People said Andrew Tate and Huw Edwards were finished. Thank God for Substack!

Two years ago, the man who told the world that Queen Elizabeth II had died was declared finished by his former colleague Jon Sopel. “Huw Edwards’ reputation is utterly trashed,” said the journalist, speaking on the excellent podcast that he co-hosts, The News Agents. “There is no comeback from any of this.” Former newsreader Edwards pleaded guilty in September 2024 to three charges of making indecent images of children, receiving a six-month jail sentence suspended for two years. He was placed on the UK sex offender’s register for seven. About five months ago, Sopel’s remarks were echoed by actor Martin Clunes, who played Edwards in a drama, in The Guardian: “There’s no way back for him.”

Only it appears now that there may be a rehabilitation for the man who was described by many as the face of the BBC - via this very site. Edwards announced his “restart” on this platform two months ago, informing us he’d be offering up hot takes on UK politics, the country’s health system, and more. If you want a summary of his blog, it goes a bit like this: I’m not saying my mental health is an excuse for the crime I committed but - spoiler alert - it is. Although claiming he is full of “deep regret and remorse” for his crimes, Edwards pivots to the sick card quickly in one post and now also disables the comments feature, denying readers the opportunity to respond to him. His posts have been dripping with entitlement from the get-go. He hasn’t posted for a month now, so maybe it’s not working out for him. But of course Edwards has only found a platform here because Substack has given him one. To complain that he’s here but to ignore this fact leaves a huge elephant in the room, as uncomfortable as it may be to confront this.

It’s great that we have the convicted criminals on Substack now, because up until recently we only had the alleged ones, although that could change at some stage. I’m being sarcastic, of course. In April though, Andrew Tate, who faces ten charges including alleged rape, actual bodily harm, human trafficking and controlling prostitution for gain, reached the top of the pops on here. Tate has been booted off most other social media platforms, but rose to become a Substack bestseller, with a newsletter that asks “are you ready to see how deep the rabbit hole goes?”

We’re now gone even further down it with the arrival of Edwards, which in 2026 appears to be rewriting the rules of cancellation for disgraced high profile figures. Although I started writing this in June, I’m only getting around to publishing it now. In some ways I’ve missed the media moment, but then this is a story that isn’t going anywhere, with the Tates due to face a court again today so it can decide whether they will remain behind bars for the duration of their court proceedings, according to reports. Andrews’ brother Tristan is also facing a number of charges. Both deny any wrongdoing. The pair were arrested in the US last month, after UK authorities issued 38 new charges against them. The now face a total 59 charges. Yesterday, British prosecutors asked a US court to knock back a request by the Tate brothers that they be released from jail while extradition proceedings are held, before another hearing. But maybe it’s also good to sit with your hot take for a while, too. With the nature of the news cycle and attention economy, too, people move on from issues very quickly and they become forgotten so maybe people need a reminder now that the initial coverage has died down: these men are still on Substack.

Late last month, Australian-British comedian and podcaster Deborah Frances-White wrote in the brilliant newsletter The Nerve that “Andrew Tate’s too toxic to touch now. But look at the damage he’s done”. As much as I love her and I understand what she’s saying - he has become too much even for Reform UK party leader Nigel Farage and US President Donald Trump - Substack took one look at Tate (and his 1.1 million subscribers) and said “yes please, thanks very much”. He also remains on X.

Tate is legally entitled to the presumption of innocence, as he himself says in one of his latest Notes on here, and a fair trial of course. But you have to ask why the other platforms barred him a while ago? Spoiler alert: it was for violating policies "on dangerous organisations and individuals", as far as the Meta ones were concerned. If he is extradited to the UK and or Romania to face charges and convicted, will Substack and X finally remove him? Will Substack release a statement then? Tell us again Substack how you’re different from other media? Where does Substack draw the line? Convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell is said to be receiving preferential treatment in jail. If only someone could smuggle her in a phone or iPad, we could hear from her too. And what will it take for those with a lot of subscribers on here (besides Jeanette Winterson and Anna Wharton) who do have some influence to act to force this site to boot Tate and Edwards off?

