EZRA KLEIN v MATT YGLESIAS

Seems like the best lace for this:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/jan/12/casey-newton-quits-substack-nazi-newsletter

Ganz isn't quitting:

https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/an-issue-of-concern

"From a political point of view, if you consider yourself a leftist or progressive, I think the correct strategy would be to compete for reach on all platforms—within reason, of course."

What would within reason be though?

Of the newsletters I subscribe to that were on Substack, two have already left over this (Today in Tabs and Last Week's New Yorker Review), two have committed to leaving soon (Garbage Day and PJ Vogt), one hasn't committed yet but is exploring other options (s1ocki's Something Good), and two have addressed the issue but decided to stay for now (Fran Magazine and Alan Sepinwall).

A few others have spotlighted the issue but without saying anything about what they personally plan to do about it (Culture Study, The Reveal, The Present Age). And others still haven't mentioned it at all.

I guess Newton's decision to leave is notable because he's a leading tech journalist with a lot of subscribers.

yeah hes a guy they recruited and gave a special deal to

had also been pretty wishy washy in his coverage of the nazi newsletter situation up until announcing his departure

that is pretty weak sauce from ganz

I agree with Ganz. Fleeing Substack — which is a tool, not a website, and one of the best tools on the market — because people you disagree with politically also use that tool is typically self-defeating pseudo-leftist bullshit. Where you gonna run to? What blogging platform has explicitly promised that it will always agree with you politically, and will never welcome anyone with whom you disagree? Who could ever make a promise like that? Who would ever expect it to be kept? This whole "campaign" has been unserious and embarrassing from the beginning. And frankly, anybody who'd unsubscribe from a newsletter simply because of where it's hosted isn't a reader you want.

This whole "campaign" has been unserious and embarrassing from the beginning.

damn wow......

as to the question of what substack is, its a company, which profits from nazi newsletters, and its run by right wing shitheads, i dont personally care if people leave it or not, everyones got their own calculations to make, but the fact that there are people who are willing to put their livelihoods at risk in order to not just let nazi and right wing shithead schemes slide is an obvious good

its easy to be all "all the companies are bad" which is true to some extent, however what you cant say is "all the companies profit off explicitly nazi shit" because generally companies try very hard to not deal with nazis, for obvious reasons, except substack

xp is accessibility and availability dependent upon them using substack specifically? are they growing readership principally or even noticeably only because they exist on substack, and people only look for known writers there?

“self limiting” or “useless” ok, but is it really “self-defeating?”

also is this situation mere “political disagreement,” or something more? recruitment? activation? radicalization?

Ganz should be pricing in substack getting a lot worse. Understand he might want to keep the rent money rolling in for a bit but it's weak not to look to other platforms/pitch to other publications. The guy is fairly established...

what you cant say is "all the companies profit off explicitly nazi shit" because generally companies try very hard to not deal with nazis, for obvious reasons, except substack

True today. Not at all guaranteed to be true tomorrow, because capitalism...and particularly because techbro capitalism. Eventually Ghost and Buttondown are going to piss off the people currently pissed off at Substack. I guarantee it.

is accessibility and availability dependent upon them using substack specifically?

It's an email program. You're communicating directly with your subscribers. There is a "recommendations" homepage, but I never even looked at it until just now.

I like Substack because it's easy to use, and because it's free. Ghost and Buttondown would each charge me about $100 a month to reach the roughly 2700 subscribers I currently possess, and only about 60 of those people are paying me $50 a year for their subscriptions, so the math doesn't add up. The platform hasn't bought my loyalty; if it starts to suck in terms of functionality, I'll look for something else. But I will not give up a free tool with good features just because assholes get to use it, too. My list of assholes doesn't begin or end with Nazis; I would probably find the majority of Substack users boring, annoying, or offensive in some way if I bothered to check their shit out. But I haven't, and I won't.

I kinda agree with this guy. There's a difference between Nazis and assholes, and you need to be able to tell the difference and respond accordingly.

might want to reflect on the fact not wanting to bother leaving a newsletter has inspired you to defend nazis

I have done nothing of the kind.

