When Good Dogs Do Bad Things

I’d love your input about an important issue.

Hi,

Back in April of 2020, I was in New Zealand and things were pretty weird.

I was just looking back the timeline of events, and in March the whole country had gone into lockdown:

At 11:59pm, New Zealand moves to Alert Level 4, and the entire nation goes into self-isolation. A State of National Emergency is declared at 12:21pm. 

For a month I was self-isolating with my three housemates at our flat in Auckland, glued to Twitter as different countries reacted in a variety of ways to a deadly pandemic (one that’s not over, btw).

I was meant to be shooting some key scenes for Mister Organ, but that wasn’t happening — so I watched as 5G conspiracies smashed into Covid conspiracies, and QAnon began to go into overdrive.

And then I got an email from New Zealander Hamish McKenzie.

Hamish had recently started a newsletter service called Substack, which was a current darling of Silicon Valley. He’d been following my reporting work on TV and The Spinoff, and thought I should start writing on the platform. He thought my voice and particular style of reporting (going down rabbit holes, embedding lots of other media and elements into stories) would work well on an email newsletter.

I Zoomed with him, exchanged a few emails, and I was in:

Annoyingly I wasn’t wooed by one of Substack’s lucrative writer’s deals (Substack paid some writers a year’s salary, to take some of the “scare” factor out of leaving a steady job for writing a newsletter) — but Hamish gave me a few smart pointers about starting a newsletter, and slowly growing a readership.

And so Webworm was born — my very first newsletter was a very lighthearted story about the frustration of missing puzzle pieces.

My biggest fear was charging for it. I’d worked for almost a decade in a New Zealand newsroom, which had taught me journalists didn’t get paid very well — and over the years, I’d learned to not value myself very much. And I felt an inherent “ick” factor asking anyone for money. I knew about Patreon, which a bunch of podcasters I knew used to make a living from their work — but me asking for money for writing? It felt icky.

What won me over was the idea that most of my work would be entirely free. All my journalism, all the stuff that mattered — would always be free. People would only pay me if they had the means, and liked my work. For that, they’d get extra newsletters of a more personal nature, first access to live events and merch, and they’d take part in the Webworm community.

While Webworm has grown hugely over the last three years, the basic balance remains — 10% of readers pay for it, and 90% get it free. And while that 10% figure seems low, it makes Webworm a sustainable job, where I can afford things like legal opinions and paying guest writers. As a side dish it’s also allowed me flexibility in my life to chase other projects and documentaries with less fear.

I feel stable. And that feels good.

But stability tends not to last.

There’s a problem with Substack, and I want to be open and clear about it. And I want your input on how to best deal with it.

A screenshot from Wolfenstein 3D

Last Year

Back in November, The Atlantic wrote a piece called ‘Substack Has a Nazi Problem’ in which journalist Jonathan Katz pointed out that Substack had a number of Nazi newsletters on its platform.

In many ways, this wasn’t exactly a revelation. Nazis — the worst of the worst, the absolute pits, people that I wish I didn’t share this Earth with — are everywhere on the internet. Go through most comment sections on the internet (Webworm aside, thankfully) and eventually you’ll find a Nazi saying horrific shit.

This news of white supremacy newsletters also arrived with some other background noise — because for a while I’d been aware that a bunch of other shitty newsletters existed on Substack. Newsletters that are openly transphobic (and exist only to be transphobic), and newsletters full of other things I try to combat here on Webworm like QAnon rubbish and Covid health misinformation.

I was aware of this content, but I wasn’t particularly stressed by it — because to exist on the internet in any way means sharing spaces with horrific people. I mean, we share this fucking planet with horrific people.

I felt somewhat comfortable (comfortable is perhaps the wrong word, but it sort of works) because unlike Facebook and Twitter, Substack wasn’t a social network. The horrible newsletters existed in their own vacuum. They weren't algorithmically pushed down your throat.

So I did what I always do: I put my head down and kept on with it. Every job I’ve had in the media I’ve had to work alongside assholes who say dumb shit. And generally I keep my head down and get on with my own stuff because what else can you do.

The Shift

In April last year, Substack set out to become a social network.

It launched an App (which I love) with a Twitter clone called Notes. It also started algorithmically suggesting other newsletters for people to read. Suddenly — those nazi, anti-trans and conspiracy newsletters had a way, in theory, to grow.

In short — if Webworm could grow using these social tools (and Webworm has, at times) then these objectively horrible newsletters could too.

On top of this, Substack has always taken a hands-off approach to moderation. A slightly puzzling one, because while nudity and pornography is banned, Nazis apparently aren’t.

And so when this Nazi news landed, I reached out to fellow Kiwi (and now my friend) Hamish McKenzie in a giant long email to ask what was going on. I found it puzzling that tits and ass would be banned here, but Nazis were OK.

(I’d rather look at tits and ass than Nazi content, for the record.)

