So Substack's not just promoting Nazis . . .

Well, damn.

Jonathan Katz who has been on and a supporter of the platform for years is leaving and documents years of skeevy and unethical behavior on the part of the Powers That Be. Some of the worst behavior was toward Casey Newton.

I am not going to try to summarize or even blockquote: I have linked to Katz’s and Newton’s announcements below (which includes where they are moving to). I enjoy their work (and will follow them on their new platforms if I can!).

The Racket has left Substack

You read that right. You can find the full version of this post, and the full five years of the Racket archive, at its new home: If you’re a Racket subscriber, you should have the sparkling new beehiiv version in your inbox as we speak. Paid subscriptions should carry over as well. If you have any problems, just reply to this email and we’ll get it sort…

The Racket

Why Platformer is leaving Substack

After much consideration, we have decided to move Platformer off of Substack. Over the next few days, the publication will migrate to a new website powered by the nonprofit, open-source publishing platform Ghost. If you already subscribe to Platformer

Platformer

So I am seriously rethinking whether I want to be on this platform. The problem is finding another I can use. And while I will be exploring options, I also have a whole lot of deadlines coming up soon (meaning February and March!) for the two anthologies I’m editing as well as the conference events I’m organizing, plus a number of medical appointments (nothing serious, routine dental, chiropractic, and diabetic PLUS a recent hearing test confirms I need at least one hearing aid, so that’s a process I have to start). So nothing is going to happen immediately.

I would appreciate any feedback from those of you reading this post (just what you think about the issue and what you are thinking of doing if you have a Substack). If you have any recommendations for any other online communities, feel free to share [with the caveat that I tried Twitter for five minutes years ago and left hastily; I tried several times to grok Tumblr and failed miserably; ditto Wordpress (I have a hate/hate relationship with that site) and while I do my best to participate in a few Discords, the firehose effect (and the character limit!) make it clear I should never try to run a server.]

Two of the platforms that Substackers are going to are Ghost and Beehiiv. I’ve checked them out and was immediately put off by their home pages (so not a journalist, so not looking for make $, so not appreciative of feeling like a webpage is punching me through the monitor [scrolling text BAH]!). They are clearly *for* journalists who want to make money, and while the sites have “free” options, the problem with that are well-known. But I also have the strong sense that more programming chops are required than I have (or have time/energy/inclination to try to learn) as well.

I have some a bit of reading on similarities and differences between those two platforms and Substack: here is a Wired article on Ghost vs. Substack. Here’s a Business Tech Daily on Substack vs. Beehiiv. Searching for “alternatives to Substack,” I found There are the 11 best Substack Alternatives for 2024." This article assumes people want to monetize, but I will check them out and look for other recs as I have time, although I have to admit BRANDING marketing language is a major turn off.1

I am not opposed to paying for a social media program (I was an early paying subscriber to Dreamwidth, an open-access LiveJournal code fork2). My first online community was the LiveJournal LotR fandom(s) which I joined in 2003 (even then there were definite sub-communities in LOTR and some remarkable balkanization considering the themes of friendship across differences in that novel). The History of LiveJournal is probably not well-known, except among us who were there, but it was tough to live through (all the more in that it was many of our first times that a platform nuked all of its so-called principles for $.

(I’m feeling much the same about a lot of academic publishing which is why I decided to primarily publish articles in open-access peer-reviewed journals, and boycott the Big Corporate Academic Publishers who charge over $100 for a book.)

I may just be too old for this shit.