This article is part of our series covering current boycotts we recommend joining.
Substack hosts publications written by Nazis—yes, actual Nazis—and other far-right extremists.
Jonathan M. Katz
In December 2023, nearly 250 Substack writers signed a letter requesting that site's founders explain why they were platforming and profiting from hate speech. The letter included a quote from neo-Nazi Patrick Casey who acknowledged that thanks to Substack he's able to "live comfortably" doing work that he enjoys and finds fulfilling.
In response, Substack banned a handful of accounts. However, co-founder Hamish McKenzie published a statement making it clear that the company would only remove accounts that publish incitements to violence. All other hate speech would be permitted on the site.
This statement was one of the final straws for Casey Newton, founder of Platformer: "I’m not aware of any major US consumer internet platform that does not explicitly ban praise for Nazi hate speech, much less one that welcomes them to set up shop and start selling subscriptions." When Newton left Substack in January 2024, he had one of the largest publications on the site with approximately 155,000 subscribers. Other high profile publications have left the platform including The Handbasket and The Racket.
Unfortunately, many important writers remain on Substack, including Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Chris Geidner, Paul Krugman, Mehdi Hasan, Heather Cox Richardson, Timothy Snyder, and Joyce Vance. We don't recommend boycotting them, though we encourage you to write to these authors and encourage them to move their publication to another platform (e.g., Ghost, Beehiiv, Steady).
If you are starting a new blog, we advise you to not publish it on Substack, which is why North Shore Progressives is published using Ghost.
