Cutting-Room Floor Text (A Hypothetical Job Interview for me):
I would expand the DEI acronym to DEIH - with the H standing for Hubris - because it’s understood these organizations know what’s best for everyone.
“Bill, thank you for your application, but hiring you would be detrimental to our newspaper’s mission and wouldn’t serve our readers or American citizens. We here at Gannett are committed to protecting our readers.”
Bill: “But half your readers probably think like I do, or at least would appreciate being exposed to the stories I could write.”
“Have a good day, Bill … and, next time you come into our newsroom show some respect for others and wear your Covid mask.”
As #98, I fully agree with this! The problem is that the things we're currently being contrarian about, the rest of the world isn't yet ready to talk about.
But in a year, you might run this same exact article about people who reported about January 6th -- or censorship, or Ukraine -- before it was 'common knowledge'.
Hard to find them if the main filter is circulation. Kind of a catch 22.
Searches based on authors opinions are possible and can be an end run around that catch 22. Below is just a modest example and I'm sure others can do better.
More Opinions On Wedge Issues
of some well known commentators, as far as I can tell...a work in progress
Is the issue with Ukraine just that it is an unnecessary war partly brought on by the West? Is there some known scandal? I hear the term "money-laundering" connected to it and don't know what posters mean.
I am against a million mostly young men dying with their guts shot out so elites in one place can monkey with a border that means almost nothing to them. Then elites in another place can commit war crimes to stop their border from being decided by some people 7,000 miles away who care zero about their young boys also dying in a ditch, alone.
These 2 sets of elites on NATO and the other Russian don't have to hold their own guts as they die.
In my article, I note that the majority of the "Contrarian" authors on my list make less than $25K a year (which, I'm fairly confident is a true statement). I should have added that these are the "superstars" of Substack's version of the alternative media.
Substack probably has THOUSANDS of authors who write articles and essays like I write. I'd say 99.99 percent of these authors make far less than someone who flips burgers at McDonald's.
So if we're going to "follow the money" in journalism, almost all the money can be found in the corporate-owned and run newsrooms.
... To which someone might reply, "Well, nobody is making these people produce a Substack newsletter."
This is technically true. However, if someone wants to be a writer and thinks like I do and thinks this is God's calling for them, they almost HAVE to write at Substack. These people dang sure can't get a job at their local Gannett newspaper or work as a producer for "Sixty Minutes."
Is it discrimination these people can't or won't be hired by the journalism organizations that pay salaries and benefits to journalists? I think it is. But it's apparently legal discrimination.
Bam. It's true. It's not usually a good idea to bite the hand that feeds you. Without Substack a lot of important information would never have made its way out into broader communities, guerrilla marketing style. But we know it's rigged against us. And we know, most have experienced what happens when a platform that was formerly free speech, even outlandish and hateful, partisan directed at us was taken away from us for less outlandish and less hateful, less partisan speech.
I knew when I first opened my Substack account where the corporate headquarters address was. San Francisco. And in a building among many of the most partisan, hateful towards contrarian speech organizations, the dark mind arts practitioners are based. I found no direct links, but the address nearby's are telling, birds of a feather and all.
We are wiser, smarter for what we learned about the other formerly free speech platforms, that this communication portal can be taken away from us with the click of a button. Which means we must already be considering and planning for that day, building redundancy, storing addresses of subscribers and content through regular downloads of our account files.
In China free speech is controlled by a regular cat-mouse game. Contrarian information is allowed to be shared, until they get a big enough platform and audience to threaten the regime. Then the take down. Free speech moves to another platform. Rinse. Repeat.
Putin was interviewed in the early 2000's about the Soviet Union, what it did right and what it did wrong. He identified the heavy-handed suppression of free speech, turning family against family with children ratting out parents and friends for contrarian speech. Putin said it's normal and ordinary for people to complain about their government, they should be able to without fear of being brought in by police on account of comments shared at the family dinner table. Putin said the only time that the state should intervene on contrarian speech is if it became so popular and widespread that it could threaten the regime.
This is the model of regulating speech that my understanding of modern authoritarian regimes seeks to reproduce in the US. The "freedom of speech, not freedom of reach" model that Musk's "freeing of the bird" has embraced. And Zuck's FB. And, by appearances, Substack.
Until a truly parallel economy and free speech platform exists, with insulated from government servers, denial of service cloudfare-like protection from malicious attacks (a former senior Obama administration official is a top honcho at Cloudfare) and other hardened communication tools are developed our free speech will remain at risk. Or we change the government and courts that wield censorship and propaganda as weapons against the people they work for and serve.
