I don’t think I’ve ever read anything on Platformer. If you haven’t either, it’s a tech news site based on Substack, at least it was until today. Now Platformer’s founder Casey Newton, has announce it is deplatforming itself and moving somewhere else. Why? Because of the Nazis.

In November, when Jonathan M. Katz published his article in The Atlantic about Nazis using Substack, it did not strike me as cause to immediately leave Substack. All platforms host problematic and harmful material; I assumed Substack would remove praise for Nazis under its existing policy that “Substack cannot be used to publish content or fund initiatives that incite violence based on protected classes.”

And so, after reading the open letter from 247 writers on the platform calling for clarity on the issue, I waited for a response.

The response, from Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie, arrived on December 21. It stated that Substack would remove accounts if they made credible threats of violence but otherwise would not intervene. “We don’t think that censorship (including through demonetizing publications) makes the problem go away — in fact, it makes it worse,” he wrote. “We believe that supporting individual rights and civil liberties while subjecting ideas to open discourse is the best way to strip bad ideas of their power.”

This was the moment where I started to think Platformer would need to leave Substack.

And here’s where the story gets a bit more complicated. Newton not only reacted to the story in the Atlantic, he also published his own version. Basically he identified a list of sites that were apparently run by actual neo-Nazis and pointed it out to Substack in person.

Over the past few days, the Platformer team analyzed dozens of Substacks for pro-Nazi content. Earlier this week, I met with Substack to press my case that they should remove content that praises Nazis from the network. Late today, we submitted a list of accounts that we believe to be in violation of the company’s existing policies against incitement to violence. I am scheduled to meet with the company again tomorrow.

Whatever becomes of those accounts, though, I fully expect that more will spring up in their wake. So long as Substack allows itself to be perceived — encourages itself to be perceived! — as a home for Nazis, they will open accounts here and start selling subscriptions. Why wouldn’t they?

Newton then published a follow up a few days later noting that Substack had decided to remove “some publications that express support for Nazis.” You can read the follow-up here but what’s strange is that it intentionally omits how many accounts were involved. In fact he quotes a message he received from Substack about the decision which also doesn’t say how many sites were involved.

Jesse Singal found this curious and got a copy of the full statement from Substack. Here’s the portion that Casey Newton left out:

Hi Casey,

Thank you for the list of publications you sent in for review on Thursday evening.

We have completed an investigation and found that five out of the six publications you reported do indeed violate our existing content guidelines, which prohibit incitements to violence based on protected classes. We have removed those publications from Substack.

None of these publications had paid subscriptions enabled, and they account for about 100 active readers in total.

Six publications. Zero paid subscribers. 100 Readers total. That’s the scope of the Nazi problem at Substack.

To put that in perspective, earlier this year Axios reported there were 17,000 writers who were earning money on Substack (and presumably many thousands more who are not earning anything). The total number of subscribers to various sites hosted on Substack at the time was 2 million.

I want to be very clear that I have no interest in Nazis or in listening to Nazis or spending any time at all reading anything written by Nazis. Anyone who holds to views like that is both stupid and bad in my opinion. But I can also recognize that five sad and pathetic sites with a total of 100 readers and zero subscribers do not represent a crisis for a platform that is home to more than 20,000 writers and 2 million subscribers. Here’s Jesse Singal.

So readers of Platformer were denied a couple of key pieces of information: first, Platformer, after what Newton described as a fairly comprehensive search involving the evaluation of dozens of Substack newsletters, could find only six publications it deemed worthy of reporting to Substack, and second, Substack was not making a dime from those publications. Both these facts run counter to the idea that Substack has a serious Nazi problem.

Now, the question of whether or not Nazis should be allowed on Substack is different from the question of how successful they have been at setting up shop here. But it’s clear from Newton’s reporting that he was interested in determining the scope of the problem — that’s why he conducted what he portrayed as a fairly comprehensive search of potentially violating accounts. He mentioned the search multiple times, in fact, but never explained to his readers exactly what the results were, except in rather vague terms…

Frankly, I think the more likely explanation here is that Newton and his team didn’t find very many Nazi Substacks, but that this would have been a difficult thing for them to report. If they did, it would complicate the leading role Platformer had played in stoking this controversy, not to mention piss off subscribers already increasingly convinced Substack is basically the film-premiere scene in Inglourious Basterds.

That’s how it looks to me as well. Newton was more interested in stoking moral panic then in letting his readers know the situation wasn’t actually so dire. So he just hid the small numbers involved and the fact that they had zero subscribers and barely any readers. Having committed to this panic he really has no choice but to follow through and leave Substack. But it seems to me that Newton has given a handful of losers with little reach and no power far more attention and impact than they deserve.