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A lot of us know by now that Substack has a Nazi problem. It not only profits from fascist voices, it actively promotes their work and recruits them. And it's funded by Silicon Valley anti-democracy billionaires like Marc Andreesen — the same type of people who are, right now, raiding the US government to basically cut funding for social services and scientific research, and to steal money for themselves.

Still, a lot of talented writers — including some that I subscribe to — publish on Substack. But others have moved to Ghost, an open source and non-shitty-tech-bro newsletter service. These include Casey Newton's publication Platformer, Molly White's newsletter Citation Needed, and plenty of others. From the beginning, 404 Media decided to publish on Ghost because, as I understand it, Substack sucks.

. . .

If you already have a Substack, Ghost has written documentation explaining how to migrate your subscribers (including paid ones) to a new Ghost newsletter. Since both Substack and Ghost use Stripe as a payment processor, your paid subscribers don't have to do anything to continue paying you.

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[-] BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world 5 points 23 hours ago

It's hard to give up because some of the musicians I really like post there, and indie musicians are often struggling financially and Substack is simply a bigger platform.

[-] mke@programming.dev 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I've seen people defend Substack saying it's not so bad, or the bad is a necessary evil to protect free speech.

I'm gonna say it: fuck free speech, I like myself some censorship. I sincerely believe some things are too harmful to be allowed to openly proliferate, that there's often a feasible path to reaching that conclusion, and it's not that difficult.

We mustn't avoid this because "it harms free speech." Nazis love that argument, and they're a threat to much more than just free speech. They shouldn't get to block attempts at censoring them, and they specially shouldn't get support to do so, because they're one of the reasons it's necessary in the first place.

"But not every case is clear-cut like Nazis," people will say, "you shouldn't support censorship, since it can be used for evil. Innocent ideas always get censored, too." To which I'll reply, "tell me more about those innocent ideas." When that happens, tell me. I'll reach out to people in charge, spread the news, get mad, help you in any way I can to fix it. We'll do it together. Fucking tell me more.

But lo and behold, many innocent ideas turn out to be dog-whistles or worse, it's always the same shit.

I don't care if it's Substack, or Ghost, or Twitter, or Reddit, or whatever. It's one thing to platform harmful views unaware. I get it, moderation is hard. Once aware, though, if your response is "but free speech," fuck off. It is moral and correct to censor Nazis. Same for people saying immigrants will eat your pets, or that gays want to sexualize children, change their genders, and harm women. Fuck that.

Platforms defining themselves on free speech is a red flag. "We're popular with both extremes" isn't a defense, it's a self-report that you're just a mercenary and like it that way—both sides being users means double the revenue.

Substack may not be Nazi-central, but it's surely a product of broligarchy.

[-] starkzarn@infosec.pub 5 points 1 day ago

Suppose it makes sense to use a cybertruck as the hero photo then

[-] Ulrich@feddit.org 8 points 1 day ago

Has Ghost refused to host "Nazi" publications?

[-] breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 day ago

Yes:

One, its terms of service ban content that “is violent or threatening or promotes violence or actions that are threatening to any other person.” Ghost founder and CEO John O’Nolan committed to us that Ghost’s hosted service will remove pro-Nazi content, full stop. If nothing else, that’s further than Substack will go, and makes Ghost a better intermediate home for Platformer than our current one.

[-] PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 day ago

That sounds like they'd ban content promoting the eating of the rich, too.

I'm all for banning fascist content, but I don't wanna lose the French revolution vibes.

[-] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

It's a standard terms of service and a verbal "commitment" which isn't worth the paper it's printed on.

I'm sure you'll find the exact same wording on substack's tos.

The problem is that what social media denizens call Nazi and what Ghost and substack call Nazi are all wildly different things.

