Not everyone can afford to leave Substack

There is a lack of truly free newsletter options, which leaves many poor users, often marginalized ones, without options.

Let me start with this absolute fact: Nazis are bad people. There is no removing violent rhetoric from anything they do, as the entire foundation of fascism is based on a want to enact violence. Period. Substack claiming that they only remove publications that call to incite violence implies they feel there are some Nazis who have publications that do not incite violence or hate. You literally cannot be a Nazi publication without inciting violence as your core value.

I support those who want to boycott Substack. I support those who choose to leave because they cannot be on a platform run by such willfully ignorant people. I also support those who stay because some don’t have other options.

I’m poor as hell and disabled. Right now, I have less than $100 in my bank account to get me by for the rest of the month. My rent went up, my food assistance was reduced, and I have more debt this year. I don’t have the money to add another bill, which is often the case with newsletter platforms that like to gouge people.

WordPress, which has a newsletter-like option, plasters scam ads all over your site if you use their free version, and they slip sponsored posts in between your own that you have no control over. At times, it’s difficult for visitors to know what was written by you and what wasn’t on some themes. This could lead to WordPress sponsoring content you are against on your own blog.

Ghost is expensive as hell. Beehiiv is also expensive at around $40 a month at their lowest plan, although they offer a free plan with a limited list, which isn’t good for long-term use if you are working on growing. If you do get lucky and happen to get an influx of subscribers, you’ll have to start planning to pay a high monthly fee or relocate. Again.

Wix has a blogging platform with a mailing list option that is free, but the learning curve to build an entire blog website, and the work of having to create separate lackluster emails for each post, is a lot. I struggled for hours figuring out the website builder, and the few templates they offer for free are ugly and not user friendly for a newsletter. You also get a 500MB media limit, unless you’d like to pay a subscription fee. File sizes aren’t so small anymore.

So far, Substack, as shitty as the leadership is, is the only place that is user-friendly, free, and requires very little work to get a newsletter out.

I’m chronically ill on top of having severe mental health struggles. Substack is the most accessible, least painful option for me. And it doesn’t involve another bill for me to pay while I’m already struggling to afford food. There aren’t a lot of sites out there that are free that have an import button to import posts and information from Substack either, so that means spending days manually copying, pasting, and reorganizing a ton of posts.

Not everyone is made of expendable income. Some people are struggling with chronic illnesses, like I am, and some do not have the ability to learn a whole new skillset just to be able to get the word out about their small businesses.

More importantly, not everyone has the ability to jump when people snap their fingers on an issue. Some of us are trying to survive and make the best decisions for our businesses, and many of us who are one-person teams are overworked and burnt out. Some of us have to make do with Substack, and that’s okay.

That doesn’t mean we support what Substack is doing. That doesn’t mean we are okay with Nazis on the platform. We hate it too.

But we have to pick our battles. There are ways to protest without snubbing people who don’t have much of a choice if they want to continue to have a newsletter. Blindly punishing, muting, or protesting people who are still using Substack is (genuinely) ableist and not a solution.

Are you boycotting X, or are you still on it? Are you boycotting Instagram since they also have an issue with Nazis, who can monetize their content, or are you still using Instagram and Threads?

Yes, I’m frustrated with all the whiplash of social media outrage. “This site has problems, you have to move!” “Oops, this site also has problematic stuff, you have to move!” “Ah, this site has problems, we must move!” When does it end? Some of us are so burnt out managing several sites just trying to keep up with new worries we now have.

Are we going to be canceled for not moving fast enough? Are we going to be punished or silenced because we don’t have other options accessible to us and our future growth? Are people going to ever slow down and realize not everyone has access to the same resources they do? That not everyone has a big audience to follow them everywhere, and moving may mean having to start over again, which can set a business way back?

My point in all of this is to please take a minute to think. Slow down. Consider that not everyone even knows what’s happening all the time. Some of us are trying to survive, and that is our main focus. That includes trying to build consistency somewhere so we stand a chance. Some people can’t constantly uproot. There are still good people on here, good people who are just as frustrated with Substack’s response, but lack the ability to move right now. Would you tell them to just not have a newsletter? To just give up their blog? Consider who you may also be silencing.

And why should we hand a whole platform over to fascists? Should we all leave and just give them another platform to thrive, or should we stay, let our voices be heard, and give ‘em hell while we drown them out?

Please consider this.