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| photo of the CEOs of Meta (Facebook/Instagram), Amazon, Google (YouTube), & "X", all of whom "platform Nazis", prominently supporting Trump at his 2025 inauguration |
For years, this was where I routinely penned my essays. But by the mid-2010s, readers had tapered off from visiting blogs, even when I would share links to my posts on other platforms. Increasingly, people tended to stick to their preferred social media ecosystems. And for those interested in reading and/or writing articles and essays, Medium was the most popular ecosystem at the time. There, you could follow other writers and they could follow you back. And because so many people had created their own Medium accounts, they were more likely to click on and share your posts and potentially follow you. So naturally, I began publishing my essays there.
I am still on Medium. But gradually, most of those readers and writers have since migrated to Substack, which is why I began cross-posting my essays there a couple years ago. I explained my reasons for doing so in my first Substack post. Later on, amidst a new round of protests against the platform, I penned a 2,500 word essay on the matter, entitled On Being an Artist, Author, and Activist in a World Where All the Major Online Media Platforms Suck. Don’t worry, that link will take you to an archived version of the essay, so you don’t need to actually visit Substack to read it.
In that post, I made a few main points that I will quickly touch on here TL;DR-style:
- I respect everyone’s right to boycott any company they choose to for whatever reasons that compel them. Having said that, it’s useful to make a distinction between boycotting a company as a customer (“I refuse to read anything on Substack!”) versus boycotting said company as an author, artist, or activist who is trying to generate interest in their work. If I were to remove my books from Amazon, or my music from Spotify, or my video essays from YouTube, or stopped promoting my work on Instagram, etc., people are way less likely to discover or access my work, because audiences are on those platforms, sometimes exclusively.
- The most commonly stated reason for boycotting Substack is that they “platform Nazis” (e.g., white nationalists, anti-LGBTQ+ activists, and other bad actors) in addition to the many mainstream and progressive writers on the site. But many of these same white nationalists & anti-LGBTQ+ activists are also platformed on Amazon, YouTube, Spotify, Instagram, and so on. So are we going to boycott all of these other platforms as well? If not, why?
- When posed this question, Substack protesters/boycotters will usually pivot to the CEO’s/founders’ presumed right-wing or far-right political leanings. But of course, I could make the exact same argument about those other companies—see photo above of the CEOs from Amazon, Google (who owns YouTube), and Meta (who owns Facebook & Instagram) prominently supporting Trump at his inauguration. Recently, I’ve seen people emphasize that Marc Andreessen is a main investor of Substack. While I agree that Andreessen is evil, he’s an investor in literally hundreds of companies, including Airbnb, Lyft, Pinterest, Slack, among others—so will we be boycotting these companies too?
- I make clear in the article that I am *not* saying that said policies and politics don’t matter or aren’t protest/boycott worthy. Just saying that singling out Substack strikes me as a distinction without a difference.
- Finally, I felt that the initial boycott against Substack (more on that in a moment) ended up disproportionately targeting transgender and other marginalized writers, while largely ignoring cisgender and majority/mainstream writers on the platform.
As I state in the essay, these are my opinions, you are free to disagree. If you want to quibble over any of these points, I encourage you to read the full essay first, as I explain it all more thoroughly there.
I decided to pen this follow up essay because I still periodically come across people (typically on Bluesky, the social media platform I use most these days) who will either politely suggest that writers should migrate off Substack, or more harshly condemn writers who remain on the platform. The people I see making these claims are, far more often than not, writers themselves (although this could be an artifact due to me disproportionately following other writers on Bluesky).
This can create some unfortunate dynamics. As an analogy, if I am a musician or podcaster who made the decision at some point along the way (whether for personal or political reasons) to not use Spotify, and I then publicly proclaim that musicians and podcasters who do use that platform are undermining musician royalties or putting money into the hands of Joe Rogan . . . well, I may have a point. But my protests are likely to lead listeners to boycott those artists (which may substantially hurt them), while having relatively little impact on Spotify itself.
This is why I’m referring to these current Substack boycotts as “writer-centric,” because they 1) primarily target writers who use the platform (rather than Substack readers or the company itself), and 2) seem substantially driven by writers who have made the decision (for personal or political reasons) to not use the platform.
With the rest of this essay, I will highlight two glaring problems that are obscured by the writer-centric nature of these boycotts, namely, 1) writers are all different and what works for some may not work for others, and 2) if one was serious about implementing an effective Substack boycott, they would target readers rather than writers.
Issue #1: Debunking the Substack writer monomyth
Whenever I see writers urging other writers to abandon Substack, they tend to make a series of assumptions that may apply to some writers, but certainly not all. I am calling this a “monomyth” partly as a writer in-joke, but also because it’s as if they are imagining a particular idealized writer that they are tailoring their pitch to.
Their first assumption is that you must already be an established writer who has an email list full of dedicated followers. They will then offer the names of alternative “newsletter” platforms that will allow you to readily transfer your Substack email list to the new site. In other words, their pitch is: See, it’s easy and relatively painless to migrate away from Substack!
