[Casey Newton at Platformer]

This fantastic round-up post focuses on Platformer's decision in January to leave Substack in protest of its content policies that permitted full-throated Nazis to earn money on the platform.

With a long-term view, it's been a good strategic move:

"We’re much less vulnerable to platform shifts than we were before. I had long worried that Substack’s unprofitable business would eventually lead it to make decisions that were not in the best interest of our readers or our business. (Besides not removing literal 1930s Nazi content, I mean.)"

This is the reason publishers should publish from a website they control. Sure, you can syndicate out to meet readers where they're at, but owning your own space makes you much less subject to the whims of someone else's platform.

And even that syndication to social platforms is becoming more controllable. One hope for the future that Casey notes:

"One way I hope [Platformer] will evolve is to become part of the fediverse: the network of federated sites and apps that are built with interoperability in mind. The fediverse is built on top of protocols, not platforms, which offers us a chance to decentralize power on the internet and built a more stable foundation for media and social apps."

Ghost, the open source platform that now powers Platformer, is building fediverse support directly into its platform at a rapid pace, so this almost feels like an inevitability. The benefit will be that Platformer can reach its readers on platforms like Threads, Flipboard, and Mastodon and maintain full control over its relationships with them. That's a game-changer for publishers.

#Media

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