Substack De-platforming

On July 15th my publication was taken down and remained suspended for two days. I joined the list of others who have been de-platformed from Substack, some of them unnecessarily (1, 2, 3, 4). I still don’t know what triggered the flagging of my account but my guess is that it’s possibly due to my invite Notes to people. Most of my followers and subscribers as you read my blog have come to know of my publication through my invite notes.

About these invite Notes. I track other progressive publications (Robert Reich, Zeteo, Paul Krugman etc) and check user comments of their articles. When I write a new article similar to a topic of these other publications, I also create a Note tagging followers of these publications inviting them to my Substack blog. This is a way to create outreach to audience. As an independent writer without any previous fan following and without any celebrity status, I try to explore ways to reach out to readers. My invite notes looks like these.

It appears that Substack didn’t like group tagging of my invite Notes. This is possible for two reasons. First is that some users who were tagged may have reported it as unsolicited spam. Second reason is that Substack monitoring algorithms possibly saw my notes with multiple tags as spam and flagged my account. From there on, Substack policy is - shoot first and ask questions later. Substack goes straight to Nuclear option and blocked my account - my publication disappeared entirely - all my articles, comments, profile and even my intro page. I did not even receive any email from Substack and was not informed of specific reason for suspension. My dashboard had notification that my account is suspended due to Spam and phishing, and I can file an appeal. I did.

After I filed my appeal, I got my first email response from Substack that my account will be restored on condition that I will not do spam and violating content will be removed. I responded that any of my content that violated Spam rules was an inadvertent mistake and can be removed. I still was not informed by Substack of any specifics about which of my content qualified as spam. I sought more clarification from Substack and that I did not receive. I found out that my account including all articles was restored but few of my Notes disappeared from public view - the Invite Notes.

Some things are highly problematic about this experience. I know that keeping social media platforms clean of spam, scams, phishing, trolling and hateful content is very necessary in current times. But it has to be done in optimal way. For example, if some of my Notes are spam, Substack can first serve me a warning that I am violating a rule and risking suspension if I do not abide by rules. No warning was ever issued. Substack can also start by deleting/withholding violating content from public view as a first step of action. Instead, Substack took down my entire publication and then asked me for removal of spam content. That is putting cart before the horse. Substack doesn’t have a proper stepwise response mechanism for dealing with violations. I wrote my grievance in detail to Substack.

The problem also originates from ever increasing automatization of social media. As internet and social media gets bigger, more of it is managed by automated algorithms. The human intervention is getting minimal. In many cases, Substack doesn’t even give specific reason for suspension to users because I suspect flagging of account is made by their complex algorithms and the process cannot be explained to average user.

Still, it makes perfect sense to first warn users of any violating content. Deplatforming and suspension should be the last option. Alright, I know that in certain cases accounts have to be immediately suspended for reasons like hate content, pornography, fraud etc. But these are exceptional cases and nuclear option of deplatforming should be reserved only for these cases. For rest of violations, an optimal stepwise response mechanism is needed.

And one thing that every Substack user - big or small in audience following - should always keep in mind is that they do not own their own content. Social media companies are opaque unregulated private enterprises and they are good as long as you are on their good side. It reminds me of Twitter (now called X) which was a good place around 10-12 years ago. The microblogging site with 140 word limit invited many extraordinary people - creative artists, independent writers, thinkers, intellectuals and celebrities. Recall that 10-15 years ago, Facebook was starting to be regarded as non-serious mediocre platform. The Twitter was the place to be. But that changed in few years as Twitter started to become a sewer of hate, disinformation and spam.

Eventually, all the intelligent people started to flee Twitter/X and this emigration accelerated after Elon Musk’s takeover. I am not saying that Substack is becoming a bad place. My point is more fundamental - Things can change. My advice to big creative writers who have the resources, to think of building their own websites which is free from any shackles of social media corporations. To smaller writers and content creators, my advice is - don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Keep your content on multiple platforms and stay active on multiple fronts. Remember that you don’t own anything on these social media platforms. They own you no matter how popular you are.

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