The Moderation War Is Coming to Substack

[..] CJR reporter Clio Chang pushed Substack to take a stance on Sullivan for a simple reason. Sullivan had previously published excerpts from The Bell Curve, a 1994 book that attempted to link IQ to race. Chang asked Substack’s founders whether his presence could cause other writers to shy away from the platform. Its paid newsletters, she noted, were already very white and male at the top.[..]

Witch hunt.

[..] At, least not yet. “They’re going to have to prepare now,” Greenwald told OneZero of Substack. “To resist the onslaught that absolutely will be coming in their direction.”[..]

Looked up the CJR article and the reporter Clio Chang: https://www.cjr.org/special_report/substackerati.php

Was also at The Intercept. This is getting tiresome.

[..] The intention is declarative—you, too, can make it on Substack. But as you peruse the lists, something becomes clear: the most successful people on Substack are those who have already been well-served by existing media power structures. Most are white and male; several are conservative. Matt Taibbi, Andrew Sullivan, and most recently, Glenn Greenwald—who offer similar screeds about the dangers of cancel culture and the left—all land in the top ten. (Greenwald’s arrival bumped the like-minded Yascha Mounk to eleventh position; soon, Matthew Yglesias signed up for Substack, too.)[..]

Substack is a Y-Combinator startup, right? I see them hiring here a lot, anyway.

I've always wondered what the cutting-edge technology or business model it aspires to provide, such that the idea was worthy of startup funding and so much interest. After all, hiring a developer to set up a Wordpress site with a few plugins and integration of some subscription payment plan through Stripe or similar couldn't be that hard, right?

Maybe Substack's goal, then, is to create a truly censor-proof platform for independent writers. I'm not sure that is currently one of their goals, but after the last few weeks, it probably should be. Otherwise, what's the point vs just some generic "Shopify for writers" that I'm sure already exists, though would be heavily dependent on the big players who could cut the platform off without notice.

So do we know if Substack is ensuring that they control their "sub stack" down to the utilities level (e.g. electricity and ISP)? Otherwise, one bad apple (e.g. Andrew Sullivan daring to reference a best selling book from the 90's that's no longer kosher amongst the woke) could ruin it for the rest of their customers.