Faked Up has moved

Hi y'all, I'm moving Faked Up from Substack to this site over here. I am copying below my announcement so you have my motivations. If you subscribed from Substack, it is likely that my newsletters are going in your spam folder unless you actively flag "not spam."

Thanks for your continued support.

Hi folks, I am moving Faked Up from Substack to Ghost.io.

There’s a bit of boring logistics to deal with but I’m hoping I can make it happen before the next regular newsletter goes out on Wednesday.

If you’re a paid subscriber, there should be no difference as payments will continue through Stripe. That said, you never know with these things and you should email me at mantzarlis@protonmail.com if you have any kind of issue.

You can read my reasons for moving below, but for now I just wanted to give you a heads-up so you don’t think you’re getting phished if you get emails about me from either Substack or Ghost.io during the transition. (You may still be getting phished, be careful out there.)

So, why are you leaving?

I had three days to set up Faked Up between the end of a very intense job at Google and the start of a completely new thing at Cornell Tech.

In that compressed timeframe, I determined Substack was the easiest and most user-friendly option out there. It was free to sign up, though it takes 10% of all subscriber revenue.

I wanted to start publishing immediately to regain a public voice I’d largely lost when working at Google and to earn a little bit of extra revenue to compensate for my voluntary pay cut. I decided I’d revisit this topic within 12 months.

Nazis

I knew already then that this platform hosts neo-Nazis, which led to folks like Casey Newton to decamp to Ghost.io. Worse, some of those newsletters monetize on here. As I teach my students, the responsibility of a digital tool to moderate content goes up when (a) the harm in question might be physical in nature and (b) when the service functions as a platform by monetizing or recommending that content.

Conspiracy theorists

In the summer, I attended a happy hour for Substack “bestsellers” in Red Hook. After a while, I saw a bunch of people clustered around another newsletter author, whom I eventually recognized as a renowned conspiracy theorist. Less than an hour into the event, I dragged my sorry self out of the bar and back to the ferry, regretting my life choices.

Disingenuous leadership

On Wednesday, the CEO of Substack wrote that “Elon Musk has been a vocal supporter of free speech. It’s no secret that we haven’t always seen eye to eye, but he deserves a lot of credit for advancing freedom of speech on X, before it was popular and in the face of fierce criticism and opposition.” He also endorsed another Substack author who fueled politically-motivated attacks against academics and experts on misinformation.

My perception is that the people who run this website aren’t ideologues. They appear to have a preference for openness that also aligns with their business motivations. For now, their support of free speech has manifested as cheap gimmicks. I’ll be curious to see, should they come under real pressure in the next four years for content hosted on this platform, whether they truly will hold the line.

So there you have it. I’m leaving.

I’m sharing my position for transparency, not applause. I don’t judge authors who choose to stay on Substack and I will continue to pay for their work.

Thank you for reading, and please be patient with me in the next few weeks as I adjust to a new service.