When will enough be enough, when it comes to toxic social media?

There’s an online phenomenon called “social proof”, aka social media followers. These days, you could make a living, land a book deal, or get a date from it. The more the better. It’s visibility, it’s branding. Another term though is “vanity metrics”, which basically means none of it matters as much as you think.

This week, the issues that we will put above social media and “social proof”, such as women and girls’ safety, if anything at all, is being put to the test again after Andrew Tate, who faces charges across multiple countries of alleged rape, sex trafficking, and forming a criminal gang to enslave women, became a bestseller on here. The “manosphere” influencer, who has openly self-identified as a misogynist, has quickly amassed over 1.1 million subscribers.

On his newsletter page Tate, who has said women are to blame for their sexual assault and whipped one with a belt in a video, asks, “Are you ready to see how deep the rabbit hole goes?” With Substack’s “decentralized” content approach - which it’s described as “all things in moderation – including moderation” - the publisher itself seems to almost be journeying into the surreal, too.

In 2020, three years after it launched, Substack insisted that “in most cases, we don’t think that censoring content is helpful, and in fact it often backfires. Heavy-handed censorship can draw more attention to content than it otherwise would have enjoyed, and at the same time it can give the content creators a martyr complex that they can trade off for future gain. We prefer a contest of ideas. We believe dissent and debate is important. We celebrate nonconformity.”

Yet even the world’s leading rights organisations, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International, say that freedom has to come with responsibilities. Research by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) into the “incelosphere” (communities of involuntary celibates) shows that platforms with hands-off moderation allow extreme misogyny to be normalized.

And misogyny in digital spaces via the “manosphere” is expanding harmful social norms used to justify violence against women and girls online and offline, UN Women said last year. According to an African multi-country study by Dutch sexual reproductive health NGO Rutgers, which I handled the media launch for in 2024, “technology-facilitated gender-based violence”, as digital violence is called, can often spill over into real life.

Research shows it is quantifiably and qualitatively worse in the global South, too. We don’t hear about it enough there, we don’t even hear about it enough in the West. But there are some instances which are horrific beyond imagination for women and girls, I know from living in Uganda, an extremely patriarchal society where there’s daily harassment yet police are corrupt and the court system isn’t independent.

Amnesty argues too that “absolute” speech for harassers and extremists creates a “chilling effect, by allowing the “incelosphere” and far-right extremists to operate without moderation. Platforms effectively censor women and marginalized groups who are driven offline by abuse, too, as has been seen in the case of X.

As for not wanting to give content creators a God complex, I’m not sure how to take that comment, considering that McKenzie platformed Richard Hanania, the president of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology in the US, who had called Blacks “animals” in 2023 and said that they should be subject to “more policing, incarceration, and surveillance” on his podcast, insisting that he was “influential” - and without calling this out.

As I was writing this today, I started to wonder is that and some of the above why the Substack has seemed a bit white and lacking in diversity, something others have also talked about? (Fun fact: Substack’s monetisation system is not even available to Africans. To be fair, the other tech giants have a problem with the continent. There’s not even one Apple shop in Africa, would you believe. But this platform told us that it was different, in more ways than one).

Frankly, when it comes to Substack’s approach to censorship, it’s hard not to think now that they start to seem a bit like cowboys conducting an experiment, and so far there’s little if any evidence to support that what they’re doing will work, as this New York Times report outlined. At least not when it comes to stopping misinformation and hate, maybe it will be a massive payday for them however. Someone pointed out to me the other day that we knew this from the start, but does that make it right?

The Atlantic revealed in 2023 that at least 16 Substack newsletters contained “overt Nazi symbols” in logos or graphics, with white suipremacists publishing and profiting from the site. The response from the platform? Not only did they double down on their stance, explaining that “some people do hold those and other extreme views” and that censorship would make things “worse”, they went onto describe their method as the best.

