Platform Politics and the Luxury of Moral Purity
Moral compromise in the digital age, examining the privilege of ethical consumption and the reality of survival in an imperfect world
Even for someone who hadn’t been spending a lot of time on Substack since December, the anger, disappointment, and general ill-feeling since the Substack/The Free Press partnership announcement—at least amongst those in my circles—was impossible to miss.
After a calamitous election result for many of the left-leaning, this alliance with alleged “Proto-Zionist fascists,” according to some comments on the announcement post, seems another slap in the face. And they haven’t stopped there.
Meta’s announcement that it will abandon its fact-checking system, surrender limitations on speech, along with other items, has caused rejoicing among some conservatives and devastation among some liberals.
Of course, X/Twitter was long lost to Elon Musk.
I’ve witnessed several of my peers and colleagues, both on Substack and off, consider where they can go, which platform they should use now—since these have now sold themselves to the devil (so to speak).
Some have already left.
Here’s what I find interesting about all this. When I first heard about Substack’s partnership with The Free Press, the primary gut reaction I found in the comments section of the post and the notes reacting to the post was a moral judgment.
There’s an inevitability to this. We’ve seen it in the disintegration of privacy of public figures—authors, artists, musicians, and yes, corporate CEOs.
We see this mentality running rampant in all arenas. Take Neil Gaiman’s recent downfall, for example. Revelations of a once-beloved author’s secret criminal life has led to widespread calls to ban his books. To a much greater degree than previous generations, a creator’s work is now tied to their character.
Even we are here, on Substack, building an audience—feeding bits of ourselves to our readers. Because there’s no longer any such thing as living the hermit life in obscurity if we want the taste of success.
We must prove we’re human. The bigger we get, the greater the fall.
But I’m not going to go into the creator-creation-public-perception tapestry in this column, though it’s certainly related.
This mindset of intertwining a thing with its creator has had the odd effect of an entire company wearing the moral cloak of its founders, owners, CEOs, etc. If I choose to support the company by utilising it, then that moral cloak extends to cover me as well, by association. This leads to people attaching judgment on others and themselves for their decisions to use certain platforms, products, or not.
Are you still with me?
Bringing this back to Substack, if I stay on Substack and keep paid subscriptions on, I am willingly funneling 10% of that money to Substack and lining the pockets of “people spreading hate,” according to some.
Personally, I am not as bothered by what Corporate Substack is doing because I see it as a host for my writing. Even if I moved house, so to speak, I’d still have to host my work somewhere else. Would I be vetting the leadership there, too? Can I be sure they are not hosting websites that promote hate?
Let’s expand on this point, though.
If I use TikTok, I’m okay with China having access to data, and also knowingly supporting a company that is designed to target children.
Except, I had a conversation with Ruhie Vaidya about how she was reaching a wider audience on TikTok than on Substack. TikTok allowed her to share her late father’s story and illness with more people. I encouraged her that there was nothing wrong with using a platform that works for her when her message is meaningful and deserves to be seen.
If I have Amazon Prime and/or use Amazon to publish my books, I’m supporting Jeff Bezos and his wealth.
Except, read this nuanced essay by Lore Wilbert onthe complex problem of Amazon, especially when it comes to publishing.
If I drive a Tesla, I’m supporting Elon Musk and his values.
If I use Google products, I’m endorsing the mining and selling of data.
I could go on, but I’ll stop there.
Just last week, I saw my husband using a Google photo editing app even though I am trying to move our family away from using Google products.
“Why don’t you use (Adobe) Lightroom instead?”
“Because Adobe is a greedy, terrible company and I don’t want to use them,” he answered.
“Uh, you think Adobe is worse than Google?”
“Yeah.”
I shrugged and let him get on with it. I still use Lightroom while he uses Google for photo editing. And I try not to judge him too much (only joking) for continuing to use Instagram, Facebook, and Reddit, all of which I find deplorable.
The irony is, the same people railing at Substack were/are still using these other products.
After Meta’s big announcement, it appears people are leaving Instagram and Facebook in droves. What was happening in a trickle is now a flood.
But, I wonder if most of those people would still have left, had those platforms not been losing their utility anyway. After all, widespread laments about performance exhaustion for a tiny fraction of followers have been going on for years now. Traditional social media, with its algorithms and advertisements and influencers, has already been on the decline.
