Substack Is Not a Neutral Platform
The newsletter platform is the latest tech company to turn a blind eye to anti-trans arguments
Last weekend, I announced my intent to abandon Substack. I surprised myself a little with the decision. I like my newsletter. I had content scheduled for two or three months in advance. I had been on the platform since early 2018, when I was recruited by co-founder Hamish McKenzie, who promised me that Toast founders Daniel Lavery and Nicole Cliffe were satisfied users. Yet, over the past several months, I had watched as the platform morphed into a haven for online transphobia, and when I hit my limit, I hit it hard.
The names on Substack now — Glenn Greenwald, Andrew Sullivan, Bari Weiss, Katie Herzog, Jesse Singal, Graham Linehan, Freddie de Boer — are a world away from the ones McKenzie used to sell me on the service, and, though their politics differ, they are seemingly united in their contempt for “identity politics,” “wokeness,” and “cancel culture,” terms which often translate as “trans people talking back to cis people.” Herzog, Singal and Linehan in particular are dedicated to spreading transphobic rhetoric through their work, and Singal and Linehan use their platforms in a such a way as to operate as “harassment influencers,” naming individual trans people who then get swarmed by their…
