I've Moved Off Substack

This is a very sudden shift, so bear with me as I briefly explain what has happened. I’m leaving Substack due to recent announcements the leadership at Substack have made regarding the platform. Substack, an online infrastructure designed to support subscription newsletters, announced yesterday that they are openly collaborating with The Free Press. This is a media organization that was founded by known alt-right journalist Bari Weiss. This is the latest blunder and failure of integrity on the part of Substack leadership, following heavily criticized policies and statements from the Substack team over the last few years regarding issues like censorship and hate speech on the platform.

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I joined Substack at the beginning of 2024 as an experiment to force myself to write more regularly and publish ideas of mine that might not find a home elsewhere as a freelance writer and cultural critic. I also wanted to use a newsletter as a way to keep people updated on all the creative things I’m up to in game dev, film, music, etc. whenever I had stuff to share. When I joined, I was unaware of the past controversies and discourse surrounding the platform. I then learned of these issues when the leadership at Substack continued to walk down a worrisome path with some of their decisions in 2024, which also brought back previous conversations surrounding the platform. Having only just started, I was sad to hear that the the place I chose to be a home for my writing had these policies. I did not know at the time of any alternatives, but was actively looking and considering transferring things over. Now with their most recent decision, I am fully transferring my newsletter somewhere else.

This ultimately isn’t too big of an issue. I’ve only been on Substack for about a year now, and don’t have too big of a subscriber base or published writing on the platform to migrate over. In fact the new platform I’m using, beehiiv, has a feature that allows me to transfer content over seamlessly. All of the essays and pieces I’ve written for Substack over the past year are available on beehiiv now, and I’ve transferred over all the subscribers I had on Substack to beehiiv as well. I’m writing this update post using this new platform, meaning that if you received this post in your inbox then the transfer has been successful.

This transition to a new platform should change very little for anyone who is keeping up with my writing. You will still receive updates to your inbox, and can visit my newsletter’s page to read old posts at: https://criticcanvas.beehiiv.com/. Overall, I just wanted to update everyone on this change in case you notice that things look a little different now, and wanted to make clear where I stand on issues such as hate speech. While my individual choice to leave the platform will likely not change Substack’s policies, I believe that one of the many trials of being alive is figuring out how to be as steadfast in your core values as possible even when faced with difficult decisions where your agency is limited. I could have easily been apathetic to this issue, or simply could have never mentioned it, but I prefer to walk the walk when I actually am able to.

This is yet another example of having to leave bad sites as various successful online platforms reveal their shift to a more conservative and hateful foundation in the 2020’s. I recently permanently terminated my Distrokid account, a company that allows indie artists to self publish their music on successful streaming platforms. I did this because I learned of their racist history as well as more recent predatory union busting tactics they’ve been employing despite being such a successful company. I am now looking for an alternative means to releasing and sharing my music on various streaming services. I’m also one of the many people who is slowly migrating more permanently over to Bluesky since Elon Musk’s horrific handling of the platform formerly known as Twitter. I’m also actively considering finally breaking away from Spotify, given the terrible way they’ve treated artists on their platform. I’m still actively looking for the ideal alternatives to Spotify and Distrokid, but this is all to say that it seems this latest era of online culture we live in involves a lot of cyber-nomadism and digital migration. Users should ideally be able to find places they can call their online home without having to stomach all these issues, whether they are creators, fans, or just regular everyday people. For now beehiiv will be the home of my newsletter, and I hope to find homes for the other work I do as well. I also hope that none of us have to migrate too many more times in the future.

I still have an actual post planned for the end of the year, which is going to be a wrap up of 2024 and lists of all my favorite pieces of media from the year. That post will be going through beehiiv, and not Substack. All content moving forward in 2025 will be here as well. Thanks for listening, and see you all one more time before the end of the year.