The Algorithm Is the Policy (Or: Nazis, Then Tate, Then Whatever's Next) (TFG pt 2)

November 2023. The Atlantic identified at least 16 Substack newsletters featuring Nazi symbols and far-right extremism openly, unambiguously, with swastikas as profile pictures. Not dog-whistle stuff. Not edgy-but-deniable content. Actual Nazi shit, being monetized, with Substack collecting its 10%.

Writers organized. An open letter went out. Hundreds signed it. The ask was simple: state clearly that you will not host or monetize content that calls for violence against Jews. That's it. A sentence. Maybe two.

Co-founder Hamish McKenzie's response – and I want you to read this slowly, because this is the man who used to be a journalist – was that:

... the platform doesn't think "that censorship (including through demonetizing publications) makes the problem go away – in fact, it makes it worse."

Let me translate that for you. The guy whose platform was taking 10% of Nazi newsletter subscription money told the people objecting to Nazi newsletter subscriptions that demonetizing those newsletters would somehow be the real problem. Are you fucking kidding me?!?!? That enforcing a content standard would make extremism worse, not better. That the correct response to hosting Nazis is to host Nazis, but thoughtfully, stroking your chin in whilst looking contemplative.

This is the same logic that got Alex Jones on every major platform for years. It's the same logic that let QAnon metastasize through Facebook's recommendation engine while executives wrote memos about free expression. It's a principle that has never, in the history of the internet, actually made anything better. It is, however, a principle that reliably protects revenue.

Under sustained pressure, Substack removed a handful of the most egregious accounts. Not all of them. Not with any new policy. Just enough to make the story go away. And crucially, as Casey Newton documented when he moved Platformer[1] off the platform entirely in January 2024, they left the growth infrastructure intact for everyone they didn't remove. The recommendation engine. The leaderboards. The weekly digests. The Notes feed. The machinery that made a newsletter go from 200 readers to 20,000 readers – they left that wide open.

Newton's point, and it's a surgical one, was that this isn't primarily a content moderation question. It's an infrastructure question. Ghost, where he (and I) landed, doesn't have a recommendation engine. If a Nazi sets up shop on Ghost, they get their newsletter and that's it. No algorithmic amplification. No platform-driven growth. No Substack taking 10% while their "Discover" feature does the marketing.

That's the difference. Not who you allow. What you build for them when they show up.

Fast forward to April 2026. Andrew Tate -- the guy who has been banned from Meta, Twitch, TikTok, and YouTube, who faces human trafficking and rape charges across multiple jurisdictions, who was freed from Romanian detention partly through Trump administration pressure, who built his audience by teaching young men how to psychologically and financially exploit women -- has been posting on Substack for eighteen months to virtually no one. Single-digit hearts. A handful of likes per post. Crickets.

Then, in April 2026, Substack moved its algorithm[2]. Tate's content didn't change. His writing didn't improve. Nothing he did differently. Substack surfaced him. Overnight: #1 New Bestseller. #2 Rising in News. Over a million followers, many of them possibly purchased bots, in a push that several observers called obviously astroturfed.

He didn't grow into that position. The platform put him there.

And this is the part that should make you genuinely angry. The founders have spent years explaining, patiently and with great earnestness, that they believe in the free press, in writers' independence, in letting the market of ideas operate without heavy-handed interference. What they have actually built is a system where they decide, through algorithm, who gets discovered and who stays invisible. They are making that call every single day. They made it for Andrew Tate.

That's not a free speech platform. That's an editorial decision made by people who want the money without the accountability.

The company Substack is keeping, by the way: the only platforms that haven't banned Tate are Substack and post-Musk Twitter/X. That's your peer group, gentlemen. Congratulations on the company.

These fucking guys indeed. I guess sleeping on a pile of $100 bills is worth selling your soul.

1 - Casey Newton and Platformer got white glove treatment from the folks who run Ghost Pro, the hosted solution. They make it seem easier to move than it is in real life.

2 - This post by Gloria Horton-Young is fire, and it is what prompted me to deal with the PTSD of dredging my thoughts of this back up. Do read it, and toss her a like and a subscribe. Her stuff is good

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