Substack is no different than Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube - so much for Free Speech

Without any warning, my account was frozen. Without any explanation as to WHY, or any revelation of due process, or any hint as to HOW to avoid a future freeze. Sound familiar to anyone?

This annoyed me and should worry the hell out of anyone who thinks they are building a readership or business on Substack. If you think this is the bastion of Free Speech we were told it is, I am sorry to report that is a falsehood. You own nothing you write on this platform and certainly have no control over whether the platform permits your words to reach your audience.

Two days ago, my account suddenly was unavailable; all I got was this splash banner:

I still have no response from

Chris Best

,

Hamish McKenzie

or others on the Substack management team. I asked for an explanation as to why my account was suddenly frozen and for a guarantee that it would never happen again.

Crickets.

I did get this 24 hours after the ban happened:

From: Substack Support
Sent: Wednesday, January 29, 2025 7:37 AM
To: Christopher Messina
Subject: Re: Appeal a Trust & Safety Action

##- Please type your reply above this line -##

Hi Christopher,

[NAME REDACTED] here from Substack Trust and Safety. Thanks for taking the time to submit this appeal. It looks like your account was incorrectly flagged as spam. I've corrected the issue and you should now be able to use it again.

Please don't hesitate to reach out if there's any other way I can assist.

Best,

[NAME REDACTED] @ Substack

Hardly comforting to me after 485 posts and innumerable interactions with readers and fellow writers going back to 3 January 2022. Three years of effort wiped away from public view with no explanation, no (real) recourse. All I got was a bland “It looks like your account was incorrectly flagged as spam.”

Flagged by whom?

Flagged by what metric or factor?

What is “spam” in the context of a media platform people use by definition to reach as wide an audience as possible?

How did the person who wrote to me determine that the “flagging as spam” was incorrectly done?

What could I be doing right now if my “appeal” had not been answered in my favor?

What is the objective, transparent, clear process by which I would go about restoring my account for the 34 paid subscribers I have?

This was my response to [NAME REDACTED]:

There is a much larger problem here. Without any warning, suddenly my account was banned. I had no way of knowing – and still don’t – what the cause of that ban was.

I am seriously wondering whether there is any point in my continuing to develop a readership on Substack under these conditions, knowing at any minute all my work could be wiped away and made invisible.

At the same time that I am wondering whether I can have all my writing disappear at any moment without warning, Substack management is using $20 million to entice authors from other platforms where they already have a paid readership.

I came to Substack because I was tired of the non-random, mainly Leftist Censorship on other platforms. I have not asked for anyone to be banned – even though I am inundated with Jew Hating morons on a daily basis. I am a believer in staunch Free Speech, so I am happy to tell those idiots how stupid they are and to ban, mute, or block them. Because that is the price of Free Speech.

I don’t know if I am conveying how bad this sudden banning of my account is.

I don’t really care that I appealed and you overturned it – I still have no sense of what the process is or what the criteria are. Which means all my work could be gone in an instant at the whim of an anonymous person without even a last name.

I need assurances from

Chris Best

this will never happen again.

Christopher Messina

Messy Times

I am deciding whether to continue publishing on Substack.

I know the management team has a business to run. Apparently, they have no time for little fish like me, as they are focused on revenue-generating (albeit abject failures in terms of policy they helped create and jam down Americans’ throats) Leftwing Boomer Draft Dodgers like

Robert Reich

and

Paul Krugman

.

But I am generating revenue for them right now and I am wondering whether I should continue to do so.

What are your thoughts? There is a poll below.

Messy Times Apocalypse Girl is having a cocktail before calling me back about continuing to publish on a platform who can just disappear my content without notice, cause or apology.