Substack touts itself as an alternative to toxic, ad-driven social media, but many of its top earners are polarizing figures who were deplatformed elsewhere
The company's CEO says the old way of social media is broken—but is his alternative much different? Tweets: @kantrowitz , @glennf , @ggreenwald , @rasmus_kleis , @aishagani , @wired , @wired , @carnage4life , and @jessesingal See also Mediagazer Tweets: Alex Kantrowitz / @kantrowitz : Bizarre lede. Weiss and Greenwald both quit their publications over ideological disputes. Absurd to call that “deplatforming.” And it's certainly not a loss of a job. https://www.wired.co.uk/... https://twitter.com/... Glenn Fleishman / @glennf : The head of Substack sees his platform as lacking an ability to make “decisions” about misinformation, the. labels Alex Berenson's outright fabrications a form of public-health policy. https://www.wired.co.uk/... Glenn Greenwald / @ggreenwald : It's hard to count how many false claims this story has. https://twitter.com/... Rasmus Kleis Nielsen / @rasmus_kleis : “The digital media economy reinforces the already very strong winner-takes-most dynamics that exist in the media marketplace ... This is a blockbuster economy [and] most of us aren't blockbusters.” Talked Substack, platforms and more with @stokel @WiredUK https://www.wired.co.uk/... Aisha S Gani / @aishagani : Substack's CEO says social media is broken. And while his company isn't reliant on algorithms and advertising money, it is at least partially reliant on the popularity of writers who have been banned or cast adrift elsewhere: https://www.wired.co.uk/... @wired : The company's CEO says the old way of social media is broken—but is his alternative much different? https://www.wired.com/... @wired : Social media broke journalism, and Substack is here to save it. But is the platform all that revolutionary? Or is it just doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past in a zeitgeisty disguise? https://www.wired.co.uk/... Via @WIREDUK Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : It's particularly ironic that Substack positioned itself as the alternative to “ad-supported, attention-monster social media feeds” only to become the place where people banned from Twitter earn six figures for spreading vaccine misinformation & other lies https://www.wired.co.uk/... Jesse Singal / @jessesingal : This is such a strange story! So many very, very distinct things are being carelessly confused and conflated! Substack Discourse is one of the lamest discourses and it feels like it will never end. https://www.wired.co.uk/... See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
Substack had already argued that opt-in newsletters required less moderation because readers choose what they receive, while its founders maintained it was a platform rather than a media company in a prior account of its hands-off model. Its later choice to pay selected writers nevertheless made platform-building an editorial decision about which writing to support.
The story tests that distinction: Substack markets a reader-funded alternative to ad-driven feeds, yet its revenue and attention are tied in part to polarizing writers displaced from other services. The dispute over whether particular departures count as deplatforming sharpens the question of how the company characterizes that role.
First-order effects
- Substack’s claim to avoid misinformation judgments is placed under direct pressure by criticism that prominent earners can monetize controversial material on the service.
- Writers who lost distribution elsewhere gain a subscription-funded route to audiences, making Substack’s creator roster central to its public identity rather than merely a neutral hosting function.
Second-order effects
- Substack’s paid-writer strategy becomes harder to separate from editorial stewardship: selecting and financially supporting creators exposes the company to scrutiny over the content ecosystem it is building.
- Twitter’s moderation choices can redirect both writers and audience revenue toward subscription platforms, while those platforms inherit the reputational disputes attached to those creators.
Third-order effects
- Subscription publishing platforms may find that direct payment removes dependence on advertising without removing governance trade-offs, because creator selection and monetization still shape what speech is amplified.
- The durable fault line is whether opt-in distribution justifies lighter platform responsibility; Substack’s model makes that claim a competitive differentiator and a source of trust risk.
The trend: Creator-subscription platforms are recasting moderation disputes as questions of writer independence, even as their funding and curation choices make neutrality harder to sustain.