I am a little wary about "biting the hand that feeds me." That hand doesn't feed me much though!
In my essays on topics like this, I always work in statements saying I appreciate Substack for allowing free speech or allowing me to "grow my brand" as a writer.
I'm somewhat unique in that I think Substack has become THE main potential threat to the Powers that Be and authoritarians. I can't picture a scenario where these shadow rulers are not strategizing on how to kill the "reach" of authors like myself, you and SC.
That is, I don't think they are saying "Oh, let them do what they want."
Another solution I failed to mention is we take advantage of this moment in history and find a way to recruit and inspire a great many more to our understanding of the peril we are in, to be willing to fight for and protect free speech - and reach - than we have today. We will never have the ability to reach more minds in mass communication, albeit as limited as Substack itself is, than today; everyday they learn and implement ways to detect and block us from wider audiences.
Think of Substack as a Beta test for them to study us, a petri dish they observe with human and automated resources, how contrarians think, speak, share. Weak links to exploit. Their information warfare warriors don't sit idly by as we study them and how to overcome their censorship and propaganda machine. They've moved on from what we learned they were up to today; they are a dynamic, moving target. We are, too, but we don't have AI and entire military units dedicated to studying them. We just have numbers. But not enough. We must grow our numbers.
Time is not our friend. We must understand this, not pretend, wish, or hope otherwise. No, the Trump administration won't save us. They'll just bring us a little more time. One day we'll look back at what we are doing today and wonder why we didn't do more to grow our numbers when it was easier than it will be then. Doing more of this now will help us change the government and courts. So we don't have those regrets.
We learned this about human nature in grade school. There's a famous book to that effect, something like "everything I needed to know about life I learned in elementary school."
Reflect back to the classroom, elementary, all the way up to, especially in high school. When the "nerd" or kinda dopey classmate always asked questions. All of the eyes that would roll in other students. "Just shut up, who cares, why do you always ask dumb questions." Whether or not they were dumb questions. "If everyone would just shut up then the teacher will finish quicker and we can get out of here, go back to doing what we really care about doing."
Sometimes I was the nerd asking questions. But most of the time I was one of the students who's eyes would roll. Our same classmates who's eyes rolled - which were most of them - grew up. And never stopped just wanting everyone to shut up so that whatever authority was in charge would just finish exerting their authority so they could go back to doing what they really care about.
That's what most of our population has been trained to think. When Thomas Jefferson said ,"An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people” he envisioned an education model that encouraged questions from actively engaged students seeking knowledge. Was the basis, the justification for funding our public education system in our nation in the first place. Authorities changed that system to something he wouldn't recognize. It's reasonable to think that was by design, authoritarians don't particularly like an educated citizenry, capable of surviving as a free people. I wrote a Stack about that:
We are wiser, smarter for what we learned about the other formerly free speech platforms, that this communication portal can be taken away from us with the click of a button. Which means we must already be considering and planning for that day, building redundancy, storing addresses of subscribers and content through regular downloads of our account files.
---------
You should be exporting your subscriber lists at least once a week. If Substack went down today, my subscribers would have an email about it tonight.
And when the information warfare operations reach into private email messages with AI-directed snooping spider crawls they, one day, will decide to use this already-existing technology to block said emails to subscribers. Which means more layers of redundancy.
For much of 2020-2021 I considered printing flyers to distribute on doorsteps, old school. But when I helped deliver campaign flyers in my neighborhood I saw exactly how many Ring cameras are at front doors, many monitored real time, already used by police to track criminal activity movements, so any anonymity would be quickly lost.
They've been game theory-ing this for a long, long time. Smoke signals? Nah, triangulated in a matter of seconds. We will run out of options for mass communication very, very quickly, when the decision is made that our message threatens the regime.
Perhaps decentralized, small, guerilla communications strategies are the only way to combat this when that day comes?
Which means our redundancy hardening must contemplate that last redoubt we will have. And how best to utilize it without rising to the "large enough threat to the regime" determination. Euphemism and other coded language that AI hasn't learned how to spider crawl for...yet.
Returning to the "change the government and courts that wield censorship and propaganda as weapons against the people they work for and serve" option as the only long term solution. And ensuring the replacement doesn't just take their place atop the censorship infrastructure.
My adult, professional tech/web designing son laughed at me decades ago when I told him I wanted to skip the electronic communication age and go straight to telepathy.
