I always understood Substack the way most did once they started engaging: it’s blogging software with a payment processor attached. The founders of Substack did not believe they were operating a media company or a publishing house they believed strongly in the concept of free speech and maintained a lax moderation policy. There was the question, too, of what the “platform” meant. Since some in the media didn’t like who the advances were offered to and there wasn’t a great deal of transparency around them, complaints were lodged-complaints that indicted the whole platform. One was their decision to have a “pro” program where certain prominent writers like Matthew Yglesias were offered advances to leave their day jobs and join the platform. Substack, at the time, drew an enormous amount of criticism from several different angles. Substack has advertised itself as a friendly home for journalism, but few of its newsletters publish original reporting the majority offer personal writing, opinion pieces, research, and analysis. Newsrooms at the Times and the Wall Street Journal have taken pains to distinguish their work from that found in the op-ed sections. The flattening effect of digital platforms has led to confusion among readers about what is reporting and what is opinion. Amazon ’s self-publishing arm has become a haven for extremist content. The Internet is flooded with disinformation and conspiracy theories. It’s an interesting time for such a hands-off, free-market approach. Best has suggested that Substack contains a built-in moderation mechanism in the form of the Unsubscribe button. Substack, like Facebook, insists that it is not a media company it is, instead, “a platform that enables writers and readers.” … The company, which currently has twenty employees, has a lightweight content-moderation policy, which prohibits harassment, threats, spam, pornography, and calls for violence moderation decisions are made by the founders, and, McKenzie told me, the company does not comment on them. In late 2020, the New Yorker’s Anna Wiener asked if Substack is the “media future we want” and proceeded to answer, in elliptical New Yorker fashion, her question.

My sense is most have moved on, since the discourse around Substack has significantly died down. Were I more inclined, I’d go around and ask the people who were most concerned about Substack how they feel about it today.

The culture war rages today, but it was more visceral two years ago-we were still in the midst of the pandemic and the racial reckoning around the George Floyd protests was very fresh. It was also a very particular product of a very particular time, and those who were most clearly upset were left-leaning media figures and pundits. Unlike, say, the ice bucket challenge craze of 2014, there was nothing ameliorative about the Substack panic. Internet events are internet events for a reason they are ephemeral, built to disappear, and only the amateur historians are left to pick through the memories and care. Do you remember the great Substack panic of 20? I know I’m not exactly asking about the meltdown of the stock market in 2008 or Donald Trump sweeping the Midwest in 2016.

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