My Journey on Substack

And why it ended.

When I started in August, I was super excited to enter this space. I found a welcoming, thoughtful, and knowledgeable community almost immediately. 

To continue my growth, I made some stretch goals for myself to stay motivated, They included but were not limited to: 

make $500 in writing in the first year

try to get at least 100 subscribers by the end of 2023

write for me - as a joyful exercise - and hope it resonates with others. 

Keep going - this was an especially important goal for me, as I tend to start things and wander. (ADHD.) 

My goals for writing and for me personally have changed substantially in the last few weeks. 

As many of you know, there has been an on going dialogue about Substacks platform, who should be able to utilize/monetize it, and how substack moderates, and promotes various users. Specifically white supremacist, anti-semitic, xenophobic speech and literal Nazi’s. Links are all over substack, and in my previous posts, so I don’t find the need to re-hash. 

This morning Substack leadership doubled down on their moderation approach, which is to say, they aren’t willing to limit hate speech, will not demonetize those accounts and seem to believe that if more people read and engage with these folks they can somehow moderate them. I don’t agree. 

My goals now have changed to migrating off this site as quickly as I can move my writings. 

Effective immediately, I will be no longer offering a paid subscription, I will not continue to profit share with this company. 

I will continue to write, but it will take me some time to find a platform that will work for my needs. Candidly, Substack has many features and has been incredible user friendly and effective for me as a writer, so this is not a decision I make lightly.

I find myself wanting to drag my feet, wanting to ignore, wanting to find reasons to stay on Substack. There are things about my Substack experience that are unique. As I’ve said over and over, the community I’ve found in my bubble has been incredible, supportive and kind. The usability is intuitive and highly functional. To leave is to start over building an audience, an income, and a community which feels exhausting.

But for me to stay and continue to build monetarily here, feels like complicity. This platform, where Substack continues to benefit from not only my small paid subscriber base, but also benefitting monetarily from hate speech, is truly not an option for me. 

It sucks, I’m frankly angry about it. 

I can often be idealistic, and internally for the past few weeks, I’ve been trying to justify how I could stay - but in my heart, I will never be able to reconcile knowingly supporting hate speech, even if I never see it or follow it. Knowing that I’m sharing a platform with folks who wish me and my family/friends and community harm is a hard limit for me.

I do hold out some hope that I and my fellow authors who are calling attention to this can find a constructive solution - I hope that does happen, but as every day goes by, I feel for me that the solution will not be here on Substack. 

For those who wish to stay in touch - please do. Or find me on Medium or  Ghost. Clearly you found me, if you are reading this! :)

Thank you to this special One New Thing a Day community. I hope you continue to seek me out in other places. 

Dania

Ps - for those of you readers who’ve paid for an annual subscription - if you choose to move to Ghost, I will be comping the rest of your subscription here - so you will still receive the benefits of reading my subscribers only posts.