Hey there, my Mightier cousin. I'm so sorry to see you take this step. I appreciate your reasoning and deeply respect your priorities. Be well, my friend. There's always a place for you here should you choose to return.
I remember considering it very seriously that winter of 2023 to spring 2024. Instead of leaving, I decided to stay. The stance of the Substack founders isn't something I agree with and, as you say, can certainly be seen as inconsistent.
In contrast, X and Meta have taken an assertive stance on the wrong side of my politics. Their announcements after our US inauguration drove me to withdraw from all of their platforms completely. I described the changes on Projectkin.org/social.
The experience of considering politics and my work on Projectkin has prompted me to think more deeply about what I'm trying to accomplish and why I'm here. My focus for Projectkin is very different from yours. For the most part, I'm not using this publication to talk about my own stories. Instead, I focus on encouraging others to tell their stories.
My first loyalty is to my subscribers, not to Substack. I'm using the platform to its fullest extent because it's the best option I have at the best price. While their media features have become vital to my community, it's the exit ramp I treasure most.
Ensuring portability takes some effort, all of which is not unlike the kind of preservation habits we try to encourage in Projectkin programming. I generally try to...
- Focus my investment in posts over notes. Notes are not readily exportable.
- Build a routine for exporting my current subscriber list
- Create a routine for backing up posts (particularly those massive videos).
Next, in this highly polarized era, I do a couple of things to manage myself and how I run my live events for Projectkin.
Will you share details of your new home? We'll want to be sure to follow you there, too. 👋
I'm working on updating links in my archived posts so our cross-posts and collaborations display properly. I will probably cross-post for a while to help people who want to migrate with me find the new place, so stay tuned!
I am sorry to see you go from here but I respect your choice in deciding to do so. I have subscribed to your WP blog and will look out for you on BluSky. I recently ditched my Mastodon because I just wasn't keeping up with everything. Best wishes!
I still follow a few bloggers on Wordpress, but I don’t post on there anymore. I’ll add you to my list for future reference. Thank you for your support of Substack.
I love the United States and our Constitution. I live in New England, and the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress, and the Constitution were taught extensively in my schools. It breaks my heart that Freedom of Speech is not being taught anymore.
I don't like Nazis. I don't like name-calling. I don't like curse words. I think sexual intercourse should be private, and I don't like seeing it on TV. But others don't feel the same way. And that's the great thing about the Constitution. Just because I don't like it, I don't have the right to force others to abide by my values and opinions and to shut up about their own. We have freedom of expression, we do not have freedom from being offended. We do have the freedom not to listen and the freedom to walk away.
So hate speech is protected. Disinformation is protected. Pornography (with some exceptions) is protected. Because of those freedoms, our country has changed for the better. (Think Civil Rights Movement -- their opponents would argue they were engaged in hate speech and disinformation.)
I applaud Substack for making the hard choice to allow everyone their say, no matter how ugly it is, and I'm sad to see Mightier Acorns leave because they don't want to be associated with the ugly voices. And because of our Constitution, Mightier Acorns is free to do that, free to share their reasoning with others, and free to encourage others to leave Substack. In some countries and regimes, the author would be punished for dissent.
Just to be clear - Substack is not allowing *everyone* to have their say. They are simply choosing not to enforce their own policies against the people using their platform to undermine the government and contribute to the spread of domestic terrorism. They still enforce their rules against some people - just not those people. They are profiting from those people.
The people I choose not to associate with (a First Amendment protection, for now) are actively pursuing an agenda called Project 2025 in which they use their power over the Russian intelligence asset illegally occupying the White House to strip away the rights you and I treasure. None of this is a secret, and none of this is new. It has been going on for decades.
Substack, as a private company, has the right to associate with whomever they like. They have chosen the wrong side. And because they have done so, there is a higher chance that authors like me will be punished for my dissent.
I wish it were just a matter of ugly voices. I can handle ugly. I edit for a horror fiction podcast, after all. But there is something much worse than ugly. It goes beyond having a difference of opinion; we now have different realities.
And my conscience tells me I need to take this step so I'm not contributing to the decline.
Hey there, my Mightier cousin. I'm so sorry to see you take this step. I appreciate your reasoning and deeply respect your priorities. Be well, my friend. There's always a place for you here should you choose to return.
