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A note on Ghost as an alternative. I've used Ghost for my newsletter for years now and their customer service has always been super responsive whenever I've needed something. I was trying to figure out, a ways back, how to format a poetry post and they helped me with it, across several emails.

it's really upsetting the number of progressives who feel that they can't afford to leave substack bc they'd lose their huge audiences. I get that it's daunting, but braving the loss of a platform is the LEAST you can do. And eventually your huge audience will dwindle anyway bc *they* all left.

For free options, both Medium and WordPress let you do a newsletter for free, and both have been around a lot longer than Substack and are cashflow positive.

The Buttondown guy is super responsive, too, if you ever have questions!

I urge people to get a domain and post content they can control

Thank you for this. There are several people I like and respect who still post there. Every once in a while when they post links from their substack, I ask them if they post elsewhere so I can read it there as I won’t support that platform.

X in particular is irredeemable also because it's deeply unsafe. It serves as a harassment vector. Get off.

i'm heartened each time i see a new blog and it's on Ghost or some other platform that's not Substack. Ghost exists, they have steps to move off Substack if anyone wants to take that step!

Not to defend Substack—I have a low circulation, very occasional travel thing there—but I never found it pushes readers past the particular author you sought out. I think of it as a tool, not a platform. I wish they had kept it that way instead of adding clunky social media gimmicks.