The Return

This is to let you know that I have returned to Substack. I do not know if this is the right or wrong decision, but it is the decision I am making. The website may be down for a couple hours tonight while I make the change. It will be up in the morning: same URL, different platform.

If you are a free subscriber, your email has already been ported over to Substack. If you are a premium subscriber, your subscription is currently being ported over (or reactivated, if you were already subscribed before the move – you may have just received an email about this). If you have a gift subscription, I’ll be sorting that out in the next few days and you will not be billed. Hopefully it just works. We’ll see.

Substack has not yet processed any payments. If you are a premium subscriber and would like to not give Substack money, you can downgrade your subscription (or cancel it entirely) by:

• Clicking this link

• Navigating to BANNED IN YOUR STATE

• Clicking the “Change Subscription” button

(For free subscribers, this will work immediately. For premium subscribers, this may not work until the port is completed, which could take a few days — I will send an email when the port is completed. If you don’t want to wait around until then, please email me at [email protected] and I’ll make sure Substack never gets a penny of your money.)

I understand why you’re making the choice you’re making, and I respect your position.

I do not regret leaving Substack in January, along with many other newsletters both large and small, after we learned that Substack was allowing actual goddamn Nazis to monetize their newsletters. It was worth a try. I wish that mass migration had either resulted in Substack enforcing its content rules against hate speech or left the platform a shadow of its former self. It has been six months, and it’s safe to say that neither thing occurred. Just as Twitter is the place where people post, Substack is the place where people write. They are so established that, despite being completely inactive on the platform for six months, I still got more new Substack subscribers than Beehiiv subscribers until I had a thread go viral on Twitter about a month ago and promoted the newsletter at the bottom. That would be Twitter “X” Dot Com, which not only allows the far-right to monetize hate speech and incitement to violence, but artificially amplifies them and directly pays them for their content. Which is orders of magnitude worse.

(Incidentally, if you are still on Twitter, you are making the same decision I am making today every time you open the app or look at your feed)

Four years ago, I think the pressure would have worked. I think the business hit would have been too much and Substack would have cracked. This is not four years ago. The far right has much more cultural power than they used to, especially in Silicon Valley. I’ve been living for the past year as though these words weren’t true because I did not want them to be true, but they are true. It’s why I returned to Twitter a few months ago. It’s why I am returning to Substack now.

Because of the nature of the Internet, I will likely take a harder hit for this pivot than the creators who quietly remained on Substack without commenting on the issue. I don’t think that’s fair, but “fair” is a stupid word and I accept the backlash. My financial situation is not good. I want people to read the things I write. My continued use of Beehiiv, one of the worst platforms I have ever used for anything, ever, does not hurt Substack in the slightest but definitely hurts me.

Again, if you would like to cancel your paid subscription or unsubscribe entirely, I understand your choice. If things went according to plan you have not been charged by Substack and have given them no money. you find that you’ve been charged by Substack and did not want to be, something has gone wrong: let me know and I will initiate a refund immediately. 

(And, of course, if you run into any other issues with the transfer, please let me know and I’ll get it sorted ASAP)

For those who are staying: thank you for understanding. You will still find the newsletter at https://bannedinyourstate.com. Comments will no longer be capped at 1000 words, you will no longer have to go through two-factor authentication every time you would like to interact with a post, and premium subscriber sign-up will work for everyone, even iPhone and Firefox users.

I hope we can all live in a better world someday.

-Laura