I kinda agree with this guy. There's a difference between Nazis and assholes, and you need to be able to tell the difference and respond accordingly.

the newsletters at the centre of this discussion are pretty openly neo-nazis & white nationalists, they're not victims of the adl's bad faith smears against critics of israel nor are people simply exaggerating in relation to more minor transgressions

substack has long made a point of refusing to enforce their own terms of service in relation to transphobes who blatantly breached it, so the most surprising thing about this whole debacle is that they actually caved to pressure a little bit and have taken action against a few of the most egregious nazi substacks.

denying that nazis are nazis easily meets the definition of defending nazis

substack at the basic level isn’t a specific tool, it’s a vendor. by the way people are transitioning to others, it sounds like subscriptions are paid through stripe and you can just pop the customer id from one site into the other. it’s transparent to readers, unless they use the substack app

substack has that app, discovery services, charts, etc. and that’s their value add. that’s what makes them a platform and not just a turnkey software vendor. if it was all white label publishing and email delivery with your own domain, then they’d just be a tool among others. but that’s not what they’re selling

“i’m sure the other tools host bad stuff too” is a valid complaint but substack’s media angle is that they promote and even paid a premium to publish certain writers, signaling they care about content but they don’t care enough to curtail abuse

I’m old enough to know that I’m beholden to all kinds of institutions for my basic needs, sometimes my social ones, that also serve people who are ideologically repugnant to me, but their use isn’t in direct service of those beliefs.

If you were publishing a zine and the last guy, doing the same, is at the same copy shop and they keep flashing their swastika-heavy shit around the store and accidentally keep leaving gross stuff on the copier, maybe you tell the store what they’re doing or you find a new place to do your work if they don’t give a shit

sad subtext to this story re people relying on substack for their livelihoods is as a venture funded company it will prob not last very long, even tho charging for newsletters is a good idea and prob could be a good business we know that their investors wont be satisfied with a good business, you can already see it in how theyre grafting all this social stuff onto the core product

yeah that’s the wild thing, it’s a commodity service readily replicated

the other thing they risk is people actually deciding it’s a moral hazard and killing their ability to send the newsletters via email. not sure how many people read in email versus the app versus website, but getting added to an email blocklist is possible

not sure how many people read in email versus the app versus website

Speaking only for myself, my latest post was read 96% via email (and the open rate was 48%, which is a little below average; I usually get 50-53%), 3% via the app.

monetizing writing in any way is such a shitshow right now and I wouldn’t be surprised if substack’s got some goal of getting a subset of their approved work aggregated into something like the paid Apple News+ plan or whatever else some people pay for and they won’t get that if they have this problem

there are no real numbers but it looks like Apple News+ pulls somewhere near 5x the number of paying subscribers, presumably giving a cut to what people actually click on and read as opposed to the newsletter-specific substack opt-in model

xp yeah so you have next to zero incentive to use substack over something else

fwiw molly white rolled her own, although it is apparently quite technical: https://citationneeded.news/substack-to-self-hosted-ghost

if theres nothing thats as easy and cheap to set up and use as substack im sure there will be soon

question is how valuable there other non email stuff is, social, growth things, ive heard conflicting reports

David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social

But what substack did was something better - over the last few years it built a referral engine that worked pretty well. A network of blogs that built audience for each other. It was a good product. Attractive. Easy to manage. Interconnected. With growth from mid-list to significant possible. /2

https://bsky.app/profile/lollardfish.bsky.social/post/3kis24vxje32a

yeah it varies pretty wildly

I think every substack I’ve subscribed to, def the paid ones, have been from following someone on social media or a podcast to their newsletter. I might be a total outlier

Adding unperson to my spreadsheet

nice man

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:mgisghjyeuqzvb5l6kyurqma/bafkreiehofm3ctwtnmoncgtsvw3qptfqsvd6lf6lxijgvblcna2th4p5mq@jpeg

sez the guy who's his own boss

the ubermenschs drive to podcast