NO chips, just hearts, minds and souls.
Still my only suggestion for truly dystopian days, coming or not.
Some have suggested that our species already possesses telepathic ability. But it has been dumbed out of us over time. They suggested we once had many more senses than sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell. Perhaps another four to seven more. Telepathy being one of them. Our brain still possesses the ability, but unused it is like any other muscle that is unused, it atrophies. Nature doesn't evolve brain capacity to sit unused, and many parts of the brain have no activity attributed to them. While not quite the "half the brain goes unused" common refrain, a much larger percentage than natural evolution would ever develop. Nature isn't that inefficient, brains consume large amounts of energy to operate, nature's "CPU's."
The theory being that we are immensely powerful creatures. And to be controlled, subdued, either by hostile captor elites or our species has proven itself to be too undisciplined and capable of great destruction if allowed to utilize all nine or twelve senses.
Theory continues, the move to transhumanism, virtual reality, digital avatars, etc is one that will soon remove other senses we have. Eliminating interactions with the physical world will cause the sense of touch to atrophy. Future generations only able to imagine touch, as we imagine telepathy. How it's been done to the others that have atrophied.
I don't know the validity of these suggestions and theories. I first heard them at a conference I attended where David Martin, the patent guy, in Plandemic, the movie, described what I've tried to relate in this post much more comprehensively than I've laid out. Who knows. Anything is possible these days. Maybe reactivating telepathy out of necessity for our survival will become a mission, taught by freedom fighters?
So much new age stuff was taught in the 60's and 70's and is still being taught - though people's motivation for teaching and learning esoteric skills is the key to mastery, probably.
Most teach the little they know to people who want to have more power, money or youth - The Temptation on the Mount explains this simply, I think.
I suspect we people need to learn focus and humility and exactly who created us and all life before we receive our owner's manuals for telepathy.
We - myself included - seem to always be hopelessly distracted!
We should be developing hard copy and snail mail batch methods of staying in touch through emergencies and local internet networks (Their all over farm country) to use until someone decides the little people are talking too much and shuts them off.
Committees of Correspondence style if we think what we're saying shouldn't be read by the NSA, which could be a real need if government were truly scared of organized social action, general strikes, or just the sharing of stuff that will make them have to lie even harder.
Bonus Analysis/Update on Mr. Reich's subscriber numbers:
In recent articles, one of my main points is that the “growth rate” of many “Contrarian” Substack authors has slowed dramatically. I know my numbers have (see below).
However, liberal “All-Stars” on Substack seem to be experiencing record subscriber growth. For example, Robert Reich.
When I first researched Reich’s subscription numbers (on Jan. 7), he had 518,900+ total subscribers. On Jan. 16 - nine days later -, his number of total subscribers had grown to 537,900+.
In a period of nine days, Reich’s total subscriber numbers have grown by 3.66 percent.
Here's the increase:
Jan. 7: 518,900+
Jan. 16: 537,900+
= + 19,000 (+3.66 percent)
But, wait, there's more!
Jan. 17 (today's numbers): 570,900+
Note: Yes, Reich's total subscribers increased by 3,000 in one day and have grown by 22,000 in 10 days!
For context, on my list of 137 "Contrarian" authors, only X newsletters had a total of 22,000 subscribers.
Expressed differently, Reich acquired more total subscribers in 10 days than the majority of the Contrarian author have achieved in YEARS.
For more context, it took Reich about five or six days to acquire more subscribers than my newsletter has reached in 28 months.
To provide additional context, I can use my own newsletter, which also experienced a significant spike in total subscribers - no dout because my “Top 137” story was shared so often. However, this brief spurt of growth was atypical or anomalous.
My total subscriber numbers:
Jan. 7: 6,951
Jan. 16: 7,068
= + 117 (+ 1.68 percent)
However, more typical is my subscriber growth the prior nine days:
Dec. 30, 2024: 6,929
Jan. 7, 2025: 6,951
= + 22 (+ 0.317 percent)
In the past nine or so months, in most months, I’ve averaged adding only between 30 and 60 new subscribers per month. In my first year as a Substack author, I had many WEEKS where I added 400 to 800 subscribers in seven days.
So, unlike Mr. Reich, my growth rate has dramatically slowed.
I wonder how many “Covid Contrarian” authors on my list have been experiencing subscriber growth of 3.66 percent every nine days or have added thousands of subscribers in one day?
My strong hunch: Probably not many (if any).
