Politics | Recovery | Current Obsessions
Neutrality isn't safety. It's shelter.
On Monday, Substack sent out a push notification promoting a Nazi newsletter: NatSocToday. Yes, that’s what it’s called. (H/t to Taylor Lorenz for breaking the story.)
We don’t know exactly why the content was pushed; Lorenz pointed out that publishers generally tailor alerts to material a user is likely to engage with. I doubt someone at Substack chose to promote NatSocToday. In some ways, it would be better for Substack if that were the case. That’s a content moderation issue with a single point of failure.
If it was algorithmically selected, then something like NatSocToday popping up on an unsuspecting lock screen is going to happen again. The coders may learn to screen better for specific terms, but they won’t be able to stop serving up outrage. As I wrote last month, Substack’s inflated valuation and over-promised funding means it has to pretend it's a tech company—chasing engagement, courting polarizing voices, and treating neutrality as a growth hack.
Besides, NatSocToday isn't even the real problem. A deeper concern is how Substack’s self-congratulatory stance on free speech (“We don’t think...demonetizing publications makes the problem go away; in fact, it makes it worse”) has made it a playground for nefarious discourse engineers.
This week, Mother Jones published a deep investigation showing how amateur historian Darryl Cooper has pursued a careful career arc over the past 10 years: He’s gone from guest spots on avowed Nazi podcasts to becoming the proprietor of Substack’s most popular history newsletter, with 172,000 subscribers. (If even five percent are paying subscribers, that’s revenue of ~$400k/year.)
According to MJ, a username traced to Cooper regularly commented on the white supremacist website Counter-Currents. Writing in 2016, they said:
"A movement like this needs to operate at various levels, from the intellectual core (that remains terrifying and offensive to the general population right up until the big shift), on up to covert supporters slipping occasional language and subversive information into conversation and normie media."
Substack is how Cooper is "slipping occasional language and subversive information into conversation and normie media."
Though he’s become more subtle in his commentary than when he appeared on shows like Rebel Yell, Cooper’s views are clear. He has blamed WWII on Churchill and Churchill’s alleged ties to “financiers” and a “media complex” supportive of Zionism. More explosively, he’s suggested that the Nazis simply didn’t mean to commit genocide — they were just “completely unprepared to deal with the millions and millions of prisoners of war.”
He’s repulsive. And Substack can’t afford to lose him.
Cooper is thriving in Substack’s “intellectual dark web” reactionary ecosystem, a group that includes The Free Press1, Matt Taibbi2, Andrew Sullivan3, and Michael Shellenberger4. Proclamations about heterodoxy and self-congratulatory stands against "cancel culture" have given Cooper cover, and Substack churns forward.
The same engagement-first polarization spiral that has made everything worse and still threatens democracy is Substack’s business model. They promised journalists independence but they’re optimizing for oligarchs.
I’m not calling for a boycott. Terrific writers are doing important work on Substack (including Taylor Lorenz!).
But creators: Consider separating yourself now — or not starting there in the first place. It will only get harder to leave. Any unease you feel is your sign to act.
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