While I have loved the convenience of Substack for publishing these newsletters, the recent Nilay Patel interview of Substack CEO Chris Best convinced me it was time to stop using the platform. Freedom of speech is great, but if a platform tolerates actively racist and transphobic and discriminatory speech without consequences, then the platform will be overrun by such content (as has happened to Twitter). I don't want to be associated with a platform like that when it happens (a conclusion others have reached before me).
A friend suggested Mailpoet, a Wordpress plugin, since my blog is a Wordpress site, so I have taken the liberty of moving my Substack subscribers over to that platform.
You can check it out and subscribe here.
https://www.platformer.news/p/why-platformer-is-leaving-substack is another newsletter I respect who came to the same conclusion I did.
And several months later, my concerns feel justified: Substack's founder refuses to remove or even demonetize literal Nazis: https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/21/24011232/substack-nazi-moderation-demonetization-hamish-mckenzie