[-] solrize@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

The attraction of substack for at least some writers is that substack actually pays their more popular or prestigious writers. I don't know how many or whether there is a published list of them, but at least a few of them are getting paid rather well (6 figures/year or maybe more). If Substack is recruiting and paying Nazis, then that is of interest and concern. Most writers there aren't getting paid by substack, though they may have readers who buy subscriptions. That is open to pretty much everyone and the fanfiction saying "don't like, don't read" works for me here. Saying Ghost is a more attractive platform because it has more censorship is kind of a head scratcher. And calling Taibbi and Greenwald Nazis is ridiculous. Disliking the Democrats doesn't make someone into a Nazi.

That said, I don't personally like substack very much and am always glad to hear about alternatives.

[-] AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space 7 points 1 day ago

Someone needs to tell Carole Cadwallader to move her resistance headquarters out of the Nazi bar. There are a lot of people who’d subscribe to her journalism if it didn’t also involve funding the enemy.

[-] Today@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

I think i only follow Robert Evans. Have any ghost recs?

[-] dethedrus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 day ago

What, no Jason Pargin?

[-] Bonus@lemm.ee 6 points 1 day ago

How do readers access Ghost? I got sucked into a trial membership but I don't intend to publish, just read, like I can do on substack. I don't want to be on the problematic platform but can't figure out how to gradually use Ghost instead, especially since hardly anyone's over there yet.

[-] Geodad@lemm.ee 4 points 1 day ago

Substack has had a Nazi problem since its inception. At first, there was a liberal backlash, but they all eventually went there anyway.

[-] bishbosh@lemm.ee 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Still remember the decoder podcast where the CEO was asked, would you remove an article that says "we should deport all brown people", and he danced around how he wouldn't get into specifics of moderation.

Just your standard 'Free speech absoluteism'

[-] drspod@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 day ago

Newsletters? Google killed RSS so we could have newsletters?

[-] breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca 19 points 1 day ago

Google weirdly gets a lot of credit for killing things that are very much alive and well.

[-] CarbonBasedNPU@lemm.ee 11 points 1 day ago

aren't podcasts still RSS. I'm like 90% sure they are.

[-] Bonus@lemm.ee 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I'm following everyone from substack and every other resource on RSS. Nothing dead about it. Maybe someone is unhappy with their particular way of accessing it? I've used Feedly ever since Google ruined their own reader. Google abandoned a lot of things during that period of innovation.

[-] breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 day ago

RSS is the hero that saved us from Spotify (et at.) walling off podcasts behind their paywall.

[-] Ulrich@feddit.org 5 points 1 day ago

I don't think we've been saved just yet. Their market share is still growing and they don't support importing RSS feeds. Nor do they support outgoing video feeds for RSS. And they continue to pay for exclusive partnerships.

[-] breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 day ago

I don't think we're completely saved forever but they tried making podcasts Spotify-exclusive. I remember a bunch of Gimlet podcast hosts being like "please come to Spotify to listen to us -- it's better than it used to be!" They ended up caving because people didn't listen. Podcasting is built around RSS -- even though people aren't really aware of it -- and people expect to get them this way.

[-] anarchrist@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 day ago

Yes and ironically there are services like kill the newsletter that will re-RSS your tired ass newsletter.

But anyone cool that uses fulltext RSS gets an auto subscribe from me.

[-] Ulrich@feddit.org 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Substack and Ghost both support RSS. Problem is no one uses it anymore. They either don't know or don't care. It also doesn't provide an option for paid subscriptions.

[-] geogeogeo@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Can a reader user on Ghost follow multiple Ghost accounts? I haven't used Substack but my understanding is that it is similar to Patreon and OF in that I can subscribe to multiple accounts and have them show up in a central feed. Can I do this as a subscriber on Ghost? And do multiple servers federate to allow for that?

[-] quinceyBones@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago

Is there no FOSS alternative we can promote?

[-] solrize@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I don't think the software matters much tbh. It's about payment aggregation, search hit aggregation, and for some "prestige" substack writers, actually getting paid by the platform.

this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2025
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