You have to wonder about the legalities of allowing a registered sex offender online and why Substack doesn’t have a policy on this even with its freedom of speech absolutist policy, as Emma Jane Taylor, a survivor of child sexual abuse and founder of the charity Project 90-10, which aims to educate and protect children from child sexual abuse, pointed out on Talk TV. This is before we get to the moral argument. Admittedly, I haven’t done a deep dive into the former. But under plans announced by the UK’s then home secretary Shabana Mahmood last December, offenders will be forced to notify police with the details of any dating app and social media accounts or face up to five years in jail. It’s not known if this was cleared or not, and although there’s been some reporting on this issue, it seems we’ve had very little interrogation of the legalities by the press, who view this story mainly through a media lens, given media is obsessed with media, and often forget that it’s real people who are at the heart of it. What happened to reporters, for instance, asking Substack the questions “how are these men allowed to be on here, do you not care about safeguarding?” and reporting these questions that were asked and their answers in the story, whether the company responds or not. When I worked for news wire agencies, this is how we did reporting.

David Yelland, former editor of The Sun, said on X that the commentary about Edwards’ “PR ‘fight back’ fails to understand the difference between reputation and the new routes to market in media which just don’t require old media gatekeepers to green light newspaper columns…just because he can be heard in public does not mean his reputation can be salvaged.” Yelland is right. And it would be unlikely that Edwards would find a new home even via a column in the Mail or a show on GB News, anywhere. For all the talk of how the establishment press is dying, it’s not dead yet and clearly it has some limits.

Substack though clearly remains utterly committed to a free speech absolutist policy. The company, which rarely comments on stories, has not responded to Edwards being on the platform and did not comment on Tate. But its CEOs have said in the past that they believe its content moderation approach is the best one, although there’s little evidence that Substack’s hands-off policy deradicalizes people, for example. Lately, Substack staff have been boasting and bigging up the platform, saying that by introducing an AI detector, theirs is the “most human corner of the internet”. How on earth can you make that claim when you’ve essentially given a stage to alleged and convicted criminals? Oh and I’ve not even mentioned the Nazis. For a brand, it’s a terrible look.

In June in Australia, because of a potential backlash from advertisers and sponsors, it was announced that daytime TV presenter Karl Stefanovic, who had featured far right thug Tommy Robinson on his separate podcast without properly interrogating him, would be parting ways with the Nine network who produce the Today program which he hosted. It appears there are some limits for legacy media, no matter how they come about. But Substack operates without a traditional advertising model like it, too.

Edwards’ comeback coincided with a new documentary on the late disgraced Australian performer Rolf Harris, on the ABC. (You can find it outside Australia on Prime Video and other platforms). Although harrowing viewing, I watched it twice to try to gain more of an understanding of how the actions of men like Harris affect their victims and survivors’ lives forever. While their offending was of a different nature, there’s quite a few parallels between the two. There were warning signs early on about the pair’s behaviour, they had a need for relevance, and they possessed a delusion over their crimes. They both, some argue, got off lightly.

In the Harris documentary, one of his survivors, Tonya Lee, tries to convey the impact of his abuse, saying “it destroys people’s lives. Not just six months, your whole life.” Another, Wendy Wild, Harris’ youngest victim, wrote to him in jail after his conviction, in response to a horrible poem that Harris wrote to her which was later published in a paper. In doing so, she is described as having “grabbed the power back from him”. It took Wild more than four decades to come forward to authorities, and it took Lee three. Australian victims, sadly, did not get a trial, which another survivor, Suzi, put down to our country’s strict defamation laws.

Lee stresses that her story is “a lot of people’s stories”. The case, nearly four years before MeToo, was considered groundbreaking and a sign that things were shifting. The documentary ends with Lee saying that “Actually being believed … made me much more powerful. That power comes from being heard.”

By giving men like Edwards and Tate an audience, Substack has signaled that they will reward the perpetrators of crimes and alleged ones involving children and women, and are setting back any progress made in getting victims and survivors to come forward. They are letting them drive the conversation and the focus is put on them, instead of being placed on the people whose names we haven’t heard of, for whom there is no “restart”, just the reality of another day of having to live with what they endured. It shows once again that although the tech bros may have built our virtual worlds and may now be finding others, no matter what they tell us they have no idea of life in the real one and do not care, either.