newton said that Ghost founder and CEO John O’Nolan told him that Ghost’s hosted service will remove any and all pro-Nazi content.

Unlike Substack, Ghost doesn’t have social functionality that allows newsletters to build followings and amass attention quickly. Though it may make it harder for Platformer to scale at the rate it has on Substack, Newton said it’s worth the trade-off, adding that the lack of such features should prevent Nazi ideas from spreading quickly if they do make their way to the platform.

Taylor Lorenz is a columnist at The Washington Post covering technology and online culture. Before joining The Post, she was a technology reporter for the New York Times. Previously, she was a technology reporter at the Atlantic and the Daily Beast. 

Taylor Lorenz

National Magazine Award finalist, 2012

Stanford University, BA in Philosophy

Columbia Journalism School, MA in Political Journalism

Will Oremus writes about the ideas, products and power struggles shaping the digital world for The Washington Post. Before joining The Post in 2021, he spent eight years as Slate's senior technology writer and two years as a senior writer for OneZero at Medium. 

Will Oremus

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