Guess Who's Back, Tell a Friend

A quick update on future prospects for the Disintermedia blog

I know it’s considered bad form in some quarters to write a blog post apologising for a lack of blog posts. So I’m not doing that, it is what it is. But I do think there would be an elephant in the room, dear reader, if I didn’t acknowledge that I haven’t posted on this blog since late 2024. Despite now having a paid subscriber (mea culpa).

I’ve not been entirely idle though, just a bit disorganised. I’ve written a lot of long fediverse threads that could make good blog posts. So part of my plan for the winter is to scroll back, find the ones that are still relevant, and rewrite them for this blog.

As well as continuing to post updated versions of highlights from the archived CoActivate version of this blog, and my personal blog on DreamWidth, when they turn out to be topical. Starting with the story of my interactions with the cagey activist who turned out to be a spy for the cops, as precursor to a post based on a fediverse thread about private communication tools.

I’ll start prepping those for publication the moment this post is out the door. Beyond that intentionally vague promise, dear reader, I’m not going to commit to a publishing schedule. I’d only be setting us both up for disappointment. But I’m aiming to get you roughly one new piece a week for the rest of the year. Given that plenty of first drafts are already written, I don’t think that’s too ambitious. But best laid plans, and all that. We’ll see how it goes.

In other news, the team behind Ghost are ramping up to the release of version 6.0 of their Free Code publishing software, which will add official ActivityPub support. In practice, this means that as well as reading on the web or in your email, publications using Ghost can be found and followed without leaving the comfort of your fediverse apps, and their posts favourited, boosted and commented on.

Why do I bring this up? Although it’s taken me longer than a lot of people, I’ve become increasingly uncomfortable with publishing Disintermedia on SubStack. Publishing the blog directly into the fediverse is something I’ve wanted to do for years, so with Ghost already beta testing fediverse integration it’s high on my list of potential replacements¹.

So why am I considering leaving SubStack?

In my earliest posts here, I gave a number of reasons for hanging out my shingle on SubStack, and I stand by those. As well as the reasoning I’ve given on the fediverse for sticking around despite the accusations of platforming “Nazis”. This is an accusation that’s been thrown around far too loosely in recent years, with the corresponding calls for “deplatforming”, ie total censorship, including of anyone who doesn’t comply with it. Yeah, nah. Current events in the US are reminding many people why the left have traditionally defended freedom of expression as a universal human right.

I wouldn’t boycott a helpful local appliance store, just because a bunch of ideology-policing neo-McCarthyists accuse them of selling photocopiers to political Bad Actors. The same principle applies to an online platform, supplying self-publishers with a nonpartisan service.

Thing is, I’m less and less convinced that the reality of how the sausage is made matches this image of the folksy neighbourhood butcher. Consider what I said in that last paragraph; supplying self-publishers with a nonpartisan service. That clause is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Let’s break it down.

Supplying self-publishers: Not a publisher.

Nonpartisan: No political agenda.

Service: Just a humble supplier of ink and movable type to people doing their own printing, or the digital equivalent.

Based on interviews with SubStack co-founder and fellow kiwi Hamish McKenzie, and a number of pieces he’s written, I think he’s sincere in this vision. If I’m honest, he reminds me of a younger Strypey. Striving to make Aotearoa Indymedia a nonpartisan space, where activists from different communities can make their case and hash out their differences in the comments². Which may have rose-tinted my view of SubStack.

The problem is, like so many idealistic founders before them³, Hamish and his co-founders made a deal with the devil. Accepting VC⁴ funding helped them grow their new business more quickly, and live more comfortably in the meantime. I get the temptation. But VCs, such as the firm commonly known as Andreeson Horowitz (or a16z), are infamous for being unsatsified with businesses that grow slowly and steadily by providing a useful service.

A VC’s goal is to extract as much wealth as they can, as quickly as they can, and move on. The best way to do that is to push the businesses they invest in to grow like cancerous tumours, following a path that novelist and tech activist Cory Doctorow has coined a very satisfying term for; enshittification. As Cory points out, platforms enshittify so quickly now because tech investors have been very effective at interfering in the political process, to smash regulation that might prevent it. So they can get away with pushing service founders to lock-in their customers, criminalise people who help them pick those locks, and bust unionisation efforts so their workers can’t push back in solidarity with the customers.

You can’t really lock customers into a platform if it just provides a generic service, that can be easily replaced. A lot of the publications that moved off SubStack in the wake of the “Nazi” drama ended up returning, because they say other service providers can’t compete with SubStack on driving new paid subscriptions. That’s because, like Medium before them, enshittifcation mandates from the VCs are slowly but surely tweaking SubStack to become more like a publisher.

Strike One.

Now, add the fascist coup unfolding in the US into the mix, along with the tech billionaires who get obscenely rich off VC investments, and stir vigorously. Here’s a growing technofacism they prepared earlier. As some of us have pointed out before, VCs like the ones funding SubStack have a political agenda - a very nasty antidemocratic one - and they’re increasingly having the platforms they invest in tweaked to push that agenda.

Strike Two.

If SubStack are now functionally a publisher, pushing a political agenda, they’re no longer just your friendly local movable type and ink shop. They’re MySpace after being acquired by Ruber Murdoch’s media empire. They’re in the media business, not the service business.

Strike Three. You’re out.

The whole point of Disintermedia is to criticise Things from the Dungeon Dimensions, like VCs and the platforms they enthusiastically enshittify, and I haven’t noticed any discrimination from SubStack so far. But it will be intriguing to see if I get any pushback for criticising them so directly in a blog hosted on their platform. Bookmark those links to my fediverse account and DreamWidth blog, just in case.

But for the time being, I don’t see the point of rushing into a change of hosts, just to end up back in the same boat in a year or two. In fact, I think it’s profoundly dishonest to make a big show of leaving SubStack on principle, only to shuffle back, cap in hand, when the bank balance is low, and the fuss has died down.

So as I start to plan a migration, I need to do some deep thinking about the pros and cons of various software I could use. Along with my options for hosting, given that I’m looking for platform more aligned with my tech politics, and my current budget consists of a photo of the smell of any oil rag. Offers considered.

All of this will, conveniently, be good fodder for a future post. Watch this space.

Image:

"Anonymous hacker behind PC" by elconomeno@email.com, marked with CC0 1.0.

1. Also I’ve had a quick play with Ghost and I love the minimalist posting interface.

2. See my comment on a 2011 callout for new Aotearoa Indymedia volunteers.

3. But unlike Strypey the Younger, who was already a committed anticapitalist before he got online, and used to living on baked beans and borrowed time.

4. VC = Venture Capital, or with an ‘s’, VCs = Venture Capitalists.