Email's been here for years. But the reason Substack wants you to call your creative work by their brand name is because they control your audience and distribution, and they want to own your content and voice, too. You may not think you care about that today, but you will when you see what they want to do with it.

I know you think you have control over your subscribers on Substack. But understand this: every single new feature Substack releases, from their social sharing to their mobile apps, is proprietary and locks you into their network. They don't let your writing live on your own website or domain under your control unless you pay them for the privilege. And it'd be a shame if something happened to those subscription dollars you're counting on, wouldn't it? Even when you say "but my readership is growing!" know that most new subscribers come from other writers referring their readers to you. Somehow... Substack wants credit for those writers making that choice? Even though it was your writing that inspired it? That's not some magical network effect thanks to Substack! That's just the internet, working as it was supposed to.

Links are powerful — that's why Instagram and Twitter and Threads punish and limit them, and why Substack tries to take credit for them. And that's why "wherever you get your podcasts" is such a radical concept — like email, it's a medium that the tech tycoons don't, and can't, own. People can read your writing "wherever they get their email".

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.

@decoderpod Our host Nilay asked Substack CEO Chris Best the tough questions about whether racist speech should be allowed in their new consumer product, Substack Notes. #techtok #technews #substack #ceo ♬ original sound - Decoder with Nilay Patel

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.

The counter-argument people generally have is convenience (which I was more empathetic towards before great options like Ghost and Beehiiv and Medium even WordPress stepped up their game) and the theoretical benefits of network effect from being on Substack. Which is largely a myth (most referrals are thanks to other writers, not the platform) and means you have to be open to the platform using your writing to introduce people to the most insidious anti-trans and white supremacist rhetoric on the internet.

That's why they have encouraged you to call it "my Substack". It's not your goddamn Substack. When Marc Andreessen and his friends funded Clubhouse (remember that garbage?) so they could hang out in audio chats that were explicitly about destroying accountability media, they also took time out to fund Substack specifically so they could undermine major newspapers that they thought would criticize their interests. And it worked, obviously.

Here's how you can export your subscribers. Here are great alternatives. Before you start those processes, one change you can make today: you can talk about your work as your work. It's your newsletter, or your email, or your blog. Or just your writing. But it sure as hell isn't "your Substack".