With a professional transphobe now on Bluesky, TikTok getting banned, and X being taken over by alt-right sh*tposters, the social media landscape is looking bleak. But would you believe it’s about to get even bleaker? Well believe it!
"We’re partnering with The Free Press to build this first version of Substack’s enterprise offering while we learn how to best support organizations of this nature." An alarm bell for those considering Substack–a largely pro-power, loose-with-facts org as prototype on.substack.com/p/the-new-me…
— Amanda Katz (@katzish.bsky.social) December 17, 2024 at 11:43 AM
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Now we knew Substack wasn’t the least-shady space in the newsletter game. Since its inception, the platform has failed to ban actual Nazis from posting alongside leading queer voices, despite much picketing. Substack is still home to anti-trans posters like Graham Linehan, Singal, and Bari Weiss. And now, it looks like they’re deciding to double-down on their commitment to the “just asking questions” crowd by partnering with Weiss’s own organization, The Free Press.
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Thankfully, prominent writers on Substack are already making plenty of noise. “Why on earth would you brag to your users that you’ve partnered with a bunch of protofascists?” commented writer Nora Loreto, who currently has over 2K followers on the platform. “You want us all to leave or what?”
“Look, partner with them because they have a large audience and traffic,” another poster wrote. “But don’t try to lie to us. Their commitment to “fact-checking” is easily debunked by a little bit of, um, fact-checking.” Another poster—The Racket writer Jonathan M. Katz, who left Substack this year because of these issues—pointed out the danger that’s always been there. “The No. 1 History Substack is a Holocaust denier,” he stated, referring to the Martyr Made podcast and substack. “[the protofascist] ship sailed a long time ago.”
True enough. The question remains: why isn’t there any kind of competitor with actually good values that can provide a worthwhile alternative?
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