I think the subscriber growth rate of the vast majority of Covid Contrarians has slowed dramatically. I KNOW the subscriber growth rate of Mr. Reich is rapidly ... growing by eye-popping numbers.
He's being pushed. You're being throttled. I've only experienced it as an online seller when Ebay would throttle the number of people getting to see the items I was selling and yet at the same time big sellers selling the same thing, would have spikes in views and searches.
“…..contrarian authors who are generating large percentages of the company’s revenues … and readers who are generating large percentages of its “users”
And THAT is why they won’t kick us off.
I agree Bill - my many peeps who know the truth don’t know that Substack exists.
Let’s just keep sharing and encourage others to share. This is a marathon, not a sprint.
God bless you Bill. I think I can speak for all here - we are grateful for your writings.
Note: despite Substack’s shenanigans, my stack continues to grow. As of this moment 2,040 subs.
Tom Haviland will be on Steve Kirsch’s VSRF webinar on 2/13. I fully expect to get many more subs after that.
I'll update your numbers Laura, which are encouraging. Tom being on Steve's webinar could be huge news for our side. Thanks to Steve for this interview.
UPDATE: For Reich subscription numbers through January 17, see this new article I just posted. Reich has added 22,000(!) subscribers in the past 10 days.
Substack is my go to go. I don’t go hardly anywhere else. I sure appreciate all you contrarians. Y’all made me feel like I was not alone. Not jabbed. Sixty one. Still hard to believe all that has happened. And I’m certain it is not over yet. God Speed.
I have read both of your articles pertaining to the leadership at Substack. They need to step up. The Contrarians, real journalists who research and question, are at Substack, and if Substack does not support them, they can get together and start their own Platform. I as a reader will follow the journalists I now count on for REAL information wherever they go. Substack leadership should start to realize that. It’s not about them. You just earned a new paid subscriber!
"No Substack authors are ‘hire-able’ in the MSM" Well you got that right. Substack writers tend to be more truth tellers of the world than MSM writers are. Eventually people want the truth which is where we come in at. Though we may have some arrows in our backs as being a truth teller comes with risk.
Agreed. It's something that if I were going to be responsible for growth metrics that I would showcase. I will say that they did a Whitehouse press correspondents and I only like certain creators on you tube that push Substack writers, good or bad because it means more critical thinking is being called upon and people who you come across most of the time in day to day want to know why you aren't on anything else and it's like Substack is better than the nerdiest thing Silicone valley has tried to dangle in front of us. Let it be an underground scene then.
I kind-of assume that if I wanted to come out of retirement and return to work as a librarian that my contrarian (lite) posts on Substack might prevent me from finding employment. I assume the same thing has happened to the 9/11 Truthers-- many have done a lot of investigative work around 9/11 and none of them seem to have been lauded for it or even given any attention at all by the mainstream press.
No job I want would disqualify me but if I did seek that type of work I would NOT be considered just by random comments. As we age, we get less willing to ignore the BS. But, then again, we also get better.
My wife and I can watch a TV show for an hour, then as we are standing up to go do something useful, mock all the plot holes, unnecessary romance, bits of almost nakedness, poor writing and researching before we've taken 5 steps.
Then not watch that show ever again.
Same way with neighbors, relatives, loud dogs, neighborhood cats, gossips, mean people, one neighbor is a thief another a liar. We just ignore them, and they don't bother us a bit.
I want the Oklahoma City Bombing brought onto prime-time TV and all the questions the citizens investigation uncovered asked again.
Especially why the first responder to respond first, a black cop, was executed a few miles away and dumped in a field about a mile away, after reporting being followed.
Substack is a ghetto for contrarians . An echo chamber with thick walls, preventing access to the general public. It provides a space in which to write, but no guarantee of reach.
Why was the first Jewish ghetto invented in Venice? It permitted the Jews to live in close proximity to their place of work, but limited interaction between the 'classes'.
Little seems to have changed in the Empire.
The enemy keeps us under close surveillance and learns how to counter our contrariness.
Cutting-Room Floor Text (A Hypothetical Job Interview for me):
I would expand the DEI acronym to DEIH - with the H standing for Hubris - because it’s understood these organizations know what’s best for everyone.
“Bill, thank you for your application, but hiring you would be detrimental to our newspaper’s mission and wouldn’t serve our readers or American citizens. We here at Gannett are committed to protecting our readers.”
Bill: “But half your readers probably think like I do, or at least would appreciate being exposed to the stories I could write.”
