Why Platformer is leaving Substack

After much consideration, we have decided to move Platformer off of Substack. Over the next few days, the publication will migrate to a new website powered by the nonprofit, open-source publishing platform Ghost. If you already subscribe to Platformer and wish to continue receiving it, you don’t need to do anything: your account will be ported over to the new platform.

If all goes well, following the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday on Monday, you’ll receive the Tuesday edition of Platformer as normal. If you have any issues with your subscription after that, please let us know.

Today let’s talk about how we came to this decision, the debate over how platforms should moderate content, and why we think we’re better off elsewhere. 

I.

When I launched Platformer on Substack in 2020, it was not in the belief that we would be here forever. Tech platforms come and go; in the meantime, they can also change in ways that make staying there impossible for the creators that rely on them. For this reason, I almost launched Platformer on a custom-built stack of services centered on WordPress, the way my inspiration Ben Thompson had done for Stratechery.

But Substack had some compelling advantages of its own. It was impressively fast and easy to set up. It paid to design Platformer’s logo. It offered me a year of healthcare subsidies, and ongoing legal support.

I also felt a personal connection to Substack’s co-founders, who believed that Platformer would succeed even before it had a name. They convinced me that I could thrive on their platform, and offered me a welcome boost in confidence as I considered leaving the best job I ever had to strike out on my own.

In the three years since, Substack has been a mostly happy home. Platformer has grown tremendously over that time, from around 24,000 free subscribers to more than 170,000 today. Our paid subscribers have allowed me to create new jobs in journalism. I’m proud of the work we do here.

Over that same period, Substack has faced occasional controversies over its laissez-faire approach to content moderation. The platform hosts a wide range of material I find distasteful and offensive. But for a time, the distribution of that material was limited to those who had signed up to receive it. In that