Operation: KILL SUBSTACK
It's easier than you think....for now
I HATE being right.....I really really do!
Unfortunately, since my personal awakening journey started in earnest back in 2021, I have rarely been wrong with my predictions.
On the occasion that I am wrong, it is usually due to the fact I was too 'conservative' (pun absolutely intended!) with my predictions and underestimated how bad things can actually get....and more importantly, how quickly!
The Substack 'rug pull' last month was a perfect example of the latter.
In late October 2025, I published a podcast episode in which I outlined in quite a lot of detail my concerns about the upcoming social media ban for teenagers in Australia that was due to kick in on December 10:
My working assumption at the time was that Substack may (and likely will) be forced to comply with the Australian social media ban legislation given they ARE clearly & evidently a social media platform...by their own admission:
Hamish McKenzie
Here is what I said at the time:
I also gave this interview to Nicola Charles (a.k.a. the "White Rabbit") around the same time, in which I articulated my thoughts on how Australians should respond to the incoming ban and what is the appropriate way to respond to any platform which chooses to comply with the legislation and implement "age verification" measures of ANY kind.
A few days before the commencement of the ban on December 10, I held an Actionable Take livestream:
Michael Ginsburg
I discussed the imminent ban in great detail and here is what I said was the ONLY acceptable response to any platform which decides to implement ANY measures to comply in ANY way with this legislation:
As you can see from the clip above, I already knew at that point that Substack contracted a company called Persona to conduct "age verification" for them in preparation for complying with the incoming legislation both in Australia and the UK.
The reason why I knew that Substack WILL comply if push comes to shove was because they said publicly they will (and also disabled comments for that particular post which is a very unusual move for posts on the official company newsletter):
On Substack
The Substack Rug Pull
A mere five days later, THIS happened:
Here is the content of the email referred to in the above discussion:
On the very same day, I was contacted by one of my subscribers on Substack with a very disturbing report:
Here is a bigger version of the notice my subscriber Nathan was presented with:
NEWS | Substack now asking for age verification in Australia. pic.twitter.com/2ocqtG6IoH
— Courage Is The Cure (@RobynRJS) December 11, 2025
Equally disturbing reports started coming out from the UK:
Doc Malik
While I was never asked to undertake any "age verification" myself at any point (and still haven't to this day!), I have seen enough at this point and have made the ONLY move that I consider to be the appropriate one in response to that:
I then immediately proceeded to set my Substack to private:
If you go to my Substack publication now and are not an existing subscriber who is also logged into your Substack account, you will see the following:
Once I finish making the final polishes to the content I transferred from Substack to my own website, I will indeed DELETE the entire publication....and possibly my entire Substack account with it!
Within a few days, it became crystal clear to anyone (unless they've had too many of those "boosters" that is) that:
Substack rolled over
The UK government did NOT compel them to activate the (highly intrusive) Persona "age verification" process and neither did the Australian government.
They simply did it on their own accord!
Indie
Sasha Latypova
OPINION | AUSTRALIA CENSORED | MEDIA BAN | Full broadcast in the comments | @DocAhmadMalik @JohnnyVedmore @BringTheNoise_X @JohnBeaudoinSr @realericmoutsos @JimFergusonUK @davidicke @SlowNewsDayShow @garethicke @dom_lucre @NicHulscher @2worldsPodcast @nobodystakee @ABridgen… pic.twitter.com/LM93S6W8vJ
— Courage Is The Cure (@RobynRJS) December 11, 2025
Thinking Coalition
At the same time, a lot of information started coming out about the company Substack contracted with to conduct the "age verification" on their behalf: PERSONA.
Persona is the identity verification giant you probably never heard of till now. Just check out their list of customers.
