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It's time to leave SubstackGarbage DayAboutLive ShowsGarbage StoreReferral ProgramRSSSubscribeGarbage DayPostsIt's time to leave SubstackIt's time to leave SubstackRead to the end for some good Canadian contentYeah, I’m Out I decided I would give Substack the holidays to get their shit together. I also wanted to hear from readers — and I’ve heard from many of you. But, most importantly, I needed some time to research where Garbage Day could move to if this truly was the breaking point for my relationship with Substack. I’ve only ever hosted Garbage Day on Substack. So most of its form and features were created using the site’s CMS. And between the litany of coupons I gave out early on and the new third price tier I introduced for Garbage Intelligence last year, moving has become somewhat daunting. But after the last few weeks, I can’t stay here anymore. Substack has always had moderation issues, like every big platform. But, unlike every big platform, the company has a habit of turning these, frankly, fairly basic trust and safety problems into weird political fights that drag on for weeks. They did it in 2021 when trans writers were getting doxxed and harassed — by newsletters that are still very much publishing and monetizing on their platform — and they did it again last month after The Atlantic reported that neo-Nazis were publishing on the site. They were in my comment sections, as well. Right before Christmas, Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie published a truly boneheaded post responding to the Nazi controversy, which contains what is may be the single worst paragraph ever written by a tech founder: I just want to make it clear that we don’t like Nazis either—we wish no-one held those views. But some people do hold those and other extreme views. Given that, we don't think that censorship (including through demonetizing publications) makes the problem go away—in fact, it makes it worse. My man, you’re not supposed to acknowledge actual Nazis are using your product. Even Elon Musk doesn’t do that. Following McKenzie’s post, I spoke with a lot of other writers on Substack, as well as folks at Substack directly. I agreed to keep my conversations with Substack off the record and I will honor that. Of course, most of what they told me was then given as a statement to Platformer almost verbatim this week. Which makes things easier for me. Substack’s new strategy essentially boils down to asking for users and writers to flag objectionable content. As they told Platformer, “if and when we become aware of other content that violates our guidelines, we will take appropriate action.” None of this had to happen. Ghost, a Substack competitor, has almost no real moderation to speak of, but no one seems to care. You know why? Because it’s not trying to jam all of its users into one feed to compete with Twitter or whatever. Substack, meanwhile, has insisted on adding more social features over the last three years, instead of making their email product better. Which is still missing tons of pretty basic features. And so they, predictably, ended up creating a poorly moderated network that was attractive to extremists. It’s been a decade since ISIS uploaded their first videos to social media. We know that this is what extremists do. And you can’t protect your social network on a case-by-case basis when you “become aware” of it. And don’t even get me started on silly a feed-based social platform is when you don’t have any ads on your site. Also, the funniest irony here is that their social features don’t even work! I asked around to make sure it wasn’t just me and it’s not. The Substack app doesn’t actually convert any readers. In the last year, I had 5,000 people sign up for Garbage Day through the app. Of those 5,000, only 37 people converted into a paying subscription. Meanwhile, one of the best conversion methods for me has been gift subscriptions because, surprise surprise, my own readership is much better at recommending my newsletter than the divorced too-racist-for-LinkedIn losers sharing graphs about phrenology on Substack’s app. If only Substack had invested time and energy into building more products like that instead of making a new right-wing playpen. I don’t think newsletters like Garbage Day leaving will make a dent in Substack’s bottom line. And, honestly, part of me would feel better if they just said, “conservatives make us more money, so we’ll do what they want.” Though, that tends to only work in the short-term because conservative media is a race to an oftentimes violent and always irrelevant bottom. I really liked using Substack and have had great interactions with their team over the years and don’t actually want to move tbh. But it’s clear that it’s time. So, over the next month, I’ll be migrating off the site. I think I’m know where I’ll be going, but if anyone has any particular thoughts on that, shoot me an email. Thank you for being patient with me. You can still sign up and still pa

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