Two months later, they did remove five publications that “violated the company’s content guidelines, which prohibit content that incites violence based on protected classes”. Yet they were still profiting from some that promoted Nazi ideology, white supremacy, and antisemitism in January, The Guardian reported.

Their content guidelines, last updated in March, now mention strictly banning “credible threats of physical harm”, incitement to violence, material classified as illegal, and doxing, but Tate’s entry here seems an indication that they’re not about to budge on the censorship issue.

Now that we’re seeing the Substack approach put into practice, it’s hard to convey my disappointment that Substack might not be better than the other platforms, it could even be worse than most given that Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, have already ditched Tate. This is along with Big Brother and now even UK political party Reform.

The quality of the mainstream press is declining, no doubt about it, along with business models. But to be fair, I can’t think of any newspaper where I can read a regular column by Andrew Tate, who has questioned the Holocaust, performed Nazi salutes, and promotes the White Replacement Theory. Not even in The Daily Express, The Daily Mail or GB New, who appear to not want him, either.

Based on Substack’s content moderation guidelines, is there anyone who they wouldn’t ban? As Dana DuBois wrote on the platform yesterday, “If Jeffrey Epstein were still alive, would Substack platform him, too?” And now that the site, whose 2025 revenue was estimated at roughly $45 million, a 23 per cent increase year-over-year, has emboldened Tate, who else is on their way here?

I joined Substack in 2024. I’ve hardly made any money on it because until I’m posting weekly and doing reporting, I’ve decided not to charge. But it has been a lifeline to me in a way because, funnily enough, I’ve made genuine mates in real life from it. In 2025 in London, thanks to meetups via this platform started by Amy I Beeson 🐝 , I knew I always had something in the diary every month.

In the back of my mind, I knew that Substack was really quite competitive and a friend I spoke to only recently remarked the same thing. Even now I’m reminded of what happened to author Glennon Doyle, who was bullied off this site (and I hate to say it, mainly by women) for being too successful. And at times I thought it was bizarre that there were a lot of lefties and a lot of far right people here, and none of us seemed to ever collide , like on the other sites. But perhaps it was a mistake not realizing that what flies on the other platforms is a low bar these days.

Let’s be honest: for all the toxicity that comes with it, we probably have more online friends and “friends” than in real life now, a sign of our times, which is another reason why we cling onto social media. It is a source of connection. Indeed, one of the arguments against a world-first social media ban for under-16s in Australia, that other countries are now considering, is that teens in remote areas will suffer. Being from a small town, and having spent a lot of time there recently, I have pondered this myself.

But one still needs to ask at times: is it all worth it? After X’s AI tool Grok, was used to make sexual images of women and children without their consent, in January, for example, there was talk that the UK would even to an X, with reports that the UK, Australia, and Canada would take action together as a show of force. But it was only about one day before this report was denied. This makes me think that we’ve seen outrage over socials before, and we have moved on from it pretty quickly.

At the time we had think pieces, on this site and elsewhere, saying time was now up for X. Those who were still there - many did leave when Trump was elected - have to finally leave. It’s interesting to look at who is still on that site, even if they don’t use it regularly. Journalists and writers who were writing these very pieces. Activists for women’s rights and others, who were also pushing back against X. And I, myself.

Yes we say, we might not be there, but we’re still there. Even if we’re not checking in, many of us haven’t been able to finally switch off the life support and delete our accounts, instead of just deactivating them then reactivating or keeping our handles alive.

Why? I can tell you the reasons. Yes, it’s for connection. I would lose so many friends if I completely let go of the site. There’s people I likely wouldn’t see ever again. Let’s be real, if we’re talking about quitting socials, Facebook for instance, the logistics can be a nightmare given so many physical events are organized via there.

There is news that we unfortunately don’t hear in the mainstream press now that we do hear on X. As I wrote earlier this year, there were things about the Bondi massacre that I didn’t know about because the traditional media didn’t report them, but it did.