Out of all the many articles I have seen come out on Persona since this fiasco began, this one is the most well researched and most comprehensive in my opinion:
Agent131711
To add an insult to injury, the CEO of Substack Chris Best (go and show him some 'love' on Twitter or Substack if you still have access) penned this opinion piece for the UK's Telegraph newspaper which he also reposted on his own personal Substack:
Chris Best
Beyond the platitude and corporate speak, here is the ONLY part that matters as far as I'm concerned:
The Online Safety Act does something different than what it says on the tin. It is not the most effective way to keep kids safe, and it hurts a free society. If this model spreads, it won’t just block content for children. It will determine whether adults can read, write, and argue freely without first submitting to surveillance. Companies like ours will respect the laws you choose, so please be sure you choose the future you want.
This is gaslighting of the worst kind!
NO ONE in the UK or Australia has "chosen" these laws except the local regime branches in both countries...who obviously do NOT represent nor work for the people of either country.
In addition to that, the HUGE fiasco with Australia was not even mentioned!
Australian Podcaster Robyn from Courage is the Cure has nailed it here and I agree with every single word without exception:
Robyn is definitely a good egg and despite being a lady, she clearly has bigger balls than many of the blokes in the freedom camp (supposedly) who are still contemplating their response to this DESPICABLE move by Substack, or worse yet, have already decided to ignore it and continue monetising through the platform.
I was considering to maybe name and shame a few at this point given almost a month has passed, but have decided against that....for now!
Here is someone who is definitely NOT on the 'naughty list' and I salute them:
phillip.altman
So how do we respond?
Substack's business model requires a different approach
Unlike Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Rumble, Substack does NOT make their money from ads (although that may be changing soon).
Instead, their business model revolves around "revenue share" whereby they take 10% of all gross (so before Stripe fees are applied) revenue publishers make from paid subscriptions facilitated by their platform.
This means that "abandoning" the platform in the traditional sense (i.e. denying them of your 'eyeballs') doesn't actually hurt them that much.
What DOES hurt them however is if they are denied of their 10% cut.
Weaponizing the revenue share model
If a concentrated and highly aggressive campaign is undertaken to deny Substack of their cut, and this is sustained over a few months, we can KILL SUBSTACK before the end of 2026.
Their current business model, as well as the fact they are not as big yet as the major social media platforms, makes KILLING the platform outright very very doable.
However, it is also very important to note that Substack is backed by US venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz:
Andreessen Horowitz are 'heavy hitters' and one of the biggest VC firms in the tech space in the US (if not THE biggest). They were early investors in almost every big name in tech you can think of including Facebook, Coinbase, airbnb and Stripe which is the only payment processor Substack integrates with (Coincidence? You decide but I personally stopped believing those exist by now).
Even more importantly: Marc Andreessen, who is one of the founding partners (the Andreessen part of Andreessen Horowitz) is one of the tech ‘elite’ steering the ship that is the second Trump administration. Furthermore, his wife Laura is the founder of a social venture capital fund with strong ties to none other than Bill Gates!!
Andreessen Horowitz said it raised more than $15 billion across multiple new funds in 2025, accounting for about 18% of U.S. venture capital allocations that year. The firm said the capital will be invested across areas including AI, crypto, infrastructure, growth, and bio and…
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) January 9, 2026
What I am trying to say here is that these are very savvy, well connected and highly experienced operators. We can still absolutely succeed in KILLING off Substack....but we need to act FAST and in concentrated manner!
What should you do if you currently have paid subscriptions to publishers on Substack?
Ask the question and DEMAND clear answers (and timeline)
If you haven't done so already, you should reach out to each and every publisher you have a paid subscription for through Substack and ask them the following question:
Do you plan to continue running your paid subscriptions through Substack and if not, what is your timeline to cease direct monetisation through the platform?
I am not going to tell you what to consider as an acceptable answer to the above question (although you can probably gather where I stand on this) but I DO very much urge you to ask the above question, if you haven't done so already.
If an answer is not forthcoming, or you are not happy with the answer given for whatever reason, your next move from there should be fairly obvious.