I remember considering it very seriously that winter of 2023 to spring 2024. Instead of leaving, I decided to stay. The stance of the Substack founders isn't something I agree with and, as you say, can certainly be seen as inconsistent.
In contrast, X and Meta have taken an assertive stance on the wrong side of my politics. Their announcements after our US inauguration drove me to withdraw from all of their platforms completely. I described the changes on Projectkin.org/social.
The experience of considering politics and my work on Projectkin has prompted me to think more deeply about what I'm trying to accomplish and why I'm here. My focus for Projectkin is very different from yours. For the most part, I'm not using this publication to talk about my own stories. Instead, I focus on encouraging others to tell their stories.
My first loyalty is to my subscribers, not to Substack. I'm using the platform to its fullest extent because it's the best option I have at the best price. While their media features have become vital to my community, it's the exit ramp I treasure most.
Ensuring portability takes some effort, all of which is not unlike the kind of preservation habits we try to encourage in Projectkin programming. I generally try to...
- Focus my investment in posts over notes. Notes are not readily exportable.
- Build a routine for exporting my current subscriber list
- Create a routine for backing up posts (particularly those massive videos).
Next, in this highly polarized era, I do a couple of things to manage myself and how I run my live events for Projectkin.
Will you share details of your new home? We'll want to be sure to follow you there, too. 👋
Thank you so much for your support!
I'm working on updating links in my archived posts so our cross-posts and collaborations display properly. I will probably cross-post for a while to help people who want to migrate with me find the new place, so stay tuned!
I am sorry to see you go from here but I respect your choice in deciding to do so. I have subscribed to your WP blog and will look out for you on BluSky. I recently ditched my Mastodon because I just wasn't keeping up with everything. Best wishes!
I follow you on Mastodon and although it apparently has a smaller user base than Bluesky I consistently get more engagement there.
Hopefully I can do a better job of being over there, since WP lets me auto-post to BSky and Mastodon!
Thanks for reading!
Which method do you use for auto-posting?
WP has several social media widgets and customizations... I found it buried in a Sharing menu.
I still follow a few bloggers on Wordpress, but I don’t post on there anymore. I’ll add you to my list for future reference. Thank you for your support of Substack.
I love the United States and our Constitution. I live in New England, and the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress, and the Constitution were taught extensively in my schools. It breaks my heart that Freedom of Speech is not being taught anymore.
I don't like Nazis. I don't like name-calling. I don't like curse words. I think sexual intercourse should be private, and I don't like seeing it on TV. But others don't feel the same way. And that's the great thing about the Constitution. Just because I don't like it, I don't have the right to force others to abide by my values and opinions and to shut up about their own. We have freedom of expression, we do not have freedom from being offended. We do have the freedom not to listen and the freedom to walk away.
So hate speech is protected. Disinformation is protected. Pornography (with some exceptions) is protected. Because of those freedoms, our country has changed for the better. (Think Civil Rights Movement -- their opponents would argue they were engaged in hate speech and disinformation.)
I applaud Substack for making the hard choice to allow everyone their say, no matter how ugly it is, and I'm sad to see Mightier Acorns leave because they don't want to be associated with the ugly voices. And because of our Constitution, Mightier Acorns is free to do that, free to share their reasoning with others, and free to encourage others to leave Substack. In some countries and regimes, the author would be punished for dissent.
Just to be clear - Substack is not allowing *everyone* to have their say. They are simply choosing not to enforce their own policies against the people using their platform to undermine the government and contribute to the spread of domestic terrorism. They still enforce their rules against some people - just not those people. They are profiting from those people.
The people I choose not to associate with (a First Amendment protection, for now) are actively pursuing an agenda called Project 2025 in which they use their power over the Russian intelligence asset illegally occupying the White House to strip away the rights you and I treasure. None of this is a secret, and none of this is new. It has been going on for decades.
Substack, as a private company, has the right to associate with whomever they like. They have chosen the wrong side. And because they have done so, there is a higher chance that authors like me will be punished for my dissent.
I wish it were just a matter of ugly voices. I can handle ugly. I edit for a horror fiction podcast, after all. But there is something much worse than ugly. It goes beyond having a difference of opinion; we now have different realities.
And my conscience tells me I need to take this step so I'm not contributing to the decline.