[wizzwizz4]

https://web.archive.org/web/20251221230655/https://www.userm...

> Substack sent a push alert encouraging users to subscribe to a Nazi newsletter that claimed Jewish people are a sickness and that we must eradicate minorities to build a “White homeland.” […] The newsletter's logo is a swastika and it has pushed Holocaust denialism along with news and opinion content for the 'White Nationalist Community.' […] Substack is primarily funded by Andreessen Horowitz, a firm whose founders have pushed extreme far right rhetoric.

[zahlman]

Your source is Taylor Lorenz, on her own Substack (with a custom domain). She apparently wasn't bothered enough to disassociate with the service. This is someone who makes claims like "Substack is primarily funded by Andreessen Horowitz, a firm whose founders have pushed extreme far right rhetoric." (Something which Wikipedia editors would be tripping over each other to evidence if it were true, but their article says nothing about it.)

There is nothing to demonstrate the claim that Substack "continues, proudly" to host such content, nor that they were ever "proud" of it. A cursory inspection shows that while the "facing" page for the group in question still loads, the underlying profile and content are all gone.

It is a known tactic of agitators to post objectionable (or even highly illegal) content on distribution networks (or in communities) they dislike and then try to get media attention attributing it to the network/community rather than themselves.

[wizzwizz4]

> Your source is Taylor Lorenz,

One of the first newsy types to report this particular issue, but certainly not the only one. See https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/07/substacks-nazi-p..., which quotes a press release from Substack. Arguably, my source is therefore Substack themselves, via Ars Technica.

> Something which Wikipedia editors would be tripping over each other to evidence if it were true, but their article says nothing about it.

Actually, this information is on Wikipedia. There's one NYT link on the Andreessen Horowitz article, and several paragraphs on Marc Andreessen's. I don't know enough about US politics to know whether all this adds up to "extreme far right rhetoric" (and I'd rather not debate that here), but there's definitely extreme, and right-wing, political advocacy described in Marc Andreessen's article. I have not confirmed whether the claims in the Wikipedia article are correct; if you dispute them, then please let me know as a courtesy (I like having accurate knowledge), then take it up with the Wikipedia editors.

> There is nothing to demonstrate the claim that Substack "continues, proudly" to host such content,

But they do continue to host it. This has been a problem for years (see e.g. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/11/substack-e..., https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/feb/07/revealed-how-s...). Do you need an article from last month? Or do I need to link you to a Nazi blog directly? They are not very hard to find: just type "site:substack.com" followed by some keywords. It took me 20 seconds to find one called "White Free Press", with such wonderful articles as "David Lane and the Foundations of His Racial Ideology", "The Contemporary Conceptual Framework of the White Ethnostate", and "The Immutable Animosity: blacts [sic] hate White People, and Nothing Can Change It".

> It is a known tactic of agitators […]

Quoting the Ars Technica article:

> Of those accounts created in February, only the Substack account is still online, which Fisher-Birch suggested likely sends a message to Nazi groups that their Substack content is “less likely to be removed than other platforms.” At least one Terrorgram-adjacent white supremacist account that Fisher-Birch found in March 2024 confirmed that Substack was viewed as a back-up to Telegram because it was that much more reliable to post content there.

> “Groups that want to recruit members or build a neo-fascist counter-culture see Substack as a way to get their message out,” Fisher-Birch told Ars.

I don't think "this is all some kind of contrived false flag operation" is a particularly likely explanation.

[zahlman]

> There's one NYT link on the Andreessen Horowitz article

I see no mention of the far right in the article; the only NYT source with "right" in the title that I can find is "The Tech Right Gets Its Own Phyllis Schlafly", but this is only being used to cite Boyle investing in some aerospace/miltech companies.

As for Marc, we're at multiple layers of guilt by association now, but even so I don't see what's extreme about anything attributed to him in his own article. In fact, it all looks to me like stuff that I'd expect a very large percentage of Americans to find agreeable.

> But they do continue to host it.

FWIW, I consider that the actual literal Nazis were a step beyond typical contemporary American white supremacists. Regardless, this is still a goalpost shift. Note that the headline of your own source explicitly describes Substack as having offered an apology, which is the opposite of how you respond when you're proud of what you're accused of.