The Choice of Publisher: X, Substack, and All

The problem of staying on X is that one becomes part of the network and, even if you are not yourself a white supremacist or Nazi, people who follow you are recruited onto a site where they will propagandized. It’s been observed that the propaganda is effective:

In addition to promoting entertainment, X’s feed algorithm tends to push more conservative content to users’ feeds. Seven weeks of exposure to such content in 2023 shifted users’ political opinions in a more conservative direction, particularly with regard to policy priorities, perceptions of the criminal investigations into Trump and views on the war in Ukraine. The effect is asymmetric: switching the algorithm on influenced political views, but switching it off did not reverse users’ perspectives on policy priorities or current political issues.

Substack is a somewhat different problem; Anil Dash says,

They do not amplify fascist content by accident, they do it because the platform was created to leverage the writing of decent people as a foundation for amplifying the radical agenda of its founders and funders.

Now, maybe for small authors, Substack is an inexpensive way to gain followers and earn some money, but of its top 25 US political newsletters, top billing (exact subscription numbers are apparently not public) goes to Trump sycophant Bari Weiss. By my count 15 of the remaining top 25 are liberal and 9 are conservative-to-centrist; there are no far left newsletters in the top 25. Of the top liberals, at least three—Heather Cox Richardson, Paul Krugman, and Rob Reich—are so well known that they would be read anywhere they go. There are alternatives; Ghost and Buttondown among them.

And then there’s Facebook; huge, but a major participant in the genocide in Myanmar, and the New York Times, an influential and important news source, widely read by the northeastern establishment.

At this point, X is a net negative for any liberal or leftist, and not even safe if one just wants to be social. Substack arguably is still tolerable, but getting progressively worse, Facebook is toxic, but no other site does what Facebook does, or has anything like its reach. Paul Krugman left the New York Times for Substack because of heavy-handed editing; Jamelle Bouie is still there. This may indicate a different auctorial choice or may indicate that A. G. Sulzberger is more concerned with the interests of wealth than racism.

I wish that authors weighed their choices of publishers more carefully. I wince every time I visit Substack to read some interesting author, and I will not subscribe there at all.