A second common assumption is that your subscribers are willing to pay you money for your “newsletter.” They will then share figures showing that the cut Substack takes from authors’ paid subscriptions is significantly higher than the cut other platforms take. Which leads to their pitch: Why give evil Substack your money when you can make even more money using a less-morally-bankrupt platform?
Often they will do the combo-pitch: It’s easy to migrate *and* you’ll earn more, what on earth are you waiting for?!?
There is a third common assumption that is never explicitly stated—in fact, it is conspicuous by its absence. Specifically, I have never once heard any of these writers say: You should really switch to “newsletter-dot-com” because it’s great for growing your reader base! Or “newsletter-dot-com” is a better place for new readers to discover your work than Substack.
In other words, the unspoken assumption is that you don’t need to attract *new* readers with this alternative platform, either because you’re already established and/or you are growing your audience elsewhere (e.g., through a larger media outlet you write for, books you author, your podcast or YouTube channel, etc.). Indeed, it’s notable that many people refer to these types of platforms as “newsletters,” which has the connotation (in my mind, at least) that it is a side project of sorts, one that augments or supports your main endeavor (your books, podcast, etc.).
But what if none of this applies to you? What if you are a writer who is just starting out and has no following. Who is ever going to stumble upon your writings on “newsletter-dot-com”?
Or say you have just started to cultivate a small readership on Substack—they enjoy your work, but they are not necessarily “dedicated” fans, at least not yet. Will these less-than-dedicated readers make the jump with you to “newsletter-dot-com,” especially if it involves them having to set up a new account, or giving yet another website their credit card number? Isn’t it easier for said readers to just stay on Substack, especially if they follow other writers there anyway? (Note: I am not encouraging such decisions, but I understand why they happen.)
Of course, people who call for writer-centric boycotts of Substack don’t typically target these smaller or newer writers (although they don’t really address their concerns either). But they do sometimes target more established writers—perhaps someone like me. Indeed, I probably resemble the writer “monomyth” they have in mind: author of several books who has a somewhat dedicated following who may be willing to migrate to “newsletter-dot-com” with me and perhaps even pay for a subscription.
I addressed my particular situation in the previous essay (in the “Regarding Income” section), but I think it is useful to reiterate some of those details here, to provide an example of why an established author might find “newsletter-dot-com” insufficient for what they are trying to accomplish.
A main focus of my online writing over the past ten years has been countering all the propaganda and disinformation that is being churned out by the anti-trans/LGBTQ+ industrial complex. So when I write essays that debunk their talking points, I want them to reach as many people as possible in a format that readers can readily share with others. Which is why a paid subscription model to “newsletter-dot-com” won’t work for me at all. Plus, the readers who tend to be most excited about my essays are trans/LGBTQ+ people—a community where a significant number of people struggle financially.
So the model I came up with way back when is that I would publish my essays for free on Medium (which had the biggest readership at the time), then encourage people who wanted to financially support my work (so I could continue doing it) to do so on Patreon (which is sliding scale, so people can contribute as little as $1/month). This system has worked well for me, at least until Medium began moving more toward a membership model and readers increasingly migrated to Substack. Which is why I decided to cross-post my essays there too.
I’ve had people tell me that, by being on Substack, I’m “putting money into the hands of Nazis”—by which they seem to mean that the money Substack makes from their cut (10%, I believe) of my paid subscriptions helps them to platform white nationalists, anti-LGBTQ+ activists, etc. Of course, I can make this very same “indirectly supporting” argument to claim that we should all stop selling our books on Amazon, posting our videos on YouTube, and so on. But on top of that, one of the reasons why I’m using Substack is that they offer a free subscription option. More than 98% of my 4,800-ish Substack subscribers do so for free, and at the end of every essay I encourage them to support me on Patreon.
In other words, there is more than one way to use Substack. And many of us use it precisely because it allows us (for free) to disseminate writings that directly counter “the Nazis” and other far-right policies and politics. And since I know what some of you are likely to say next, let me end this section with a relevant quote from my previous essay:
Of course, there are limits to [what I would do to reach as many people as possible]. I certainly wouldn’t go on a dedicated white-nationalist or far-right outlet to spread the word. And there’s always a debate whenever someone on the left goes on Fox News in an attempt to reach their viewers. But then again, Fox News is a 100 percent conservative outlet. Whereas Substack (like Amazon, Facebook, Spotify, Twitter, and YouTube) hosts all sorts of voices, many of whom are on the left and some even happen to be trans.
Issue #2: Substack is where the readers are
A second oversight of the writer-centric boycott is that it fails to understand cause and effect: It presumes that readers are migrating to Substack because that’s where the writers are, when in actuality, writers are migrating to Substack because that’s where the readers are.