However, Meta has been stealing and selling our data from day one! The terms of service literally says that by signing up, you grant them a license to use your work5. They own everything you post on their platforms. The content moderation has always been arbitrary and shady, even when they had it. None of this was a deal-breaker for most people until they stopped working for us the way we wanted.
This just happens to be the nail in the coffin.
My point is, we make excuses for things that serve us. And I don’t mean that in a solely utilitarian way.
In a similar vein to this principle, someone once gave me advice that I must be careful what I “like” or “share” of others. Should I make the mistake of liking a note or post by someone with questionable values, I could be seen as endorsing that person’s values.
Y’all, this is madness!
I want to take this further to see how far we can go. Bear with me, okay?
I mentioned these big tech companies above that have been in the glaring spotlight for some time. Let’s consider the companies that remain out of the spotlight—those hiding their ethical wrongdoings or flying under the radar outside tech circles.
Can we vet them all? Do all their values align with yours?
Are you still driving a gas-fueled car? Don’t you care about the environment? Is there plastic in your house? What about sustainable washer sheets or detergent?
Are your clothes ethically made? Is everything you own and use ethically sourced and bought from an honest company? Are you sure your zippers weren’t made in a factory in China? What if a child working 12 hours a day in freezing conditions had to make them? Are you buying things from shops that use slave labour—I mean, prison labour?6
Are you in the workforce? Is your company doing good things? Does it have leaders that give (enough) to charity (how much is enough)? Have they ever done anything morally reprehensible? Are they supporting the “correct” politicians? If they’re not up to par, why on earth are you still working there, doing your part to keep that company alive?
Oh, you need money to feed yourself and your family?
Ah, here we’ve hit on it at last: survival.
I want to share something my husband wrote several years ago, in response to a friend’s comment asking what he thought about the failed acquisition of his company by another.
I disagree with the business model of (the other company), or really, just the greed in this world. Where they just keep buying companies, fire people, and focus on making money instead of doing research and creating new tech. It disturbs me that investors applaud these kinds of companies, keep buying their stock even though their P/E is at 67. Then people argue that (the other company) must be doing great because their stock is doing well. It’s sad that companies and their employees are reduced to a single metric: their stock price. I think the world and its greed are really what disturbs me. A world where greedy, unethical things are done in the name of creating shareholder value makes me really sad.
By the way, I’m not saying (my workplace) is the best-run company or that it does everything right. (My workplace) does its own share of bad things in the name of shareholder value. At the end of the day, it’s just a job for me. I’m glad my department does more meaningful work than pumping out chips that run a little faster every year. I’m blessed that it enables me to do other meaningful things in life as a Christian.
Coming back to Substack again, many writers here don’t have the ability to pay for another email service. For a lot of us, writing on Substack is our job (or we are trying to make it our job).
For me, it allows me to do work I find meaningful in a way that doesn’t require me to sell (too much) of my soul, and contribute a little to my family.
Something went wrong
I’ve seen a lot of comments here and there along the lines of, “Aw I just got here; sad to see Substack is just like the other places.”
Except, it’s not.
Ignore the political views of Substack leadership, whatever they may be. We will be hard-pressed to find a host that agrees with our views at all times, and I, for one, am not interested in interrogating the CEOs of every platform I may use. In the meantime, I’m still creating an archive of all my work off Substack on a domain I own (thanks to Seth Werkheiser’s advice), because you know what? No platform lasts forever anyway.
On other platforms, they own your work. Bots automatically flag your content and can remove it without warning, even delete your account and ban you indefinitely. You can jump through a lot of hoops to try and retrieve it, sometimes to no avail. Often, you have no idea why this happened.
Here, your publication is your house. You do the moderation yourself by kicking out, blocking, banning unwanted guests. You make the rules of engagement (although, as I wrote in a recent note, I would still very much like a subscriber-only option for comments. Others can kick up a fuss about those rules, depending on how restrictive they are, but ultimately, you’re in charge.
Substack Notes can be a different arena, considering it’s more like traditional social media. Even there, however, we have a lot of control over what we see and who can interact with our posts. We have the ability to moderate our own feeds, without the oppressive oversight other places have.
Aside: You don’t have to use Notes. No one is forcing you. If you don’t like it, just don’t go on it. I try to spend very little time on notes. Most of my effort is directed to my own publication, and engaging with the publications I am already subscribed to. Growth is slower that way, but still happens.
Factors such as cost, networking opportunities, ease of use, all play into our moral calculations. The level of control we have over our work and the home we host it on, matters.
There will always be friction between morality and practicality. Call me cynical, but that’s life. We must survive it.
