I am well aware of the current push to get people off Substack in light of its problem relative to fascists and neo-nazis. I sympathize with the goals. That being said, it isn’t quite so simple to just walk away.

There are some content sources that are not going to migrate off Substack that I want to maintain access to. Those content sources are also not likely well-prepared to simply jump ship. If anything, they would shutter their operations indefinitely rather than suffer a migration if push came to shove.

Consider one of those is a continuing course on the study of disinformation and how to counter it. I think it is counterproductive to force that instructor to migrate. She’s an experienced person with a law enforcement background. I think she’ll be fine. There’s no integrated solution for her to jump to and she’s not equipped to self-host. It would be a disproportionate demand upon the instructor in question to ask that she shift off Substack to a self-hosted set of tools that are not clearly defined by anybody at this point as a migration endpoint.

Remember, there are edge cases in life. You need to plan for them. If you demand that content creators jump ship, what on earth are they to shift to?

When we get into 2024 I will probably hear then from the instructor of the disinformation class. She’s enjoying the holidays. She’s likely not aware of what is going on with the current mess. I should follow her lead, I think.