I read this a couple of times! Thanks for writing this.
I think this "cancelling you if you're on platform X" is a very Mastodon/far left position. A casual look at Substack Notes shows me that most people are delighted to be there and are having fun. I would say, pay these folks no mind. Most of us would be delighted to subscribe and follow you.
I feel your pain about getting heard and having feedback. I more or less set up my Substack for the very same reasons.
I also find the pursuit of the "purest" platform that is ideologically good a hopeless pursuit. We might as well give up using the Internet. I notice that this particular crowd is very reaction. Today it's Substack, tomorrow it's something else. It's like their hobby is to be mad at some topic/platform any given week.
It can be tiring to be part of this.
So I say we just rise about this and use these platforms while we still can to reach our readers - dispassionately and without bias.
First, please see the other comments I just made, about housing being a much better analogy than "bars"
Second, the comments that concern me are the ones I am seeing on that techdirt article and many other places, not (so far) on Substack. The concern is that what one writes here on Substack it's boycotted just and only because what people heard about Substack as such, NOT that specific author, somewhere else
You are absolutely right that the only CONCRETE effect of demanding/searching for the purest of the pure place is to shutdown the internet altogether.
Third, if I may, a word about "Most of us would be delighted to subscribe and follow you": thanks, please do recommend this newsletter as much as you can, in and outside Substack. And, also: did you subscribe here yet? If not, may I ask why not? Thanks!
Apr 20, 2023·edited Apr 20, 2023Liked by Marco Fioretti
Subscribed already ;) My main problem with Substack subscriptions is that it floods my inbox and I pretty much hate reading via my email inbox. I have a weird system - I subscrbie to a newsletter's RSS, feed it to Calibre, and every month, I'll download it as an ebook to read at my leisure. For some, I'll subscribe using a "dummy" email - cos I know the author needs the stats.
I find reading on screens - smartphones and desktops far too distracting.
About Substack - I see lots of people commenting, "If you're on Substack, I'm cancelling you."
The weird "I'm far too righteous to use Substack" vibe is absolutely strange to me.
about reading in email inbox: I NEVER, EVER do that either. Whenever I open an email from Substack newsletter, I automatically click on "read online", to read it in a browser tab. Not as good as ebook or paper, but much less distracting for some reason, at least for me.
But your "monthly ebook system" is VERY cool, thanks for the suggestion.
Last but not least "lots of people commenting If you're on Substack, I'm cancelling you." is exactly what concerns me. Especially because the same people never give a feasible alternative, e.g "I'd read you if you moved to X", and "X" is doable. They don't realize that the "Nazi bar" analogy is deeply flawed, "Nazi-owned residence" would be much more appropriate.
And just out of curiosity, really: do you see/receive those comments more from certain places/ communities than others? E.g more from Twitter than from Facebook, or IRL contacts?
I tend to see comments like these on social media like Twitter and Mastodon. Especially Mastodon! That's because anyone on the far left or right are engaging in the culture war, so they tend to cancel things that are not aligned with their beliefs.
I'm not American and I'm a centrist, so I don't really get or engage in these things.
I don't think it's widespread thing, imho. Just limited to some spaces.
Just posted this on Mastodon, and am really sad I didn't think of THIS when I originally wrote the post, because it makes the point much clearer:
The "bar" part of all this discourse is flawed, and can badly backfire on independent authors though.
Think housing, not bars.
Think renting a studio in a building whose other tenants and landlords you know nothing bad about,
because it's the only affordable place you can get,
only to discover 2 months later, when you had just finished unpacking your stuff,
that the landlord may be a nazi (ADDED 2023/04/20: and/or may be renting, or be willing to rent, other flats in the same building to nazis)
and, again, there is no other place you can afford. Should YOU judged badly because you cannot leave? Especially considering that there is NO guarantee at all that the same thing could happen in the next place you find?
thanks and... the beginning of your comment helps me to add more perspective to my concerns:
"47% of the voters picked Trump in the last elections"
That is (yes, I am approximating here) an INTERNAL american fact only. The USA is not the world, not at all. Still, everybody who for any reason has to be online, whatever their citizenship or country of residence is, has to bear the consequences of MOSTLY american individuals angry (as they are entitled to do, NOTHING agains that, of course) about their internal problems, or, which is the real problem, judging everybody with their own cultural canons, even foreigners who may have no idea at all of why they are being judged badly. Not a productive situation, in the long run.
Starting from the end... " the Notes thing was a stupid move": yes, it really was, if they had not thought about the consequences at all, as it seems from that interview. And yes, of course it's a personal decision, but we all can and probably should totally ignore Substack Notes while CONTINUING to use Substack to write & read posts, and comment THEM independently, as we are doing right here.
As for "what to do now", my answer is:
first, obviously, share my post as much as you can in and outside substack and social media in general. Because this is just a particular occurrence of a very general, very serious problem
second, just ignore trolls, and even whether that Chris Best guy is personally a nazi, ONLY as far as continuing to write /read substack is concerned. To trolls, say "OK, if this is a nazi bar, which is not, it *may* be a nazi-owned residence and it's not my fault, I will leave it the moment YOU commit to read everything I publish on a normal blog with a normal RSS feed. See the post "I just started a newsletter and it's all your fault" linked from this one.
If there is no other REALISTIC AND EQUALLY EFFECTIVE way for the authors you want to support to write and be seen, and no other REALISTIC AND EQUALLY EFFECTIVE way for you to support them, what else should you do?
This is a problem created by the "won't click, won't read" people in the screenshots, who are often the same now yelling to cancel everybody on substack, not by us. So THEY must give us an economically sustainable alternative. Until that day, let's use this thing.
