For the Sake of Free Speech
When we are left with conflicting choices, there is only one thing to do.
The South Korean entrepreneur, Oh Yeon-ho, famously said that “every citizen is a reporter” before starting his online newspaper Ohmynews.com in the year 2000. He coined the term citizen journalism, born out of his distrust of traditional main stream news media. Here we are, two decades later, living in a world where we rely on YouTubers, influencer TikTok videos, microblogging feeds, and Substack, to digest encapsulated news from around the world. A regular guy sipping on his Cortado and typing away on his laptop in a local coffee shop has the power to change the world with his words.
Yeoh-ho stated a revolution, but it had one major flaw. Every citizen started to believe their truth. If your source of truth isn’t mine, then yours must be fake news. If hate news outlets are an abomination for some who demand censorship, it is a constitutional right for others. We have lost trust in government, but we believe in the truth socials controlled by megalomaniacs. We are skeptical about what the Center of Disease Control (CDC) warns us because a TikTok trend says otherwise. I can go on, but you get the gist.
Part 1: Substack’s Free Speech Issue
I am writing this post on a platform where many writers congregate. Some of the smartest and brightest creative minds share their thoughts here, including authors, journalists, and influencers. Since 2020, Substack has been a space where creative freedom is valued. But their “hands-off approach to content moderation” has created a divide among its writers — one camp for unregulated free speech and the other for regulated free speech.
It started when The Atlantic published an exposé article: Substack Has a Nazi Problem. This kicked off a battle between the powers that be of Substack — its founders and their golden children. Many open letters were written, secrets conversations were had, and petitions were signed. In the end, many writers packed their thoughts and left. Casey Newton was one of them.
Casey, a prominent tech journalist who left The Verge to create a technology newsletter called “Plaftormer”, was one of Substack’s original success stories. Earlier this month, he announced his decision to leave Substack. He explained that his choice to find a new home on the Ghost platform, a competing independent publishing platform, is the result of Substack’s unwillingness to mend their rules for stricter moderation of content.
Meanwhile, the main stream media did not waste the opportunity to kick Yeon-ho’s revolution where it hurts. The Guardian reported this: Reporter Casey Newton takes more than 170,000 subscribers elsewhere over company’s failure to police extremist content. The Verge said this: Platformer is leaving Substack over its policies around pro-Nazi publications using the platform.
But substack stood their ground with minimal concessions while their opposition moved on. The fight was over but left behind in its aftermath are the many independent publishers who couldn’t afford to leave for various reasons. Many are in limbo, undecided, trying to grapple with the guilt of having sold their souls to the devil. They are the underdogs of Substack, and the next part is for them.
Part 2: Q&A with Casey Newton
I found Casey’s farewell post “Why Platformer is leaving Substack” to be a compelling one. It was a graceful exist and I admire that about him. So I decided to reach out and requested for an offline Q&A to help me make sense of it all. To my surprise, he obliged.
In my questions, I quoted Casey’s statements from the article that stood out to me, starting with how he credited Substack for Platformer’s growth:
In 2023, we added more than 70,000 free subscribers. While I would love to credit that growth exclusively to our journalism and analysis, I believe we have seen firsthand how quickly and aggressively tools like these can grow a publication.
(This made me wonder if my newsletter with <500 subscribers would be at a disadvantage if I left.)
Me: What can you tell us newbies about Ghost’s ability to do the same for us if we were to migrate now?
Casey: Ghost has a free concierge service which we used to help us migrate. We had some issues as we made sure all the subscriptions were ported over properly, but on the whole it went very smoothly.
Substack’s tools are designed to help publications grow quickly and make lots of money — money that is shared with Substack. That design demands responsible thinking about who will be promoted, and how.
(While I agreed with Casey’s statement above, I wondered what stops other independent publishing platforms, like Ghost, from changing their policies in the future.)
Me: In your opinion, how do we keep these platforms accountable beyond just taking their word for it?
Casey: You can keep searching Substack for Nazi blogs and writing about them! I hope journalists and other users of the platform continue to pay attention.
Me: The crux of the issue is Substack’s unwillingness to stop promoting hate speech content via Notes, its weekly email digest, and any algorithmic ranking logic that curates such content on our feeds. Should we still be hopeful that Substack will do the right thing someday, if we continue to protest from within and outside the platform?
Casey: They seem pretty set in their ways. I don't expect to see a real change until some sort of true crisis.
We didn’t ask Substack to solve racism. We asked it to give us an easy, low-drama place to do business, and to commit to not funding and accelerating the growth of hate movements. Ultimately we did not get either.
Me: Given your relationship and experience with Substack, would Platformer continue to lead this fight for/with us?
Casey: I think we've kind of had our say here ... we're looking forward to getting back to doing our journalism and spending less time thinking about our email provider.
Ghost tells us it has no plans to build the recommendation infrastructure Substack has. It does not seek to be a social network.
Me: This concerns me. If not for these recommendation engines and algorithms, how else can writers grow their publications quickly and organically, on any platform for that matter?
Casey: Through great writing and reporting. I think it's a mistake to rely on algorithms to grow your audience ... Substack's recommendations are basically a dark pattern that encourage people to sign up for newsletters without even knowing what they're about. It gives you a vanity metric that you can brag about, but most of those subscribers will never even open your emails. So focus on writing something good enough to get someone to authentically share it and forget about the algorithmic promotion.
Me: Platformer’s focus seems to be on topics concerning social networks and tech primarily. Meanwhile, my small publication “The Marinade” focuses on global politics, diversity in culture/lifestyle, and travel.
Do you have any suggestions for the smaller aspiring newsletters on how to stay relevant in this very competitive space? There really is no secret here — you've just got to show up on a regular basis and have something interesting to say. If you do that, readers will follow!
Me: Substack and Platformer have paved the path for many of us who aspire to make our mark in this revolution. I speak for many underdogs writers when I say that we need both — a platform that helps us grow fast and success stories such as yours for inspiration. Casey, I want to thank you for taking time out to respond to these questions. I truly appreciate it.
Casey: Thanks for having me.
Part 3: Why I’m Not Leaving
A part of me wishes to leave Substack. The other part intends to fight the system from within. Casey’s responses helped me decide on the latter.
I can’t grow my publication unless I have the tools to do so. Casey is the living proof of that. I realize that some of Substack’s metrics are simply “vanity metrics” like Casey puts it, but how else would I know that I’m on the right track? If not for the chart that plots an upward trend of free subs, I would begin to doubt my writing and eventually, my confidence.
I understand Substack is an open marketplace. I don’t agree with their choice of whom they do business with, or their policies. But as long as I still have the power to choose what I consume, and the option to block people or content that I disagree with - I am deciding to stay.
So I will keep writing and growing my reach here by building on the momentum I currently have. It wasn’t easy to get here, and it’s not going to be easy to grow. I have no choice but to stay.
But that’s my choice. Not yours. For those who are still undecided, I have this to say: When we are faced with conflicting choices, and when we don’t know what to do, we just have to decide to pick the one that is our truth, and stick with it. That’s what Casey did. That’s what I am doing.
Thanks for reading.
For writers who would like to understand the process of transitioning to the Ghost platform, please read my Q&A with ex-Substacker
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Thank you Raj for your Q&A with Casey Newton on the evolving landscape of citizen journalism and the recent developments on Substack. The platform's approach to content moderation has sparked a divide among its writers. There is no wrong or right and I appreciate the nuanced exploration of this complex issue.