What should Substack Publishers do?
and what not to do unless you want to be in a world of pain!
If you are a publisher on Substack that is peeved by this obvious rug pull by Substack and are considering your next steps, this section is for you.
Let's start with the simplest scenario first.
If you do NOT have paid subscriptions at the moment
If you never had any paid subscribers through Substack, your situation is very simple and the solution is very simple as well:
Don't activate paid subscriptions through Substack.
If you connected your stripe account to Substack, and provided you never had a paid subscriber coming in from Substack or their subscription has since lapsed, you can safely go to your Substack publisher dashboard and disconnect Stripe under settings --> payments.
You can then choose any other monetisation option you want that does not involve connecting your Stripe account to Substack.
As far as whether you should continue publishing on the platform or abandon it, that is up to you.
As long as you don't collect subscription payments by having your Stripe account connected to Substack, you are not contributing anything to Substack's bottom line and can keep hammering their Amazon Web Services (which is what they use to host the platform on) and Mailgun (which is what they use to send emails) bills.
However, keep in mind that your readers in the UK, Australia (and god knows where else in the very near future) may not be able to access the content without submitting to the Persona "age check".
If you decide to abandon the platform completely (which I do encourage you to at least consider), there are two specific options I am suggesting further down in this piece.
Just don't forget to export your email list and content before shutting up shop on Substack:
If you DO have paid subscriptions at the moment
This applies to you even if your paid subscriptions are currently paused:
If you currently have paid subscribers on your Substack and even if those paid subscriptions are currently paused, resist the urge of just going into your publication dashboard and disconnecting the Stripe account yourself.
What NOT to do:
If you just go to your publisher dashboard and hit the "Disconnect Stripe" button, all your existing subscriptions will be CANCELLED. This is the case even if these paid subscriptions are currently paused.
Worse yet, you will need to provide pro-rated refunds to all paid subscribers for the unused period of their existing Subscription, which may result in you being directly out of pocket and also potentially losing your Stripe account altogether.
To Substack's credit, they do warn you that this is what will happen as you can see in the screenshot above but this is also easy to miss in a moment of anger/frustration.
I don't want that to happen to you which is why I am specifically warning you of this.
What to DO instead:
There are two scenarios here:
- If you've already decided on where you will move your paid subscriptions to and have everything you need to set up elsewhere, you can ask Substack to sever their connection to your Stripe account from their end as explained further down. If like me, you are moving to Ghost, make sure you complete the following workflow in your Ghost backend FIRST after connecting the same Stripe account you've used for Substack.
- If you have not decided on your next steps yet, my advice is to consider pausing the substack subscriptions until you do. Doing so will deny Substack of any further revenue but will also give you the urgency to look for alternatives as you are obviously also denying yourself of revenue as well.
Mark Neugebauer
Courage Is The Cure
Whatever move you decide to take, make sure you communicate clearly to your paid subscribers WHAT you are doing and WHY you are doing it.
Severing the connection between Substack and your Stripe account the RIGHT way
If you've already sorted out your paid subscriptions on another platform and are ready to cut off Substack, it is imperative that Substack sever the connection on their end rather than you doing it yourself through the Substack publisher dashboard.
When I did this in early December, there was an email address you could email to and reach directly the specific team of humans at Substack which performs this specific task.
Unfortunately, this has changed now and you will be forced to go through their AI chat bot first.
However, in order to help you out and keep the interaction with this AI bot (which cannot perform this specific task anyway) to a minimum before being transferred to a human (who can perform this specific task), I recommend the prompt below which has achieved the desired result (namely: escalation to a human) in just one attempt...although this is also based on a sample size of one:
You can copy and paste the prompt below to the chat window when commencing the interaction with Substack's AI chatbot:
I am looking to get Substack disconnected from my Stripe account but I want all existing subscriptions to remain as-is and NOT cancelled.
Can you make that happen? If not, please escalate to a human support specialist.
