A lot of us know by now that Substack has a Nazi problem. It not only profits from fascist voices, it actively promotes their work and recruits them. And it’s funded by Silicon Valley anti-democracy billionaires like Marc Andreesen — the same type of people who are, right now, raiding the US government to basically cut funding for social services and scientific research, and to steal money for themselves.
Still, a lot of talented writers — including some that I subscribe to — publish on Substack. But others have moved to Ghost, an open source and non-shitty-tech-bro newsletter service. These include Casey Newton’s publication Platformer, Molly White’s newsletter Citation Needed, and plenty of others. From the beginning, 404 Media decided to publish on Ghost because, as I understand it, Substack sucks.
. . .
If you already have a Substack, Ghost has written documentation explaining how to migrate your subscribers (including paid ones) to a new Ghost newsletter. Since both Substack and Ghost use Stripe as a payment processor, your paid subscribers don’t have to do anything to continue paying you.
Has Ghost refused to host “Nazi” publications?
Yes:
That sounds like they’d ban content promoting the eating of the rich, too.
I’m all for banning fascist content, but I don’t wanna lose the French revolution vibes.
It’s a standard terms of service and a verbal “commitment” which isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.
I’m sure you’ll find the exact same wording on substack’s tos.
The problem is that what social media denizens call Nazi and what Ghost and substack call Nazi are all wildly different things.