But I’d also be lying if I didn’t admit that it took quite a while to get 12k X followers, which isn’t as many that so many others have, but which I’m told is a handy amount - or “social proof” - for jobs. As a career counsellor once told me when I was applying for a media role that required branding experience and I told her I didn’t have this, “it helps to tick the box”.

And for people wanting to write books at some stage, we’re told about the “10k” figure. I have a bit of insight into how hard it is to market books after doing some PR for writers last year. One of them was an award-winning journalist who already had quite a body of work, a decent social following, and a publisher doing PR, but still approached me for extra coverage. This is how hard it is now.

The other person was a wellness and leadership coach who also had a healthy following on platforms like Instagram and LinkedIn, much better than mine. I’ve seen writers on Substack say too that they were told to “learn social media” when they wanted to publish something, as well.

Although I’m acknowledging my own hypocrisy in all of this, even though it will only be a drop in the ocean if I leave these platforms, of course I’m not the only one who might be complicit in some way in the platforming of toxicity and misogyny. Maybe though I wish that some others - who do have much more of an influence than me and could actually shift things - would be a bit more honest about this. Someone who comes to mind after I heard him talking about this issue is Alastair Campbell, who spoke on The Rest is Politics earlier this year along with his co-hosts, about why he was staying on X.

He stated that he didn’t feel he should have to leave. I like and respect Campbell and partly understand this. But I think maybe I just wished he and so many others would also admit that some of this is about not wanting to give up one million followers and what comes with that, too.

It’s such a complex matter though isn’t it? To have some impact on the “tech bros” now, it feels like we all have to leave - or none of us leave. Perhaps though it’s the big names who may have to lead the way, before the others turn the lights off. Yes, we shouldn’t be forced to abandon our social handles in 2026? But if we all say “I’m not leaving, it won’t make a difference...” And, I can’t help but wonder, would it be such a high price to pay to go - even if for only a while - to regain the standards of decency and civility that we once had and ensure our future safety?

This platform evidently feels so convinced that its content moderation approach is superior to others, that it will no longer even respond to media comments stories about Nazis. Like LinkedIn, who a lot of others are enslaved to, they have us over a barrel. And they know it.

While I don’t like the idea of policing people’s feminism or thinking, women or men, or telling any one to do (feminism is meant to be about choice after all) it’s hard for me not to feel disappointed at fellow Substack users, especially the big names and particularly the ones who tell us they care so much about women, girls and democracy, who aren’t calling this out.

If Substack won’t move on this, then what can we do? I don’t think I’m leaving, yet. But I incidentally set up on Beehiiv a few weeks ago for my my PR newsletter, and I’m thinking about joining Ghost as a potential alternative platform, or Patreon, which others have encouraged me to look into. Someone on LinkedIn told me yesterday that their web designer friend and an SEO consultant had encouraged her to blog on her own site, rather than loading all her content onto here.

Whether I’m here or elsewhere though, staying silent on this isn’t an option for me. And as far as I’m concerned, every one else on this very platform needs to speak up, too. For God sake at least let Substack know you’re unhappy.

Protest. There is one planned for the 18th where people will stay off the site for the day.

And continue to increase visibility around this issue so that the legacy media will hopefully highlight it, as well. Yes it can feel like amplifying the issue is amplifying the man himself, but this can be done in a responsible way. A number of independent outlets such as Crikey, the We Used to Be Journos in Australia, and The Guardian Australia have all done podcasts on how to report on the far right without emboldening them further, in the past year. I will share the tips on this later (they’re currently on my phone and I need to find them). But as We Used to Be Journos co-host Jan Fran pointed out when she recorded this episode last year, it’s also very easy to Google this.

What will we put above “social proof” in 2026? The answer, sadly, it still seems, is nothing. Chris Papps said morning that “Tate is the litmus test most of us will fail”. And Australian Lieutenant General David Morrison said, “The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.” This week, we’re going to see the standard some scroll past, as Tate and his more than 1.1 million subscribers hover. And until all of us decide to stop, act and even possibly pull the plug, nothing will ever change.