“Have a good day, Bill … and, next time you come into our newsroom show some respect for others and wear your Covid mask.”
🤣🤣🤣
As #98, I fully agree with this! The problem is that the things we're currently being contrarian about, the rest of the world isn't yet ready to talk about.
But in a year, you might run this same exact article about people who reported about January 6th -- or censorship, or Ukraine -- before it was 'common knowledge'.
No. 98 (in the world) is pretty impressive. However, your newsletter should have at least quadruple the subscribers you have.
It would if a lot more people started scrolling through Substack articles.
Hard to find them if the main filter is circulation. Kind of a catch 22.
Searches based on authors opinions are possible and can be an end run around that catch 22. Below is just a modest example and I'm sure others can do better.
More Opinions On Wedge Issues
of some well known commentators, as far as I can tell...a work in progress
https://tomg2021.substack.com/p/more-opinions-on-wedge-issues
{...Screaming into the void...}
You mean the space enclosed by most skulls ??? ... 🤔🤔🤔
Sometimes that is the case ;)
Cambodia? I don't understand?
NO relation to Cambodia at ALL.
Please, re-read my previous TWO lines.
The 2nd. line was satirically refering to Simulation Commander's motto: Screaming into the void.
NO ulterior motives ...
Millions of skulls were found there after 1975.
Most will never admit they were wrong.
Is the issue with Ukraine just that it is an unnecessary war partly brought on by the West? Is there some known scandal? I hear the term "money-laundering" connected to it and don't know what posters mean.
I am against a million mostly young men dying with their guts shot out so elites in one place can monkey with a border that means almost nothing to them. Then elites in another place can commit war crimes to stop their border from being decided by some people 7,000 miles away who care zero about their young boys also dying in a ditch, alone.
These 2 sets of elites on NATO and the other Russian don't have to hold their own guts as they die.
The 2014 coup, the biolabs agreement, the money laundering, and of course the death and destruction.
We're allowing a war to continue so we can test out our gadgets.
In my article, I note that the majority of the "Contrarian" authors on my list make less than $25K a year (which, I'm fairly confident is a true statement). I should have added that these are the "superstars" of Substack's version of the alternative media.
Substack probably has THOUSANDS of authors who write articles and essays like I write. I'd say 99.99 percent of these authors make far less than someone who flips burgers at McDonald's.
So if we're going to "follow the money" in journalism, almost all the money can be found in the corporate-owned and run newsrooms.
Speaking of "equity," this is NOT a "fair fight."
... To which someone might reply, "Well, nobody is making these people produce a Substack newsletter."
This is technically true. However, if someone wants to be a writer and thinks like I do and thinks this is God's calling for them, they almost HAVE to write at Substack. These people dang sure can't get a job at their local Gannett newspaper or work as a producer for "Sixty Minutes."
Is it discrimination these people can't or won't be hired by the journalism organizations that pay salaries and benefits to journalists? I think it is. But it's apparently legal discrimination.
Compare Coronamania to Vietnam. The media then questioned the narrative.
But unlilke Pharma, munitions companies weren't advertisers.
Bam. It's true. It's not usually a good idea to bite the hand that feeds you. Without Substack a lot of important information would never have made its way out into broader communities, guerrilla marketing style. But we know it's rigged against us. And we know, most have experienced what happens when a platform that was formerly free speech, even outlandish and hateful, partisan directed at us was taken away from us for less outlandish and less hateful, less partisan speech.
I knew when I first opened my Substack account where the corporate headquarters address was. San Francisco. And in a building among many of the most partisan, hateful towards contrarian speech organizations, the dark mind arts practitioners are based. I found no direct links, but the address nearby's are telling, birds of a feather and all.
We are wiser, smarter for what we learned about the other formerly free speech platforms, that this communication portal can be taken away from us with the click of a button. Which means we must already be considering and planning for that day, building redundancy, storing addresses of subscribers and content through regular downloads of our account files.
In China free speech is controlled by a regular cat-mouse game. Contrarian information is allowed to be shared, until they get a big enough platform and audience to threaten the regime. Then the take down. Free speech moves to another platform. Rinse. Repeat.
Putin was interviewed in the early 2000's about the Soviet Union, what it did right and what it did wrong. He identified the heavy-handed suppression of free speech, turning family against family with children ratting out parents and friends for contrarian speech. Putin said it's normal and ordinary for people to complain about their government, they should be able to without fear of being brought in by police on account of comments shared at the family dinner table. Putin said the only time that the state should intervene on contrarian speech is if it became so popular and widespread that it could threaten the regime.
