About Substack

I'm slightly wary of the platform right now.

Photo by Florian Schmetz on Unsplash

After about one year on this platform, I was beginning to get comfortable with it and seeing some growth in membership. Then this happened. Essentially, there are some white supremacists who are making money by operating their own pages on Substack.

Many people, including some prominent writers on this platform, publicly questioned whether this was a good idea. Substack’s co-founder, Hamish McKenzie, responded to these concerns with a statement. It read in part:

I just want to make it clear that we don’t like Nazis either—we wish no-one held those views. But some people do hold those and other extreme views. Given that, we don't think that censorship (including through demonetizing publications) makes the problem go away—in fact, it makes it worse.

People can believe whatever they want, but I’m not a fan of people using this platform to profit off hate speech. And I think giving bigots cash for their behavior definitely doesn’t help to make the proble…