Deciding to Move

Substack has shown they can't be trusted

It feels like ages ago, but Elon Musk only bought Twitter two and a half years ago. Twitter was never my favorite platform, but most of my online friends were there, and the company tried not to be the worst (with more failures than successes, to be honest).

By 2023, it was glaringly obvious that whatever Twitter had been, it was going to be made intentionally worse, and so, like many of you, I abandoned it. But where to move to was not an easy question to answer.

Among the many upstart platforms that benefited from the millions leaving Twitter/X, Substack made a lot of sense to me as a place to go. My family history blog had been on Blogger for about a decade, but I hadn’t been writing there since publishing my book project, and it was ready for a refresh. So, on 4 October 2023, I re-launched Mightier Acorns on Substack.

And, of course, a month later, Substack’s decision not to enforce their terms of service on white nationalist and anti-democracy content (while still enforcing terms of service against other kinds of content, like that of sex workers) turned into a movement to dump Substack.¹

Some writers I respected (like The Reframe) made compelling arguments to leave, while others (like Ken White of Popehat) convinced me to take a “wait and see” approach. But in December 2023, Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie put their decision out here, and this is where they remain:

In the two years since, my Substack audience has steadily grown, and I have found a community of fellow genealogy writers that is encouraging and supportive. I was reluctant to make the move to another platform, and I was struggling to find one that met my needs and wouldn’t eat up my time. So my “wait and see” period continued.

Substack has also grown explosively as journalists have fled or been pushed out of mainstream media to start platforms where they can reach their audiences directly. And there was an election which has resulted in what can only realistically be described as a coup as the executive branch claims powers it does not have, issues unlawful orders that keep getting struck down in the courts, and then threatens the legistlative and judicial branches and individual states with violence.

And all this time, I kept hoping that Substack would revisit its decision and enforce its terms of service. That has not happened.

Meanwhile, I have become increasingly aware that continuing to write on Substack is alienating the part of my audience that I care most about. When I share my posts outside of Substack’s walled garden, I not only don’t get the engagement I am looking for, but I get another response from those who are willing to tell me why they aren’t coming to see what I write: “Substack is a Nazi bar, and I won’t be a patron.”

Substack is a business. They don’t have to cater to the whim of every minor user, and that’s fine to a point. But they have shown that they are more interested in profiting from the people who are engaged in overthrowing the country my ancestors and I swore to defend, and while I’m too small for them to care, my conscience won’t allow me to continue to be a patron.

If You Would Like To Come With Me…

I have begun a process of migrating my archives from Substack to WordPress, and I launched my site yesterday: mightieracorns.wordpress.com

I barely know what I’m doing, and I am learning as I go, but my plan is to take a short break from writing new posts during this transition, and return to a twice-weekly schedule later this summer. I tried to import my subscriber list so that current subscribers wouldn’t notice an interruption, but I have limits on my account, and (since I don’t know what I’m doing) I may not be able to add you all.

If you want to come with me, it will help me out a lot if you will visit the new site and click the Subscribe button over there.

There are still a lot of decisions for me to make, many I haven’t thought of, yet.

But the point is, I can’t stay here. I certainly won’t judge anyone who does stay—but eventually, I will be deleting this account, and after that, I will stop seeing your content.

Thank you to everyone who has been so supportive an encouraging. I wish we lived in less disruptive times, but here we are.

I will probably be posting shorter and more informative reminders until I leave for good—and you can always ask questions. My Gmail will remain “MightierAcorns” and I’m staying on Bluesky (@tadmaster.bsky.social) and Mastodon (@mightieracorns on genealysis.social).

Don’t be a stranger, cousin!

1. Katz, Jonathan M., The Atlantic, “Substack Has a Nazi Problem”, November 28, 2023.