The above prompt should get the AI to transfer you to a human.
However, even once that happens, it may take some time for a human to get back to you (especially if there are many thousands of people doing the exact same thing as you at exactly the same time) so you will need to be patient.
Even once you do start engaging with a human, you may find they will try and tell you that this is something you can do yourself through the publisher dashboard in order to confuse/trick you...or simply because they are dumb!
Maintain your stance and calmly explain to them that you moving to another platform (even if you are not) and want all existing subscriptions to remain as-is.
It may take a bit of back-and-forth but eventually you will get the desired result:
Some alternatives to Substack to consider
This is NOT an exhaustive list by any means
To close off this piece, I want to briefly touch on a few options that you may consider moving to that I feel are the most similar to Substack's UX (User Experience) and functionality and yet give you a much higher level of control.
For the avoidance of doubt: I was NOT paid to mention any of these options and do NOT benefit financially (or otherwise) if you choose to go with any of the options below.
Ghost
This is the option I personally went with and the CMS (Content Management System) on which this piece you are reading is published.
There are many reasons why I decided to go with Ghost (as opposed to something like WordPress or any other solution) but here are the most pertinent ones:
- Ghost is specifically designed for Independent publishing on the web and its functionality, user interface and editor are very streamlined for this specific purpose;
- Ghost has email newsletters built-in as a core feature of the software.
Ghost
- Ghost is specifically designed for Independent publishers to be supported directly by those who consume their content (written and otherwise) through memberships and includes highly flexible and versatile content gating built-in as a core feature of the software;
- Ghost is more secure in my assessment compared to WordPress due to the plugin architecture of the latter; and
- The latest major release of Ghost (version 6.0) supports integration with the Social Web through a protocol called “ActivityPub” which brings the web back to its early days in the sense that it becomes a lot more decentralised and less beholden to the big major platforms across publishing and social media. This may sound like complete “geek speak” to you and explaining that in detail is beyond the scope of this post so if you don't understand what I am referring to, you can check out this video and this one. I also discussed that in much more detail in my latest Actionable Take Livestream and the show notes for that are publicly accessible.
The official Ghost hosting service is quite expensive but there are other options
While Ghost is a free and open source software just like WordPress (and most other major content management systems), its architecture (especially following the release of version 6.0) makes it not feasible to use the standard cPanel-based shared hosting you may use for a WordPress website...and this is as technical as I will get on this. 😉
The Ghost foundation, which is the custodian of the Ghost open source project (just like the WordPress foundation is the custodian of that open source project), offers its own managed hosting service for Ghost powered websites and it's called Ghost Pro. This is the primary way the Ghost foundation funds its operations and the ongoing development of the software (which is free to use).
The problem is that this service can be quite expensive due to the fact that the pricing structure is based on how many members you have on your website rather than how many emails you send through the software.
Depending on your setup and the way you plan to send your newsletters through Ghost, other hosting providers may be significantly cheaper.
I personally use Ghost only to send newsletters to my paying members while using a different service for the newsletters that go for everyone.
Therefore, for me a hosting service which charges based on the number of emails sent rather than the number of members makes more financial sense.
I personally use this service which costs $12 a month (and so far, so good) but have recently come across this service which seems to offer the same but is much cheaper (48 Euros for 12 months).
I had a few interactions with the person behind this second service just to gauge their responsiveness and also test their ability to quickly and easily migrate a Ghost website between hosts (which is something you can absolutely do, just like with WordPress) and have nothing but good things to report. However, I have not used them to actually run my website through so can't comment on that.
One service I do have to caution you specifically to NOT use is this one. I initially went with them but following some concerning things I found in their terms of service (see screenshot below), I approached the owner for some clarifications. He then said he will take a look at my content and get back to me.
Once he did, he said that my content (below is a direct quote):
Requires too much effort from a risk management perspective
And basically asked me to go elsewhere. To his credit, he did give me a full refund in a prompt and hassle-free manner.
