Technological platforms are not neutral. If we truly want to resist the digital coup that is currently under way, we need to normalize the use of free, open source solutions.
This is what resistance to the digital coup looks like
We are in the throes of a
digital coup. And Big Tech’s deep pockets and large ad spending have been building - for 2 decades now - the illusion that in order to be seen and heard online, to make an impact through writing, one needs to use their centralized platforms. Because “they are the only way.”
I completely disagree. I remain all in when it comes to the Fediverse and FOSS publishing solutions. With this post, I hope I can show you that another way is possible.
This is what a digital coup looks like
Sunday morning I came across
a blog post by Jared White bestowing praise on journalist Carole Cadwalladr’s TED Talk: “
This is what a digital coup looks like.”
Cadwalladr’s presentation was phenomenal, filled with brilliant, incendiary quotes against the Broligarchy (in her words: tech bros + oligarchy = broligarchy). I would recommend everybody
watch it.
a screenshot from Carole Cadwalladr's recent TED Talk, showing her on stage
📽️
Cadwalladr's full presentation is hosted on TED's website (
link)
After seeing this powerful presentation
I did some research and I discovered something that left me deeply unsettled. I then published
a mini-thread about it on Mastodon:
I just watched the most brilliant TED Talk by Carole Cadwalladr "This is what a digital coup looks like.” It's filled with memorable, superb quotes about the broligarchy. A must see, to be shared widely. But then I looked up Cadwalladr's online activity. She uses Bluesky for social and Substack for publishing. This is impossibly incongruous after her incendiary TED talk. Honestly, it made me sad. One place is owned by crypto bros, the other is funded by A16Z...
I continued:
The issue here is having an illustrious journalist condemning Big Tech and the Broligarchy... who then uses two centralized services, owned or funded by questionable groups. In my ideal world she would be in the Fediverse, bridging to Bluesky - for social. And publishing on Ghost or Wordpress with federated accounts...
My toots quickly went viral - they were shared in the Fediverse hundreds of times and ended up at the top of “Explore”.
The reactions were deeply divided: on one side there were people sharing my surprise and on the other there was the recurring sentiment of “leave Cadwalladr alone, she needs to make a living and being on Bluesky and Substack is the only way she can reach a lot of people” (I’m paraphrasing). I was even called “absolutely despicable” by someone for pointing out the incongruity between Cadwalladr’s words and her online presence (my first attack in 2+ years on the Fediverse - some sort of personal milestone).
Maybe the wise choice would have been to drop the topic altogether but
I feel I should clarify my position and speak up against the illusions being perpetrated by VC-backed Substack and crypto bros-funded Bluesky. What are the illusions I speak about? That they are the only places to be in order to make an impact in this brave new digital world - or make a living while speaking truth to power. These beliefs contribute to the enforcement of the digital coup.
Carole Cadwalladr has my utmost admiration. The fiery presentation she gave at TED is not diminished by the tech stack she personally uses. I firmly believe everyone should watch her video - it’s digital literacy 101.
Still,
I believe that if even Carole Cadwalladr - who recognizes the problem (the broligarchy) and speaks so eloquently against it - is ONLY using American VC-funded Big Tech platforms, her presence there is an implicit endorsement. And her audience will get the indirect message that compromises need to be made and it’s no big deal to use Broligarchs’ platforms because they may be the only solution to get one’s message out there.
This is not the case. And I would like to prove it to you today.
The problem with Substack
To get you up to speed with the controversy surrounding
Substack - something that has been widely discussed since November 2023 - I offer you these articles:
Long story short, Substack is refusing to moderate or demonetize Nazi content and misinformation. It hosts numerous paid newsletters that promote hate speech, misinformation and transphobia - and earns a 10% cut from their paid subscriptions.
VC-backed Substack (it’s funded by
A16Z) has done such a superb job promoting itself that now the word “Substack” has become a substitute for “newsletter” for many. Anil Dash eloquently spoke about why this is a problem in his blog post “
Don't call it a Substack”:
Email's been here for years. But the reason Substack wants you to call your creative work by their brand name is because they control your audience and distribution, and they want to own your content and voice, too. You may not think you care about that today, but you will when you see what they want to do with it.
He added:
We constrain our imaginations when we subordinate our creations to names owned by fascist tycoons. Imagine the author of a book telling people to "read my Amazon". A great director trying to promote their film by saying "click on my Max". That's how much they've pickled your brain when you refer to your own work and your own voice within the context of their walled garden. There is no such thing as "my Substack", there is only your writing, and a forever fight against the world of pure enshittification.
