Anil Dash: Just a reminder here of why I won’t subscribe to your substack, why I won’t promote it for others to subscribe to, and why I’ll help you get off the platform so you’re not enabling those who want trans people dead and who would abet attacks on communities I love.

Just a reminder here of why I won’t subscribe to your substack, why I won’t promote it for others to subscribe to, and why I’ll help you get off the platform so you’re not enabling those who want trans people dead and who would abet attacks on communities I love.

If you don’t know why Substack should not be supported, they directly fund many of the most hateful leaders of the attacks on trans people, and their CEO explicitly refuses to stop people who spread white supremacy on the platform. https://www.tiktok.com/@decoderpod/video/7221602731998498094

Decoder with Nilay Patel on TikTokwww.tiktok.com Our host Nilay asked Substack CEO Chris Best the tough questions about whether racist speech should be allowed in their new consumer product, Substack Notes. #techtok #technews #substack #ceo

At the very least, append each of your messages with “a significant portion of every dollar you spend on this publication goes to directly attacking trans people”. Put a warning label on it.

Thanks for this warning!!

But what about podcasts? Sounds like migrating the rest is easy, but my pod goes through substack too, and they make it real easy.

A lot of options like these, depends what your needs are. riverside.fm/blog/best-po...

The folks who run Transistor.fm are indie devs and all-around great humans.

Which of the alternatives gets your strongest recommendation?

I think Wordpress and Ghost and Buttondown.

I like the idea of ghost, but I want something free. And WordPress isn't what I'm looking for. I'll check out buttondown tho

Thanks for this, I’m going to check out Buttondown

Excuse me while I pick my jaw up off the floor.

so indie writers are just SOL? come on

I mean, yeah. We’re SOL. We can’t keep asking people to use Substack or Twitter or any other shitty ruined platform if they’re not safe there. It sucks, and that’s where we’re at. I’m sorry.

There are literally dozens of other options. Personally I’d start with Wordpress, which is also a lot more robust. If you have tech clue you can do anything imaginable, and if you don’t, you can still do more than you probably think is possible, for free.

I need subscriptions to eat

Weirdly enough so do I. I feed myself and my family from subscriptions on my Wordpress site.

Funny how putting effort into living out your principles works!

I mean sure, but Wordpress is owned by Google isn't it? I mean it's not like there's some magic sector of Big Tech untouched by oppressive corruption. At a certain point it's just choices between different flavors of shit.

I don’t think it’s perfect or that anybody is perfect but it became very important to me a while ago to have as much control as I can over who makes money off my work, who decides how I work, who controls what I can say, and who manages my audience.

Let me also just note that I’m an admirer of your work and I’d very likely be a subscriber if you were someplace else. I am also an indie writer who has published extensively within my field. So this is a choice I’ve also made. I know it’s not easy but it’s there to be made.

He specifically offers to help people get off the platform. What more could you ask of him?

Ghost, buttondown, Wordpress, beehiiv. None of them take as much money as substack, either!

Amen. I refuse. Having gotten dragged through the right-wing Substack set when I half-heartedly objected to it a few years ago just proved my point.

Here’s a great piece from the great @annaleen.bsky.social on the scam, a fundamental point of which was to pretend there was no editorial position at the company. Just follow who they paid to write for them. thehypothesis.substack.com/p/heres-why-...

Here's why Substack's scam worked so wellthehypothesis.substack.com They paid a secret group of writers to make newsletter authorship seem lucrative

Bonus points for linking out to a way out; double bonus points for doing so in 2021!!

God this really SUCKS though. Substack had so much promise!

Even more creepy possibility (unprovable) that they are MOVING people to the right or getting them to write extremist shit by shifting the payouts in ways that push them right. If your bread was buttered more by dehumanizing transgender people? Some people will do that. Is it billionaire cash?

I’m afraid it started out bad.

Yes, but then it attracted a ton of WONDERFUL writers. So some dipshit reichwingers and liars and bigots are nestled within a community of very cool people and good writers who are not Nazis. And it’s the whole thing all over again where you can only walk away. Nothing can be done.

It’s becoming obvious to anyone paying attention to these creeping fascism signs that substack is creeping fascism type of bad rather than the formerly popular amoral silicon valley capitalism type of bad but it’s captured a lot of people now…in various ways.

Well, perhaps, but it actually started out with the former group having been directly recruited and paid $800,000 to write at Substack. People like Greenwald, Taibbi, Weiss, that anti-trans guy Jesse last name escaping me at the moment. It started out bad. I’ve been screaming about this for YEARS.

Thanks for posting that. It’s a comprehensive and worrying article, but at least it has pointed me towards buttondown.email which looks very promising

Buttondownbuttondown.email Newsletter software for people like you.

Ah, after investigation @buttondown.email isn't the one for me - pricing kicks in at over 100 subscribers. I think I've got about 180 subscribers, and that isn't enough to justify the $9 a month for the next tier. I wonder what other good options exist?

Anything with a thumbnail from The Sting has to be good. Right wing folks have little appreciation for that movie. They identify with the guy from Jaws.

I remember your ordeal, Sarah!

It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times.

😂

I’m migrating to Buttondown right now, and realized all my old posts still have subscribe to Substack buttons within them, so I’m trying to clean that up before relaunching!

Appreciate you putting in that effort. 🙏🏾💜

thank you for consistently being a person who stands by their principles Anil. 🏳️‍⚧️🫡

Trying my best.

"Is it okay to say don't let non-whites into the country?" "Well, we really want the writers to be in charge." Greeeeat lol.

it’s extremely telling that Substack’s founders think that publishing nazis & paying them money is somehow an apolotical act. i turned down a job with them a couple years ago over similar concerns to the one Anil raised.

I don't get why people love that place all of a sudden, isn't it just a blogging platform?

It’s a strange affinity.

It's a blogging platform that does a good job of managing paid subscriptions for writers who want that, and does a good job of marketing itself to writers as well as trying to upsell readers on subscriptions without being annoying. And unlike Patreon/etc. it feels like a product, not just begging.

It was this that finally got me off my butt to transfer my Substack pub over to Buttondown!

Excellent!

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