I agreed to keep our conversation off the record, so he’d feel comfortable replying during what was no doubt a stressful time. I wasn’t the only lefty liberal banging at their door, as over 200 Substack writers published open letters about the service hosting Nazi writers.

Hamish replied kindly, openly, and honestly — laying out his thoughts in real-time. I agreed to keep those off-record, but they were essentially refined and whittled down in a public post he made on December 22, which boiled down to:

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.

Our content guidelines do have narrowly defined proscriptions, including a clause that prohibits incitements to violence. We will continue to actively enforce those rules while offering tools that let readers curate their own experiences and opt in to their preferred communities.

In short — zero Nazi newsletters were kicked off, because apparently Nazi stuff does not equal “incitements to violence.”

(I tend to disagree with this — violence and death of an entire people is all Nazis are about.)

While many celebrated Hamish’s “hands-off” approach to moderation, many — including me — did not. The fact that Nazis were allowed to exist on Substack was shitty.

The Nazi bar analogy comes to mind. Loosely paraphrased from the original Tweets by @iamragesparkle: You’re in a nice bar with your friends, and a Nazi turns up. The bartender doesn’t kick them out immediately, so the next week that Nazi brings another Nazi. And then one day you’re at your favourite bar and you look around… and it’s just Nazis. And you realise you’re at a Nazi bar.

And then you have to leave.

Last Week

Hamish and Substack finally listened to the feedback from writers, and on January 9, as reported by fellow newsletter Platformer, some of those Nazi Substacks were booted.

“Substack is removing some publications that express support for Nazis, the company said today. The company said this did not represent a reversal of its previous stance, but rather the result of reconsidering how it interprets its existing policies.

As part of the move, the company is also terminating the accounts of several publications that endorse Nazi ideology and that Platformer flagged to the company for review last week.”

This was great. The rest of the Substack’s approach felt… weak.

“The company will not change the text of its content policy, it says, and its new policy interpretation will not include proactively removing content related to neo-Nazis and far-right extremism.

But Substack will continue to remove any material that includes “credible threats of physical harm”.

You can read more of Substack’s take here.

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I Want To Know What You Think

For the last few months, I have been talking to Hamish at Substack. I have been talking to other writers on Substack, and I have been talking to friends and colleagues.

A big part of me wanted to ignore all of this. I still do! For some reading this, it’ll be the first they’ve heard of it. I personally have never been dished up horrific stuff by Substack — my experience has been nothing but positive. And I can’t help but factor in that personal experience. But then when I go home to visit my old dad and he says “Are those Nazis a problem for you?” then maybe the issue is more widely known than I imagined.

I feel a certain allegiance to Substack, because it’s allowed me a new life, and new opportunities. It’s meant more financial freedom, and helped me foster this community.

The platform and technology of Substack makes writing and creating Webworm incredibly stress-free. I don’t need to worry about email lists or tech support — I just write. They’ve enrolled me in their Substack Defender Program, which means if legal shit really goes off the rails they may come in to bat for me. When a reader accidentally gifted Webworm $36,000, I refunded it all immediately but was left with $4500 in processing fees. Stripe (the payment system behind Webworm) refused to do anything significant to help — but Substack took it on the chin and credited me that amount back in full.

“Uh oh.”

Substack have already listened to feedback and kicked a bunch of Nazis off. There is a world where Substack keeps listening, and chooses to do more to actively moderate who writes (and gets paid!) using their platform. People moan a lot about moderation, but to be honest it’s not that fucking hard. Webworm has a moderation policy, and at times I enforce it!

There are alternatives to Substack — places like Ghost and Beehiiv. Both those platforms have a more active moderation process, and Nazi content is not welcome at all. Those platforms also, to my knowledge, do not have a social media aspect. They are not pushing writers’ content onto anyone. You have to find it yourself.

I’m aware that if I do move to another service, there is no guarantee they won’t do things I deem as “bad” or “shitty”, too. As I said earlier, every job I’ve had has had me working alongside other people who sometimes have shitty ideas.

I am actively researching what is possible — and if there is a world where I can seamlessly shift Webworm over onto a new platform, then I may well do it. I want to make sure that there is no noticeable change for you if I do this — that Webworm just slides into your inbox as usual, and you get involved in the comments like any other day.

I also want to make sure I don’t muck it up for myself, where suddenly paying Webworm members who let me do my job are suddenly not able to pay, and I sort of accidentally fire myself overnight.

To be clear — I am keeping a laser focus, as best I can, as to what is going on in the wider Substack universe. Things may improve — or they may get worse. And to be even clearer there is a point where I will take Webworm elsewhere no matter what anyone thinks!

But I wanted to be fully transparent where I am at, and I wanted to get your input on this. Some of you use the Substack app, some of you read a bunch of other newsletters — and I’d like to know what you think.

You are as much Webworm as I am, and so as I work through this process I want to know where your head's at.

I feel confident about whatever happens, because Webworm is YOU — and as long as I have you, Webworm can keep doing its thing wherever that is.

See you in the comments,

David.