Substack is not the only way. It’s just a popular publishing platform that is Nazi-friendly (and handsomely profiting from hate speech).
Several popular independent journalists have migrated away from it or started publications elsewhere as an act of resistance. It’s about time we normalize this ethical choice and acknowledge they are successfully running publishing businesses away from Substack.
Examples of thriving blogs / newsletters that are NOT on Substack
Are there alternatives to Substack that are easy to use and set up? Where writers can grow their blogs to hundreds of thousands of subscribers? You bet.
The top two that come to mind are
Ghost (which hosts this newsletter) and
Beehiiv.
Ghost offers a “
concierge migration” service to help writers and publications to “migrate [their] content, newsletters, members and payments. For free.”
What are some notable blogs/newsletters that are powered by Ghost?
- Platformer by Casey Newton
- Citation Needed by Molly White
- 404 Media – which grew into a profitable online media publisher with a team of journalists and contributors
- The Lever - “a nonpartisan, reader-supported investigative news outlet that holds accountable the people and corporations manipulating the levers of power” - which has over 150,000 subscribers
- Joan Westenberg’s personal blog and The Index - whose posts go viral on the Fediverse on a daily basis
- Dan Gillmor’s Cornerstone of Democracy
Another Substack alternative - Beehiiv - recently launched a
Media Collective to help “leading journalists forge an independent, sustainable path forward.”
Notable newsletters powered by Beehiiv include:
Earning MORE money publishing online – by avoiding Substack
I hope that the blogs listed above have convinced you that yes, it is possible to build a large audience of readers away from Substack. Thing is,
avoiding Substack makes a lot of sense even financially.
What do I mean by that? Micah Lee discusses the issue in a must read blog post: “
Not only is Substack right-wing broligarchy garbage, it's way more expensive than Ghost.”
An excerpt:
Suppose you have a newsletter with 9,500 free subscribers and 500 paid subscribers who are each paying you $60/year (which is $5/month). This means your subscribers will pay you $30k a year. If you host on Substack, Substack will take a $3k cut, and you'll end up with $27k. If you host on Ghost, you'll get the whole $30k, but you'll have to pay $99/month for hosting a newsletter with 10,000 subscribers, or $1,188/year. With this modest publication, Ghost is $1,812 cheaper.
The numbers get dizzying as the paid subscribers count climbs. According to Lee, for a popular newsletter with 15,000 paid subscribers (imagining they pay $5/month),
Substack would take $90k a year in commissions, whereas
Ghost would only take $13,380/year - thus being
$76,620 cheaper.
The aforementioned Molly White, who hosts two popular Ghost-powered newsletters, has often discussed how Substack is the most expensive newsletter solution out there (
source):
the screenshot of a post by Molly White on Bluesky demonstrating how Substack is the most expensive newsletter solution
Another argument showing how moving away from Substack could bring financial benefits: people who are truly disgusted by SS's profiting from hate speech would not pay for a newsletter hosted on that platform (because Substack takes a 10% cut).
When I learned about the doubling down by Substack founders - who refused to moderate or demonetize newsletters promoting hate speech - I moved away from the platform... and I unsubscribed from 40+ newsletters hosted there (including two paid newsletters). I admire Cadwalladr's work and I would love to do a paid subscription to her blog - but I won't as long as she's on Substack. I am sure there are many people who feel the same way.
Cadwalladr could keep a Substack account - for reach - and post to Substack Notes (their social platform).
If she decided to move her newsletter to another platform she could make even more money.
What about alternative social media?
The second part of the critiques against my stance boiled down to: in order to be heard online you need to use Big Tech’s social platforms.
I understand. And while personally I would not resume using any platforms owned by Meta or X, I can empathize with writers who feel like they need to use multiple platforms to get their messages seen. Sure.
On Sunday I shared this toot on Mastodon:
In the interest of being constructive, maybe I can talk about my role models: people who speak truth to power and create content with financial support by readers. Molly White (@molly0xfff) is my ultimate role model in this space. She is on Mastodon, Bluesky and X and publishes content on her self-hosted Ghost blog (access is free but she accepts monthly donations). She has eloquently explained many times how Substack would take a big cut of her earnings. I wish Carole Cadwalladr would follow her path.
See, I didn’t have a problem with Carole Cadwalladr posting on Bluesky or Substack. My issue is that she only has accounts in those American, centralized, VC-backed online spaces.May I offer an alternative that would be coherent with her message?
