Well, I'm done with Substack

This is exhausting

It all seemed relatively harmless.

In Jan of 2023, as the future of Twitter — at the time my social media platform of choice and an essential promotional tool for this silly little blog — was in question as it began its ongoing downward spiral into a morass of trolls and goblins.

Someone popped up and said “Hey, there’s this thing called Substack where you can write a newsletter.” It seemed like a good tool: I send out posts letting people know when I have new content (at a time when Uncanny X-Cerpts was becoming much more active but unpredictable) and occasionally when I had time — which turned out to be not too often — additional material.

It worked, I was happy with it. My subscribers may not be very large in number, but there was consistent presence and occasional response. It felt like a good value add on and that if I applied myself I might test the waters by offering paid subscriber content again in 2024.

But alas.

“Substack says it will not remove or demonetize Nazi content - The Verge”

I cannot in good conscience continue to associate myself with a site that has such a casual, and indeed profitable relationship with Nazis. I run an X-Men blog for crying out loud.

“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.” - Substack’s Hamish McKenzie

It’s not wrong to censor, de-platform or demonetize Nazis. I think you give up the right to protected speech of any kind when you advocate for Genocide as a formal way of life. It’s never wrong to hate hate, repay cruelty with abrupt dismissal, or to be intolerant to intolerance. Dozens of platforms already observe these boundaries, why am I letting myself get mixed up with one that doesn’t?

The truth is, if you have Nazis on your platform without any recriminations, then you have a Nazi platform.

I liked using Substack, but my site doesn’t require it to run. They don’t make a dime of me but I won’t get them a single more click. This is the last post I will ever do here. I’m sure you’ll understand.

You can always find Uncanny X-Cerpts where it has always been, most Mondays and some Thursdays. For updates you can follow at Bluesky or — as bad as it is — the site formerly known as Twitter. There may be another newsletter-like function in our future, but that remains to be seen.

I hope you have a great new year!

-Scotto