To be clear: I’m not advocating for helpless defeat, nor am I suggesting we ignore bullying, hate speech, and misinformation (though what constitutes even that, is, again, a discussion for another time). I am not suggesting we bury our heads in the sand in willful ignorance.
I am, however, wondering if we’ve taken our moral high ground too far. I am wondering if we are blind to our own hypocrisy.
I ask that we stop judging others for the decisions they make about what they choose to use, who and what they choose to associate with, and trying to influence others—either explicitly or implicitly—through distorted perspectives. We need to stop viewing these issues through black and white lens when in reality, we have to make compromises with these ethical issues every single day.
No company or platform will ever be perfect. Leave for somewhere else, and I can guarantee that shiny, new place or thing will have something else wrong with it. If you can’t find it, it just hasn’t been exposed yet (how long did it take for Neil Gaiman to be exposed?).
I recently unsubscribed from someone I found on Substack, who moved to Beehiiv after the Nazi debacle, then said they were leaving Beehiiv as well because it was also problematic (they didn’t specify the reason). More power to them for staying true to their principles, but good luck finding that perfect online home.
The irony in taking such actions is this: it looks like empowerment on the surface, yet is actually subjecting yourself to the whims of another entity’s decisions. Are we to live on the edge of our seats, always waiting for the other shoe to drop?
Let’s talk about the privilege to seamlessly hop from platform to platform, job to job. To hone in on what at first may seem disparate but reflects a similar mentality, I saw comparable rhetoric for treating those with differing beliefs, particularly in light of the U.S. election results. Punishing people—even family members and long-time friends—for their political beliefs by cutting ties with them has become a common reaction. We mustn’t rub shoulders with anyone who dehumanises others, right?
Here’s the thing, though.
Many do not have the liberty of removing people from their lives. Some aren’t capable of picking up and moving away from their homes to get out of a “bigoted” state, or even the country.
Nor do some even want to.
This kind of mentality reflects a deep lack of understanding of the kind of privilege it takes to move away from emotional, financial, medical support, stability, roots, and a host of other factors.
Before the 2016 election, my father-in-law told us that if we didn’t vote Republican, he would disown us. He’s a nearly 80-year-old immigrant. His ideas and thoughts are quite set, though not completely. We may not be able to change his mind about a great many things. And we’re the only family he has left in this city. So, no, we’re not going to abandon him, in spite of how appalling his political views are to us. The truth is, his worldview and values were shaped by complex factors, including, but not limited to, history, tradition, life experiences—that we can’t even begin to fathom. This is true of every person you come into contact with.
Perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself again. You see how complex this is, though? how many aspects of our lives it extends to?
“But they/you should stay true to their values.”
At what cost, though?
And are any of us staying true to our values 100%? Can we?
There is no such thing as pure morality. Humans hold several beliefs, thoughts, emotions, values—some conflicting. The line is blurry. Let’s not pretend the dissonance isn’t present in our everyday choices.
Yes, please act upon your own conscience.
If you have the means to turn off paid subscriptions because it doesn’t feel right for Substack to take a portion of your income, then do so. Direct your subscribers to pay you off Substack if you prefer that.
If you have the means to pay for another email delivery service like Ghost, Beehiiv, Buttondown, ConvertKit, or the many other options out there, do so.
If you can program your own website, grow your own food, make your own clothes, by all means, do it. Then consider if this would leave you enough time to write.
Let me posit this, though: these “services” are still companies. They will make decisions for the good of the company. Their goal is not to benefit you, but to put money into their own pockets. Some are less scrupulous than others. Some will get exposed, now or later. Others start out with good intentions and gradually find that keeping investors happy and the company afloat often means cutting corners or making decisions that throw them into the sea of grey.
Alas, that is the world we live in. The corporate/capitalist world is a greedy one.
There are sacrifices to all the choices we make—time, money, energy. None of these are limitless.
We will always have to choose the lesser of many evils.
We have been told that the right thing to do is to take a stand by walking away, by cutting ties, and we call this “setting boundaries.” And yes, sometimes that is necessary. Sometimes, a literal walk-out is the only way to be heard.
But sometimes, telling someone to walk out when they have nowhere to walk to is just a different kind of tone-deaf privilege.
With Love,
About Me: I’m Tiffany, a literary fiction, fantasy, and memoir author. My writing has been published by The Cultivation Project and Renewal Missions. I’ve been writing this publication, The Untangling, since 2023. Order my books here or here.