[Lauren Egan at The Bulwark]

If I was Substack, this is exactly what I'd be doing. But then again, if I was Substack, I wouldn't have paid Nazis to post on my network.

"The company sees an opportunity. Its employees have been meeting with congressional staffers and chatting up aides to potential 2028 presidential candidates, encouraging them to get on the platform. Substack also recently hired Alli Brennan, who worked in political guest booking at CBS News and CNN—the type of person who has phone numbers and contacts for just about everyone in D.C. whom the company is hoping to get on its platform. The goal is ambitious: they want Substack to become the essential online arena for political discourse in the upcoming election cycles."

I personally think Substack's Nazi problem should have made it radioactive to anyone who believes in democracy. But this play - to get thinkers of note to join the platform and try to be be the place for long-form discourse - is exactly what platforms like Medium have done in the past.

My preference? Make it as easy as possible for these writers to use platforms like Ghost and aggregate their posts on easy-to-use portal pages. There's nothing good to be gained from any platform owned by a single company becoming the go-to place for all political discourse. Ultimately, anyone who wins at that strategy will become, by definition, a bottleneck for democratic publishing. Spread it out; let it thrive on the web, and then tie it up in a bow for people who need it delivered that way.

#Media

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