No Matter Where You Live

Let’s imagine a town, where the river is the main source of fresh water for everyone. Then, one day, someone builds a factory, near the middle of the river. A side effect of what the factory produces, is that it releases toxic waste into the river. The owners are aware of this – but they won’t do what’s needed to clean it up, as it would cut into their profits.

• How would you feel about buying the factory’s products?
• And would it matter if you lived upstream or downstream from it?

Blog posts about Substack

Today I read John Gruber’s blog post Regarding – and, Well, Against – Substack, which also linked to Anil Dash’s post “Don’t Call It a Substack”.

We constrain our imaginations when we subordinate our creations to names owned by fascist tycoons. Imagine the author of a book telling people to “read my Amazon”. A great director trying to promote their film by saying “click on my Max”. That’s how much they’ve pickled your brain when you refer to your own work and your own voice within the context of their walled garden. There is no such thing as “my Substack”, there is only your writing, and a forever fight against the world of pure enshittification.

Anil Dash

This is a great point – and all three of us are in agreement here!

A slight disagreement

However, while I have a slight (and perhaps unimportant) disagreement with the next quote from Dash, I strongly dislike Gruber’s comments on it.

Substack is, just as a reminder, a political project made by extremists with a goal of normalizing a radical, hateful agenda by co-opting well-intentioned creators’ work in service of cross-promoting attacks on the vulnerable. You don’t have to take my word for it; Substack’s CEO explicitly said they won’t ban someone who is explicitly spouting hate, and when confronted with the rampant white supremacist propaganda that they are profiting from on their site, they took down… four of the Nazis. Four. There are countless more now, and they want to use your email newsletter to cross-promote that content and legitimize it. Nobody can ban the hateful content site if your nice little newsletter is on there, too, and your musings for your subscribers are all the cover they need.

Anil Dash

Substack is the factory in my simple analogy at the top. And “normalizing a radical, hateful agenda” is the toxic waste in the river. My small disagreement, is that I don’t think the factory was made with the purpose of polluting the river.

Some might say that’s an unimportant distinction, and that what matters is that they don’t care that they’re doing it. And I get that! My point is that I don’t want to give people the opportunity to think, “Of course they didn’t create an entire factory just to pollute 🙄 – so let me disregard all the points about the factory’s effect on the river."¹

Gruber’s post also shows another way this type of hyperbole can be unhelpful:

I think Substack sees itself as a publishing tool and platform. They’re not here to promote any particular side. It makes no more sense for them to refuse to publish someone for being too right-wing than it would for WordPress or Medium or, say, GitHub or YouTube. Substack, I think, sees itself like that.

John Gruber

Technically, I think he’s right here.² But Dash’s (I believe, exaggerated comment) allowed the discussion to be dragged into Substack’s intent rather than effect – which is not unimportant, but way less important.³

A large disagreement

However, I really don’t like where Gruber goes next:

What I can say, personally, is that I read and pay for several publications on Substack, and for the last few weeks I’ve tried using their iOS app (more on this in a moment), and I’ve never once seen a whiff of anything even vaguely right-wing, let alone hateful. Not a whiff. If it’s there, I never see it. If I never see it, I don’t care.

John Gruber

Gruber doesn’t even try to dispute that the factory is poisoning the river. The only thing he’s saying is that, as someone who lives upstream from it, he doesn’t care whether it pollutes. His water tastes good, so why should he care?⁴

On Anti-Trust, APIs, and Market Participation

This week’s episode of the Upgrade podcast, was a good one as usual. I especially liked the discussions surrounding a potential pair of Apple smart glasses, and the way this connects to the regulatory scrutiny Apple is under currently.

Jason refers to the fact that Federico Viticci loves the Meta Ray Bans, but still really wants Apple to create a pair. And he then asked what I deem to be a crucial question:¹

Do we want smart glasses from Apple because of what they do better than the competition, or because of what they are allowed to do, but that they bar their competitors from doing?

Let me use earbuds as an example, as they are more common. I’m delighted with my AirPods Pro – and they’re a better fit for me, and my Apple hardware, than a pair of Sony buds (for example). But when looking at the reasons why I pick one over the other, here’s something I think it’s crucial to distinguish between: Which of them are due to things Apple does better, in fair competition (maybe I prefer the sound, or noice cancelling), and which of them are due to things Apple blocks Sony from doing (like pairing fairy dust)?

This brings me to a clip I wanted to share from the podcast, where I agree with a lot, but wanted to add something:

More solutions

What I wanted to add, was that there are more solutions than Apple being forced to make stuff for its competitors. And I think the European Commission holds this opinion as well.

Solution 1: Don’t block