This whole substack drama reminds me of the last project I worked on in my edtech startup before leaving. Its a good reminder that any time a company decides to pander to fringe/right wing elements they will almost always end up on the wrong side of everything, even financially.
A few states (read: Florida and Texas) had major problem with our product because it was considered too “liberal” for schools. Parents (& teachers!) had complained that our product (supplemental news) did not have enough conservative (read: right wing / fringe) view points to teach kids and it was very NYC liberal. As soon as latest legislatives were passed there was a lot of debate within the company about what kind of company they wanted to be and what values were important. After much debate, the leadership decided that all voices were important and choice was important, and who were we after all if our customers demanded that, right?
So in the next few months, the product built choices within platform that allowed school admins to censor or promote specific content to students, and even block it. Teachers had no agency to override and could get into trouble for using non-approved content. Result was the few teachers who were vociferous in their complaints go their wish, but all the other teachers who could’ve used the product also were not.
But it did not end there. The company thought by pandering to a few states and their right wing BS they would avoid showdown in other states. Well, other state schools, teachers and admins were pissed that the company would take a position of censorship. The reputational hit amongst liberal state teachers was way more than conservative states - even so that usage fell not only in the right wing states but also in liberal states because teachers/admins could no longer identify with the values of the company. But once the company was on this path, there was no going back. Unfortunately I did not stick around long enough to figure out what happened since then, but all I know is that the reputational hit that the product took completely demoralized the company employees, hit its finances and ended up with layoffs of almost 40% of company. Now i have no idea whats going on there.
Coming back to Substack, this is exactly what will happen. There is no coming back from the absolute idiocy they did. They didnt learn from Twitter either. Once you’ve shown what values you as a company hold, there is no coming back from there, especially for small/mid size companies. And you know what, you fucking deserve it.