To finish off this section, here is a direct comparison between Substack and Ghost prepared by the Ghost Foundation.
This obviously makes it marketing material but I am including it nevertheless because it is factually accurate.
WordPress
WordPress is still the most widely-used CMS (Content Management System) on the web, with 62% of all websites that use a CMS, running WordPress. In numerical terms this means more than 810 million websites as of 2025.
The problem that WordPress does have (and is alluded to in this comparison prepared by the Ghost foundation) is that you will need to install quite a few plugins in order to replicate the same functionality Ghost has out of the box and more specifically: content gating and sending email newsletters.
The reason I decided to include WordPress as an option is primarily due to the fact that I have recently learnt that the company that is behind the hosted version of WordPress has started offering an email newsletter service as part of its JetPack plugin which is a plugin that adds various features to self-hosted WordPress sites that are available on the hosted version of the software, which they own.
This seems to have happened as an attempt to directly compete with Substack as their pricing table makes a direct comparison between the two:
This may be appealing to you if you already have a WordPress-powered website and especially so if you already use the JetPack plugin for one of its other features.
However, please keep in mind that you will need to be at least on their mid tier price plan ("Growth") in order to access the Newsletter service.
One for the podcasters: Supercast
I decided to include this option because I know there are quite a lot of Podcasters using Substack and who rely heavily on its various paywall features for both the content itself and access to comments and the chat room.
I looked at this one quite awhile back (almost 2 years ago now probably) after hearing it mentioned in some podcast episode I listened to (don't remember which one now) and thought that this is quite interesting and worth bookmarking for potential future use.
Supercast is NOT open source and CANNOT be self-hosted. Instead, it is another managed SaaS (Software As A Service) platform just like Substack. I just want to get that out of the way.
The reason why I decided to mention it anyway is because looking at its feature set, it appears to me that if offers everything Substack offers in terms of gating audio and video content, built-in written posts and built-in email marketing as well as a built-in AMA (Ask Me Anything) functionality.
All that is provided through a revenue share model just like Substack but with one MAJOR difference: the platform fee is FIXED ($0.59 per subscriber per month) rather than Substack's 10% cut.
This can mean significant savings for a podcaster who gates some or all of their podcast episodes. In other words: if you are a podcaster, you can potentially make much more money without changing the prices of subscription.
Furthermore, Supercast allows podcasters to create as many pricing tiers as they like, unlike Substack that only has a "paid" and "foundation" tiers.
One thing Supercast doesn't offer is the built-in discovery/social media aspect of Substack Notes but one doesn't have to be running a paid newsletter on Substack to access notes and if your paying members are prevented from accessing Substack unless they submit to "papers please", then this entire point becomes moot anyway.
The way Supercast works is that you maintain the public RSS feed of your podcast with whatever host you are currently with but host the paid feed through them. Paid subscribers can then access the paid feed through a unique RSS feed that is created for them individually and easily integrates with whatever podcast listening app they are already using.
This video provides a demonstration of how this works in practice:
Time to ACT!
As a collective, we freedom-lovers/"anti-vaxxers"/"cookers" have had little to NO wins this decade.
This is a sad reality but it IS the TRUTH nevertheless.
The DESPICABLE move by Substack last month finally gives us a specific soft target we can focus ALL of our collective anger/frustration at and finally get some sort of release in the form of a victory, however small.
This victory has a very clear and unambiguous end goal: KILL SUBSTACK.
More specifically: the purpose is to ensure that by the end of 2026 (and ideally much sooner than that), Substack is no more!
We do NOT want Substack to apologise.
We do NOT want Substack to reform.
We do NOT want Substack to promise to do better going forward.
WE WANT SUBSTACK TO DIE!!!
Let that be a lesson and a WARNING for any so called "freedom-friendly" platform to NEVER EVER try a stunt like Substack did EVER again!
Substack 2017-2026
R.I.P
Onward!