If I were her, I would set up a blog/newsletter on Ghost - with paid membership - and I would keep a Substack account, taking advantage of the Notes feature to share articles hosted on her hypothetical Ghost blog. The best of both worlds.
For social media, I would create an account on the Fediverse and use a tool like
Buffer or
Fedica to crosspost to multiple accounts.
One of the most memorable presentations I saw earlier this year at
FOSDEM was by
Melanie Bartos from the University of Innsbruck. She talked about how we are currently experiencing “
enshittification” in business and politics - something that makes the open social web all the more important. Bartos spoke about the
idea of +1: for institutions and organizations that are already sharing content on Big Tech social platforms, they could easily add one free open source network. This concept was originally coined by Ralf Stockmann, Head of Digital Development at Berlin Central and Regional Library (ZLB), the largest one in Germany. It wouldn’t take that much effort to do so: not just for institutions, but also for politicians, journalists – anyone, really.
a photo of Melanie Bartos presenting at FOSDEM
The tech stack we use is an endorsement of the companies behind it.
Technological platforms are not neutral. If we truly want to resist the digital coup that is currently under way, we need to normalize the use of free, open source solutions.Let’s normalize resistance to Big Tech
In one of the messages in my viral thread about Carole Cadwalladr’s TED talk
I wrote:
I feel that maybe I should have a disclaimer at the bottom of my blog posts sharing which platforms I use. As Cadwalladr said in her TED Talk: "politics is technology now." I deactivated or deleted ALL my commercial social media accounts (LinkedIn included). I use Mastodon and GoToSocial daily. I post infrequently on Pixelfed and MakerTube. I have a dormant Bluesky account I use for lurking. I publish via Ghost and Wordpress (both self-hosted). I DeGoogled. I use Signal for messaging.
I understand that these radical actions are not possible for everyone. Maybe you need to keep a LinkedIn or Meta account for work. I get that.I just think that people who write about technology should have a disclaimer about the tech stack they use - in order to see if they’re “walking the talk.” And if people who speak truth to power feel they need to be on VC-backed, centralized, for-profit social networks, sure no problem. But I believe that anyone speaking up against the broligarchy should be active on the Fediverse too - a galaxy of independent, free, open source networks that is not funded by billionaires or crypto bros.
The mere act of posting on the Fediverse sends a clear message: another way is possible.#AdoptAWriter
Where do we go from here?
Till Kleisli
sent me this thought-provoking question on Mastodon:
@_elena an important question is also: what keeps people from using alternatives? Don't they know them? Are they too complicated to set up/use? Are they too lazy? Are there network effects that make other tools more favourable?
Call me an idealist, but I think that a way to improve the situation would be to
extend a helping hand to journalists, writers and bloggers who are not super tech savvy… and volunteer to help them set up an account on the Fediverse and to move to a publishing platform that is not owned by VCs and on the way to certain enshittification.
I have extensive knowledge of Wordpress and Ghost… as well as Fediverse microblogging platforms like Mastodon, Sharkey, GoToSocial and Friendica.
I would LOVE to help journalists and bloggers to set up accounts on FOSS publishing platforms or to create one more social account on the Fediverse.
This is my official declaration: I would love to #AdoptAWriter. If you are reading this and know anyone who might be interested in taking up the offer, please sent them my way. My contact information is available on my website, at the bottom of this page:
https://elenarossini.com/about/As always, thanks for being here,
Elena
P.S.: special thanks to
Wesley Moore,
geraldew,
rhrwllnrtr,
Lutin Discret,
ilja,
Michel Patrice,
Jonzie Halo,
themadhatter,
Mark Reeves,
Simon Keating and
Cassandra for all the great suggestions (and sorry if I couldn't include all the non-Substack publications you recommended).
All the articles in the series
The Future is Federated are available here:
The Future is Federated - Elena RossiniThe Future is Federated is a series of essays about the Fediverse with the goal of introducing it to people not familiar with it... and showing interoperability between projects for more advanced users. The future is already here, thanks to the magic of ActivityPub!
Elena RossiniElena Rossini
💓 Did you enjoy this post? Share it with a friend!
👫 Follow me on
Mastodon (my favorite network!) or
Pixelfed. All my other links are available here:
elena.social📽️ If you'd like to support my work, you could buy or rent my documentary
The Illusionists on the globalization of beauty.
Watch the teaser:
Buy or Rent The Illusionists💌 If you'd like to say hi, my contact information is
here✏️ If this post resonated with you, leave a comment!
