Substack introduced final week that it acquired Letter, a platform that encourages written dialogue and debate. The financials of the deal weren’t disclosed, however this acquisition follows Substack’s current $65 million increase.
Newsletters are all the craze — Facebook launched its unique, celeb-studded Bulletin platform final month, and Twitter acquired the e-newsletter startup Revue earlier this 12 months. Letter doesn’t publish e-mail newsletters like Substack, however reasonably, it permits writers to interact in epistolary exchanges about fraught subjects like Brexit, courting and the 2020 U.S. Presidential election. The concept behind Letter is smart. Complicated conversations require nuance, but these on-line debates too usually occur on platforms like Twitter, the place short-form tweets make it more durable to have nuanced conversations.
“We could see that Letter, like Substack, was working in opposition to the ad-driven attention economy, attempting to change the rules of engagement for online discourse,” Substack wrote in its acquisition announcement.
But this acquisition could also be trigger for concern amongst these already troubled by the controversy Substack confronted earlier this 12 months, when information got here out that the platform provided some writers as much as six-figure advances as a part of its Substack Pro program. The perceived downside wasn’t that Substack was incentivizing writers to hitch the platform, however reasonably, who Substack had hand-picked to pay an advance. Plus, Substack says that it’s as much as the author to reveal whether or not they’re a part of Substack Pro, which creates a scarcity of editorial transparency, critics mentioned.
As Substack grew, writers left jobs at BuzzFeed and the New York Times, lured by pay raises and cautious optimism. But as extra writers got here ahead as a part of the Substack Pro program, Substack was criticized for subsidizing anti-trans rhetoric, since a few of these writers used their newsletters to share such views. Substack admits it’s not solely apolitical, however the decisions of which writers to subsidize, and its determination to make use of solely light-weight moderation techniques, are a political selection in an period of the web when content material moderation has a tangible impact on international politics. Some writers even selected to go away the platform, in consequence.
Annalee Newitz, a nonbinary author who since left the platform, wrote on Substack, “Their leadership are deciding what kinds of writing and writers are worthy of financial compensation. [ … ] Substack is taking an editorial stance, paying writers who fit that stance, and refusing to be transparent about who those people are.”
So, when Substack described its new acquisition Letter as a platform that encourages individuals to “argue in good faith instead of dropping bombs for retweets,” it made the acquisition worthy of a deeper examination. Statements like this sound agreeable, but this sort of language usually seems in arguments that deem social justice a menace to free speech. But free speech shouldn’t imply endorsing hate speech.
Substack needs to place itself as a impartial platform, and for a lot of writers, it’s a useful technique to earn cash, particularly in an unstable journalism business. But on condition that some customers have already change into skeptical of who Substack chooses to financially incentivize, it’s value analyzing the implications of shopping for Letter, a platform that features writers related to the so-called mental darkish internet in its group of twenty “featured writers.” On Letter, a few of these writers query the validity of childhood transgender id and consult with the assertion “trans women are women” as propaganda, for instance. Substack already misplaced the belief of some trans and gender-nonconforming writers, and the content material on its newly acquired Letter gained’t assist rebuild that belief.
In addition, Letter co-founder Clyde Rathbone wrote in help of a controversial letter revealed in Harper’s Magazine, which known as for the “concerted repudiation of cancel culture.” But critics of the letter level out that free speech isn’t actually at stake right here.
The open letter had been signed by over 150 outstanding writers — like Gloria Steinem, Noam Chomsky (a Letter creator) and Malcolm Gladwell (a Bulletin creator). It argued: “We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences.” These “professional consequences” echoed the predicament that J.Okay. Rowling — who additionally signed the letter — had put herself in. After denying that trans ladies are ladies, her popularity suffered. Some may name that “cancel culture,” however others may name it the refusal to proceed to platform individuals who perpetuate dangerous beliefs.
“The panic over ‘cancel culture’ is, at its core, a reactionary backlash,” wrote journalist Michael Hobbes. “Conservative elites, threatened by changing social norms and an accelerating generational handover, are attempting to amplify their feelings of aggrievement into a national crisis.”
Substack says it plans to make use of the acquisition of Letter to assist writers collaborate, and that it gained’t combine Letter into its platform. Rather, the Letter group will relocate from Australia to San Francisco to “bring their expertise to help build more of the infrastructure and support.”
TechSwitch requested Substack if the anti-trans content material on Letter is trigger for concern inside the firm, given the current backlash towards the platform.
“We think that open debate and disagreement are absolutely part of having free press, and that includes views that you or I may not like,” a consultant from Substack mentioned. “Anyone could browse Substack and find things they agree with and things they don’t agree with. Substack has no ad-driven feeds pushing content based on virality and outrage, and there is a direct relationship between writers and readers who can opt out of that anytime. So the bar for us to intervene in that relationship and tell writers what they should be saying is really high, and the fact that Letter allowed writers to openly debate and discuss is consistent with that philosophy.”
We don’t know but how or if Letter will change Substack — however given the prevailing discourse across the type of content material Substack pays for, Substack isn’t demonstrating “good faith” with this acquisition.