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The Substack app sent a push notification promoting a Nazi newsletter to several users.
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this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2025
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It's almost like Substack has a Nazi problem and has for years.
Stop pretending substack isn't a Nazi platform, because they actively support Nazi propaganda on their site and have refused to take it down or commit to keeping it off their platform.
Substack is run by Nazi supporters at the very least, which should be enough for people to flee in droves, but more people are ok with Nazis than we want to admit.
Yes, this has come up repeatedly over the years.
The problem is that it is really the only viable platform for independent articles/blogs these days. That is already a ridiculously small potential audience (people who can read AND people who are willing to pay for content). Cutting out the one platform that got any traction is as good as quitting.
It is similar to why businesses (which is what we are talking about) couldn't leave twitter until like a year and a half ago or whenever bluesky went open sign ups. Yeah, it is a platform owned by nazis and infested with them but... it is also the only way to advertise said businesses and have any hope of surviving. That said, once bluesky gained traction there is absolutely zero reason to not, at the very least, diversify (preferably dropping musknet entirely).
For Substack? Ghost is an increasingly viable platform. But just look around here for any time someone posts a link to a 404 media article and you get "Ugh. Fucking scammers want to rugpull and steal all my personal information" for... wanting ANY email to be used for a free account to just limit the impact of bot/ai scraping.
Its less that "more people are ok with Nazis than we want to admit"... especially considering many of the people on substack are talking about said fucking Nazis. The problem is that "fewer people are willing to support independent media than we want to admit". It is the same logic of "if I like a youtube channel I'll give them money on their patreon" that is patently flawed.
I use Ghost for my blog and don't have any trackers nor do I require emails.
So I wouldn't attribute that to Ghost but rather attribute it to 404Media.
That said, I disagree, there are blogging platforms other than Substack. Sub stack is just the current popular choice and people are too lazy to move unless they personally have a problem.
Unfortunately blogging next to Nazi propaganda isn't a problem for those people.
I don't want to create a fucking account on every single fucking website I enter to read a shit article about some random bullshit
That's just making the internet even shittier place than it already is. Telling your readers to eat a hatful because scrapers are not respecting robots.txt? Please step on lego
404 media doesn't make you create an account, they just send you a link to your email, but having to create a throwaway email every time so they can't track what I read is a hassle I just don't care enough for. I'll either skip the article or use a proxy.
So true, but I think Patreon will be the place to submit my articles. I deleted my Substack over this. You can make your post free and offer paid teirs what I do.
Good on you even if I hate Patreon's usability for just about anything
But if you haven't already, I would recommend doing some research about why so many writers/creators have stuck with substack. I want to say Aaron Rupar actually talked about this and I would be shocked if the 404/Aftermath crews didn't. I remember reading and basically nodding my head and acknowledging it was all way above my head but... these are the people who would both know and care.
Yeah but it would require me to go to Substack and I won't do that.
How does it compare to lemmy?
Lemmy has a tankie problem, but I rather deal with tankies over nazis.
It's also federated. Which instance has a tankie problem? Which instance has a Nazi problem?
Lemmy.ml and hexbear have tankie problems. Thankfully it’s easy to block instances. I’m not aware of any instance that got Nazi problems.
There are plenty of Nazi instances, but most non-Nazi instances share a common blocklist and don't federate with them.
Oh yeah, I agree. I blocked hexbear, but not .ml yet. I'm still willing to argue with that group. It's just saying "lemmy" has a Nazi problem is like saying email has a Nazi problem.
There's some nazi instances like explodingheads or whatever, but everyone has and continues to defederate from them instantly so it's not much of a problem for users.
There used to be some extreme right wing instance but it instantly got defederated by everyone
It’s primarily the Tankie Triad; That’s .ml, hexbear, and lemmygrad.ml. To a lesser extent, some people also include lemm.ee too. The reason tankies are so widespread on non-communist posts is because .ml is the Lemmy dev’s home instance. So if you want to see updates for lemmy’s development, you need to federate with .ml. Which means even non-tankie instances are inevitably exposed to all of the tankieposting.
Tankies call me a Zionist because I’m Jewish but Nazis pose an existential threat to me. I’ll take dumbass tankies.
Some people struggle to make the split between religious people and religious extremists.
Not all Muslims are part of ISIS, not all Jews are Zionists. I don't know what's so difficult.
How are they better? To me both are like cancer, perhaps brain vs heart tumor, pretty much just as bad.
One is definitely racist.
Communism has noble goals, even if the tankies advocate self-defeating ways of achieving these goals. I'm not aware of any noble goals behind Nazism or any kind of fascism. That, to me, puts even the most infuriating tankie above any Nazi.
Unlike tankies, Nazis actually do things in real life, beyond socializing in their niche internet forums
Good point!
Lemmy's federated structure makes it easy to block the instances which don't moderate the nazis or tankies or anything else away to your satisfaction, while Substack is a centralized platform which has chosen to not only allow, but actively encourage and reward its nazis.
So, any such problem on Lemmy is "better" because we can all (as individual users, and/or collectively as instances) deal with it as we like instead of bowing to Substack's decision to be a nazi bar for all its users.
I've never seen open support for Nazis being left up after being reported on instances that haven't been defederated, so it's better without question.
Lemmy is more like Reddit than Substack. Ghost would be the Substack equivalent.