A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?
As I mentioned yesterday, my newsletter, The Reframe, is departing Substack. I want to say more about why.
It's in part over the most recent Nazi flap, but for me (and I suspect many creators) it's more about how we have learned to think about platforms.
A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?
Enough of all that. I've buried the lede (it's my brand). Eventually I do know better, even if it takes me a while. The Reframe has a new home, and you are looking at it.
More here: https://www.the-reframe.com/hello-i-must-be-going/
A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?
We built The Reframe. Me by writing and you by reading, and if you've read my novel The Revisionaries perhaps you understand that I consider the latter to be just as important a part of the creative process as the former.
We don't just enjoy the value. We ARE the value.
A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?
Publishers who think they are the value when they only profit from it make a mistake. If they make it hard enough, they'll forget where their value comes from and they'll lose that value. This is obvious, but I've noticed that tech founders who think they ARE the value don't realize obvious things.
A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?
Sorry, Hamish & Co. You could have had anti-Nazi creators. You wanted Nazi creators more, so, more and more each day, that's probably what you'll have. This isn't something that's being done to you. It's something you've done.
So long and (no) thanks for all the fash.
A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?
Again: no ideologically pure options here. My new platform will have its problems—any platform will—but what it isn't doing is operating in bad faith against its own creators in order to promote a bigoted eliminationist worldview that it claims to oppose but which it actively promotes.
A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?
I really want to harp on this point, because it gets twisted: what Substack’s doing is not just morally wrong, it’s bad business. I don’t trust Substack to not repeat these practices, and create more such situations, so I don’t trust Substack as a publisher—which is what they are.
A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?
And anyway, Substack goofed. Because The Reframe isn't a “Substack” any more than it was a “Revue.” It's you.
You. Me.
Whether you're a paid up founding member or a casual reader. You and me. Readers and writers. We can take our ball and go elsewhere. This is OUR newsletter.
A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?
Nevertheless, these latest revelations have convinced me Substack has charted a ruinous course—for me, anyway, if not for itself.
I'm not leaving to stay ideologically pure. I'm leaving because I don't think it's a stable place to stay. I've seen what's happened to Twitter, for example.
A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?
In short, I think the site is making itself an easier place to monetize and organize if you are a bigot, and a harder place to do so if you're anti-bigotry, and moreover, I think it's doing so on purpose in order to quash anti-bigotry voices while promoting bigoted ones.
A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?
I'm leaving because it seems obvious that there will be other incidents after this one, as Substack does what Substack has made it clear it wants to do, and makes itself more and more attractive to bigots. Staying feels like putting off something inevitable.
A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?
For me, these final two revelations were pretty much the last straws. It meant that Substack is a site that fundamentally cannot be trusted, and one weird quirk about me is I like to trust my business partners.
A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?
I don't blame any creator who stays—it's hard enough for creators to find an audience and writers didn't choose to live in a world of rapidly mainstreamed Nazism and other supremacy and all the impossible situations Nazis and other types of supremacist create.
Moving is financially risky, and I think some creators—often creators most threatened by Nazis—just don't feel they can risk it. Sometimes leaving when Nazis move in is a duty, but sometimes it can be a privilege. We shouldn't forget it.
A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?
In truth, as Nazi ideas (like the vile great replacement myth that is energizing the most recent Republican insurrection over their claimed right to murder people on our border) continues to be mainstreamed, I don't think it's going to be possible to *avoid* Nazism, really.
A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?
THEN it came out—via @katzonearth again—that Substack founder McKenzie had astroturfed a "grass roots" creator response to get ahead of an actual grass-roots movement by creators who were asking him to explain his position vis-à-vis Nazis.
https://substack.com/@armoxon/note/c-47067108?ref=the-reframe.com
A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?
And THEN it came out Substack had leaked information from Platformer—one of their own flagship publications—to try to reframe the complaint as being about a few accounts rather than Substack’s posture toward them, which suggests a deeper ideological rot.
https://www.platformer.news/why-platformer-is-leaving-substack/
A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?
This was not a secret, by the way, that Substack's owners were doing this. I probably should have known better then and never gotten on board with Substack in the first place, but I've never been the sharpest bulb on the Christmas tree. Ah, me.
A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?
Then it came out in The Atlantic courtesy of the reporting of fellow Substacker @katzonearth that Nazis were monetizing/organizing on Substack.
The Atlantic also platforms many of the bigots Substack promotes, by the way. That's how it goes these days.
A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?
THEN Substack founder Hamish McKenzie decided to defend Substack's platforming and monetization of Nazis by positioning it as a principled stand to actually help *fight* Nazi ideology and practice—which is, as I point out here, laughable nonsense.
A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?
Anyway, after what's-his-name demolished Revue, I moved my newsletter to Substack.
Even then, Substack's leadership had begun heavily promoting and mainstreaming a whole raft of bad-faith pro-bigotry writers, which helped those writers grow their audiences and pose as mainstream voices.
A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?
And what I noticed about that year of demolition is that old what's-his-name (you know him, he looks like a boiled dumpling that was dropped on a barbershop floor) seemed to think that the value of the site wasn't us, who wrote on it.
No. He thought the value was HIM.
A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?
It happened like this: The Reframe had been hosted on Revue, which was a newsletter platform Twitter acquired.
When Twitter's new owner (whose name I can’t quite remember right now) demolished Revue as part of a larger effort to demolish Twitter, I shifted over to Substack.
A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ?
Now it so happens that Twitter's new owner, old what's-his-name, acquired Twitter in order to put his finger on the scales for neo Nazis and other supremacists and bullies, in the name of "free speech." Whether or not intentional, this destroyed much of the site's value.
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