The Censors Are Not Done With Substack

Jonathan Katz et al. might be done posting their newsletters on Substack, but they’re not done trying to destroy it

Remember Parler? Yeah, me neither.

If we did remember Parler, however, we might remember how companies like Apple, Amazon, and Alphabet all conspired at the same time to remove what was, at the time, the most popular app in the United States from their app stores and web servers in an attempt to destroy it. The stated reason for this was that Parler did not do enough to moderate its platform for threats of violence or “hate speech,” and that some of the people who engaged in the January 6th riots organized themselves on the social media platform. Parler’s real crime, however, was allowing people to express their dissent from official narratives regarding COVID-19, Hunter Biden’s laptop, or the 2020 presidential election. In short, Parler was allowing its users to freely think, speak, and discuss contentious issues, and was becoming popular for doing so. That couldn’t be allowed.

Here we are a few years later and I believe this same tactic will at least be attempted by critics of this very platform, Substack. Background: Some neurotic progressives, not content that Substack allows other users to post content questioning their pieties, made up some arguments about imaginary “Nazis” on Substack, and blamed Substack for allowing these “Nazis” to make money off of the platform while also making money themselves off of “Nazi” content. My reply to this propaganda can be found here:

Of course there were no Nazis, and the chief instigators never cared about Nazis; their goal was to exert control over Substack’s moderation to censor their perceived political opponents. End of story. Now that they have failed to take ideological control of Substack, however, many of their bigger names are starting to self-importantly pronounce that they are leaving Substack, which leads me to believe that the next stage of their plan will soon begin. If they can’t control Substack then they will settle for destroying Substack, just as soon as their content and subscribers are safely migrated over to a different platform.

Jonathan Katz and Casey Newton, having failed to convince Substack to let them kick anyone they don’t like off of the platform will inevitably start trying to pressure other companies to stop doing business with Substack the same way they and their ideological cohorts did to Parler in 2021. Newton, in fact, had already reached out to Stripe, Substack’s payment processor, to agitate for them to stop doing business with Substack because of “The Nazis.” I have no doubt they’ll be taking their arguments to Apple and Alphabet to get the Substack app removed from those app stores in the very near future.

Whether these absolute clowns will be successful remains to be seen; Substack is not Parler and 2024 is not 2021. Regardless, Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie (No relation) and the rest of the Substack team had better be prepared for what is almost inevitably coming. I think Hamish’s original statement regarding this absurd controversy was ill-advised, as it took their propaganda at face value and inadvertently gave them credibility that they did not have previously. Substack should have said nothing, making it clear that Katz, Newton, and the rest are beneath their contempt, or made it clear that their claims are nothing more than propaganda cooked up by pathetic ideologues. These people want only your total surrender or your total destruction, so you must treat them accordingly.