Is Substack over?
Thoughts on the slow death of Substack and why I am pausing paid subscriptions
I’d wager that most of you who are not really active on Substack are clueless about the rumblings going on under the hood here, so I figured I’d try to explain it as best I can and what all this means for my future on here.
Effective March 1, I am pausing all paid subscriptions.
This means (and you’ll have to bear with me as I am not 100-percent certain how all of this works), that paid subscribers won’t be charged anything any more unless I decide to un-pause.
And unless radical change occurs within the company (that is highly unlikely), I have no plans to do that. In fact, I may remove the option for paid subscriptions altogether but I need more time to contemplate everything and to plan for the fallout. More on that in a bit.
So, what the hell is going on??
A lot.
In a nutshell, despite having a weak salsa TOS, Substack turns a blind eye to neo-nazis and misogynists. Not only that but they profit from them as well. As a company, they are effectively ignoring pleas from countless women to enforce their own rules on sexual harassment, violence and hate.
You can read a good article about everything here:
Unfortunately, this is not a new problem on Substack. The Atlantic covered it back in 2023 with their article titled “Substack Has a Nazi Problem.” And sure enough, they do.
Despite having the national spotlight shined on them for monetizing hate, Substack’s response was to do nothing about it. Their silence on the issue speaks volumes and their profiting from it is insulting.
And when I say neo-nazis, I mean literal neo-nazis; the kind that are banned almost everywhere else except for StormFront and X. Substack makes money off of these people and they hide behind the curtain of “free speech” while doing it.
As a company that is often in the tech news sector for being “innovative,” they are allowing men to endlessly harass and torment women with threats of rape, murder and deep fake revenge porn. One of Substack’s “best sellers” writes rape fic for a living and uses homophobic and misogynistic slurs if that tells you anything about who is running the company and their values.
People are obviously upset and clamoring for Substack to do something but they are running up against a brick wall, which is par for the course at this point.
Honestly, it’s interesting to me to see so many people just now waking up to the fact that the people who run Substack are not good people. That realization happened to me last year.
In 2025, after learning about Substack being a neo-nazi safe haven and receiving several hate comments myself, I wrote to the Anti-Defamation League in hopes that they would investigate. They sent me a form letter instead and said they would refer my complaint to their Center on Extremism for further review. That was the last I heard from them.
That said, the ADL did publish an article on how hate thrives and profits on Substack back in 2023, about the same time The Atlantic did their article.
Substack makes it obvious that they couldn’t care less about this kind of press.
In the article, the ADL provides some hard numbers on prominent alt right and neo nazis who profit and spread hate on Substack. For example, the notorious “Libs of TikTok,” who spews hate like rancid, poison candy, has over 151,000 subscribers with “thousands of paid subscriptions.”
Whereas “Libs of TikTok” was banned and censored elsewhere, she thrives and profits on Substack. She’s a verified, badge-displaying “best seller” on Substack and that should tell you everything you need to know about not only Substack but many of its paying users.
That, my friends, is why Substack will not do a goddamn thing to help you or me. They only thing they give a fuck about is profit, period, and if that comes from nazis or rapists, so be it.
Personally, I think the people running the company have already doomed it to failure and that it’s only a matter of time before it’s sold or goes under. Many people are considering leaving Substack and removing their paid subscriptions in protest.
As admirable as that is, unless some of big earners and celebrities on Substack participate in the protest, Substack will never give a shit.
That doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do but it is a reality check for those of you expecting to nudge them in the right direction with morality — they have none.
So, what happens now?
Well, regular people who aren’t making a living on Substack need to decide if Substack is even worth fighting for, knowing full well that the owners are nazi enablers, rape apologists and profiteers, and that they will never have their back. Or…decide if it’s time to abandon ship.
Where does that leave me? I honestly don’t know yet. It requires more careful thought but, as I mentioned before, I am pausing payments because if Substack is going to continue to profit from these folks, then I choose not to contribute to that. It really is that simple.
People have to draw the line somewhere. In solidarity, and also in response to Substack ignoring this issue for years, I refuse to contribute to their bottom line until they fix the issue or until I go elsewhere.
For the time being, I am leaving my coffee tip jar open, even though the people running that company are not much better. I will likely switch to a better donation platform but again, I need time to shift and move all this shit around. But if you still feel like supporting what I do, you can always leave a tip in the jar.
All of this has been exhausting and caused me to reflect on my journey on Substack. There are so many things going on right now in my own world OFF of Substack, that this is the last thing I needed to worry about.
Honestly, it feels rather stagnated at this point and that largely has to do with the company forcing it to be something or than what it was created as.
I have been looking at the websites several writers have created recently and it’s making me want to switch back to a singular website and just keep the coffee donations open.
If I do that, I will likely still be on Substack but probably only to network and bullshit. We shall see. If anything, writing on here has netted more than enough material for a few books.
Stay tuned.
Sarlos
Wow thank you for sharing this! It’s really insightful
Hi Sarlos, I knew about the nazi issue, and that has been enough to send me looking for an alternative, but I did not know about the misogyny and the rape lit. There is such deliberate manufactured 'confusion' between free speech and hate speech these days, when really, it is quite simple. No decent business should be profiting off the latter. That Substack chooses to do so tells us so much about them as human beings, and it is not a system I choose to support. I don't have many paid subscribers, so Substack will not miss me in the slightest, but if we left in droves, they'd have to rethink, right? I dont think my paid subscribers would want their money supporting naziism and misogyny either. Best of luck to you!