Now, there may have been a time (circa 2018–2020) when the former was true. In 2021, it became public that Substack recruited a number of high-profile writers to join the platform by promising them big advances. The fact that several of these writers expressed anti-trans views seems to be what initiated the original Substack boycott. I can understand why people felt that discouraging writers from using the platform might work at that time, since the platform was relatively new and actively recruiting writers. But that boycott didn’t work, for reasons that I delve into in the “Regarding the Original Substack Protest” section of my previous essay.
Today in 2025, things are significantly different. Substack—not unlike Amazon, or Spotify, or YouTube, or Instagram—has an established audience who spends their time specifically (and in some cases, exclusively) on that platform. I remember when I published my first few Substack posts, several readers commented saying they were glad I had joined the platform because they missed my work. Which struck me as odd at first, because I had been writing free and accessible essays on Medium the whole time! But in essence, what they were telling me is that they used to be on Medium, but now they did most of their reading on Substack.
When I’ve discussed this in the past, some Substack protesters/boycotters have acted surprised or even incredulous. So allow me to share some actual statistics. According to my Substack “Stats” page, this is where my current 4,800-ish subscribers come from:
Here is the breakdown, with accompanying definitions (in quotes) from “A guide to Substack metrics”:
- More than half (52%) of my subscribers came from the Substack App: “Readers who directly subscribed from a Substack platform surface such as the Substack app, Notes, or the leaderboards.”
- About a quarter (25%) of my subscribers came from Other Substack Network: “Readers who subscribed as a direct result of Substack network features such as Recommendations and promotions.”
- A fifth (20%) of my subscribers came from Substack Existing Accounts: “Readers who could more easily subscribe to your publication because they already had a Substack account.”
- A mere 3% of my subscribers are New Accounts: “Readers who came directly to your publication.”
In other words, only 3% of these readers “joined Substack” (read: entered their email address so they could receive my writings) because of me. The rest were already there. I am not drawing readers to Substack in any substantial way. The readers are already there and I am simply reaching them now.
I know some writers have successfully migrated away from Substack and I am sincerely glad that has worked out for them. But I’ve also seen several writers (who are smaller perhaps, or whose online articles are their entire gig rather than simply augmenting their primary job, books, podcast, etc.) say they tried to move to another platform but could not financially sustain it, so they had to move back to Substack. For such writers, migrating to “newsletter-dot-com” is akin to packing up the store you have on Main Street with lots of foot traffic, and moving it to the outskirts of town. If you’re a mega-store, or if you cater to a niche market, then sure, maybe some shoppers will go out of their way specifically for you. But the vast majority of the shoppers will have no idea your store even exists.
Finally, I can imagine that some protesters/boycotters who come across this post may accuse me of “promoting Substack” or “shilling for them.” If that was my intention in writing this, I would have simply published this essay *on Substack*—it probably would have gotten a bunch of “likes” and “restacks” and may have even become a featured post there.
But I didn’t. Instead, I have posted it here, on ye olde Blogspot—the proverbial outskirts of town—where no one will ever see it. Unless of course, I come across someone suggesting that I should abandon Substack, or more generally condemning writers who use the platform. In that case, I may share the link to this essay with them in the hopes that they will understand where some of us are coming from, and why a writer-centric boycott of Substack has failed to garner traction.
Conclusion
If your main goal is to disrupt or destroy Substack, then the most successful boycott you could organize would target readers. If you got 50% of readers to not use the Substack app or click on Substack links for one day, it would most certainly get the company’s attention. And if you could convince readers en masse to leave the platform, the writers would follow them. I can assure you of this, having moved to Medium, then to Substack, in the hopes of reaching readers myself.
Alternatively, you could continue to protest and boycott Substack without centering those efforts on the writers who use the platform. As an example, I made the decision a couple years ago to boycott the The New York Times due to the massive anti-trans turn they have taken. I am quite vocal about my stance. And if there is ever an article of theirs that I feel the need to read, I purposely seek out an archived version rather than clicking on their website. But because they are not a 100 percent conservative outlet, they have a few writers—Jamelle Bouie immediately comes to mind—whose work I really appreciate. As much as I dislike the higher-ups at The New York Times, I cannot fathom how convincing progressive writers like Bouie into leaving the paper would help my cause. Even if all the progressive and pro-trans writers exited, The New York Times would not collapse, because they have a huge built-in readership and they can always find more writers.
Substack also has a huge built-in readership (you can look up the statistics if you want). Even if you got me, or several dozen, or even over a hundred progressive writers to leave the platform, it would have a minimal impact on the company and their bottom line. But it would certainly reduce the number of progressive voices on the site.
Anyway, that’s my 2¢. Like I said, I completely understand why some people might want to avoid reading me on Substack, which is why I cross-post all my essays to Medium.
And if you decide to boycott me entirely as an author, artist, and activist because I use Substack (but not because I’m also on Amazon, YouTube, Spotify, Facebook, and other sites that “platform Nazis”), well, of course you are free to do so, although I personally don’t understand that reasoning.
This essay was made possible by my Patreon supporters—if you appreciate it, please consider supporting me there.