I read this a couple of times! Thanks for writing this.
I think this "cancelling you if you're on platform X" is a very Mastodon/far left position. A casual look at Substack Notes shows me that most people are delighted to be there and are having fun. I would say, pay these folks no mind. Most of us would be delighted to subscribe and follow you.
I feel your pain about getting heard and having feedback. I more or less set up my Substack for the very same reasons.
I also find the pursuit of the "purest" platform that is ideologically good a hopeless pursuit. We might as well give up using the Internet. I notice that this particular crowd is very reaction. Today it's Substack, tomorrow it's something else. It's like their hobby is to be mad at some topic/platform any given week.
It can be tiring to be part of this.
So I say we just rise about this and use these platforms while we still can to reach our readers - dispassionately and without bias.
Hi Elizabeth, and thanks a lot for your words.
First, please see the other comments I just made, about housing being a much better analogy than "bars"
Second, the comments that concern me are the ones I am seeing on that techdirt article and many other places, not (so far) on Substack. The concern is that what one writes here on Substack it's boycotted just and only because what people heard about Substack as such, NOT that specific author, somewhere else
You are absolutely right that the only CONCRETE effect of demanding/searching for the purest of the pure place is to shutdown the internet altogether.
Third, if I may, a word about "Most of us would be delighted to subscribe and follow you": thanks, please do recommend this newsletter as much as you can, in and outside Substack. And, also: did you subscribe here yet? If not, may I ask why not? Thanks!
Subscribed already ;) My main problem with Substack subscriptions is that it floods my inbox and I pretty much hate reading via my email inbox. I have a weird system - I subscrbie to a newsletter's RSS, feed it to Calibre, and every month, I'll download it as an ebook to read at my leisure. For some, I'll subscribe using a "dummy" email - cos I know the author needs the stats.
I find reading on screens - smartphones and desktops far too distracting.
About Substack - I see lots of people commenting, "If you're on Substack, I'm cancelling you."
The weird "I'm far too righteous to use Substack" vibe is absolutely strange to me.
about reading in email inbox: I NEVER, EVER do that either. Whenever I open an email from Substack newsletter, I automatically click on "read online", to read it in a browser tab. Not as good as ebook or paper, but much less distracting for some reason, at least for me.
But your "monthly ebook system" is VERY cool, thanks for the suggestion.
Last but not least "lots of people commenting If you're on Substack, I'm cancelling you." is exactly what concerns me. Especially because the same people never give a feasible alternative, e.g "I'd read you if you moved to X", and "X" is doable. They don't realize that the "Nazi bar" analogy is deeply flawed, "Nazi-owned residence" would be much more appropriate.
And just out of curiosity, really: do you see/receive those comments more from certain places/ communities than others? E.g more from Twitter than from Facebook, or IRL contacts?
I tend to see comments like these on social media like Twitter and Mastodon. Especially Mastodon! That's because anyone on the far left or right are engaging in the culture war, so they tend to cancel things that are not aligned with their beliefs.
I'm not American and I'm a centrist, so I don't really get or engage in these things.
I don't think it's widespread thing, imho. Just limited to some spaces.
Just posted this on Mastodon, and am really sad I didn't think of THIS when I originally wrote the post, because it makes the point much clearer:
The "bar" part of all this discourse is flawed, and can badly backfire on independent authors though.
Think housing, not bars.
Think renting a studio in a building whose other tenants and landlords you know nothing bad about,
because it's the only affordable place you can get,
only to discover 2 months later, when you had just finished unpacking your stuff,
that the landlord may be a nazi (ADDED 2023/04/20: and/or may be renting, or be willing to rent, other flats in the same building to nazis)
and, again, there is no other place you can afford. Should YOU judged badly because you cannot leave? Especially considering that there is NO guarantee at all that the same thing could happen in the next place you find?
thanks and... the beginning of your comment helps me to add more perspective to my concerns:
"47% of the voters picked Trump in the last elections"
That is (yes, I am approximating here) an INTERNAL american fact only. The USA is not the world, not at all. Still, everybody who for any reason has to be online, whatever their citizenship or country of residence is, has to bear the consequences of MOSTLY american individuals angry (as they are entitled to do, NOTHING agains that, of course) about their internal problems, or, which is the real problem, judging everybody with their own cultural canons, even foreigners who may have no idea at all of why they are being judged badly. Not a productive situation, in the long run.
Hi Ari, and thanks for reaching out.
Starting from the end... " the Notes thing was a stupid move": yes, it really was, if they had not thought about the consequences at all, as it seems from that interview. And yes, of course it's a personal decision, but we all can and probably should totally ignore Substack Notes while CONTINUING to use Substack to write & read posts, and comment THEM independently, as we are doing right here.
As for "what to do now", my answer is:
first, obviously, share my post as much as you can in and outside substack and social media in general. Because this is just a particular occurrence of a very general, very serious problem
second, just ignore trolls, and even whether that Chris Best guy is personally a nazi, ONLY as far as continuing to write /read substack is concerned. To trolls, say "OK, if this is a nazi bar, which is not, it *may* be a nazi-owned residence and it's not my fault, I will leave it the moment YOU commit to read everything I publish on a normal blog with a normal RSS feed. See the post "I just started a newsletter and it's all your fault" linked from this one.
If there is no other REALISTIC AND EQUALLY EFFECTIVE way for the authors you want to support to write and be seen, and no other REALISTIC AND EQUALLY EFFECTIVE way for you to support them, what else should you do?
This is a problem created by the "won't click, won't read" people in the screenshots, who are often the same now yelling to cancel everybody on substack, not by us. So THEY must give us an economically sustainable alternative. Until that day, let's use this thing.