This is the model of regulating speech that my understanding of modern authoritarian regimes seeks to reproduce in the US. The "freedom of speech, not freedom of reach" model that Musk's "freeing of the bird" has embraced. And Zuck's FB. And, by appearances, Substack.
Until a truly parallel economy and free speech platform exists, with insulated from government servers, denial of service cloudfare-like protection from malicious attacks (a former senior Obama administration official is a top honcho at Cloudfare) and other hardened communication tools are developed our free speech will remain at risk. Or we change the government and courts that wield censorship and propaganda as weapons against the people they work for and serve.
Great post. Thanks.
I am a little wary about "biting the hand that feeds me." That hand doesn't feed me much though!
In my essays on topics like this, I always work in statements saying I appreciate Substack for allowing free speech or allowing me to "grow my brand" as a writer.
I'm somewhat unique in that I think Substack has become THE main potential threat to the Powers that Be and authoritarians. I can't picture a scenario where these shadow rulers are not strategizing on how to kill the "reach" of authors like myself, you and SC.
That is, I don't think they are saying "Oh, let them do what they want."
Another solution I failed to mention is we take advantage of this moment in history and find a way to recruit and inspire a great many more to our understanding of the peril we are in, to be willing to fight for and protect free speech - and reach - than we have today. We will never have the ability to reach more minds in mass communication, albeit as limited as Substack itself is, than today; everyday they learn and implement ways to detect and block us from wider audiences.
Think of Substack as a Beta test for them to study us, a petri dish they observe with human and automated resources, how contrarians think, speak, share. Weak links to exploit. Their information warfare warriors don't sit idly by as we study them and how to overcome their censorship and propaganda machine. They've moved on from what we learned they were up to today; they are a dynamic, moving target. We are, too, but we don't have AI and entire military units dedicated to studying them. We just have numbers. But not enough. We must grow our numbers.
Time is not our friend. We must understand this, not pretend, wish, or hope otherwise. No, the Trump administration won't save us. They'll just bring us a little more time. One day we'll look back at what we are doing today and wonder why we didn't do more to grow our numbers when it was easier than it will be then. Doing more of this now will help us change the government and courts. So we don't have those regrets.
Most people are so gullible about experts and medicine that they see the events of the past five years as proof of medical and government excellence.
We learned this about human nature in grade school. There's a famous book to that effect, something like "everything I needed to know about life I learned in elementary school."
Reflect back to the classroom, elementary, all the way up to, especially in high school. When the "nerd" or kinda dopey classmate always asked questions. All of the eyes that would roll in other students. "Just shut up, who cares, why do you always ask dumb questions." Whether or not they were dumb questions. "If everyone would just shut up then the teacher will finish quicker and we can get out of here, go back to doing what we really care about doing."
Sometimes I was the nerd asking questions. But most of the time I was one of the students who's eyes would roll. Our same classmates who's eyes rolled - which were most of them - grew up. And never stopped just wanting everyone to shut up so that whatever authority was in charge would just finish exerting their authority so they could go back to doing what they really care about.
That's what most of our population has been trained to think. When Thomas Jefferson said ,"An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people” he envisioned an education model that encouraged questions from actively engaged students seeking knowledge. Was the basis, the justification for funding our public education system in our nation in the first place. Authorities changed that system to something he wouldn't recognize. It's reasonable to think that was by design, authoritarians don't particularly like an educated citizenry, capable of surviving as a free people. I wrote a Stack about that:
https://freedomfox.substack.com/p/thomas-jeffersons-birthday
We are wiser, smarter for what we learned about the other formerly free speech platforms, that this communication portal can be taken away from us with the click of a button. Which means we must already be considering and planning for that day, building redundancy, storing addresses of subscribers and content through regular downloads of our account files.
---------
You should be exporting your subscriber lists at least once a week. If Substack went down today, my subscribers would have an email about it tonight.
And when the information warfare operations reach into private email messages with AI-directed snooping spider crawls they, one day, will decide to use this already-existing technology to block said emails to subscribers. Which means more layers of redundancy.
For much of 2020-2021 I considered printing flyers to distribute on doorsteps, old school. But when I helped deliver campaign flyers in my neighborhood I saw exactly how many Ring cameras are at front doors, many monitored real time, already used by police to track criminal activity movements, so any anonymity would be quickly lost.
They've been game theory-ing this for a long, long time. Smoke signals? Nah, triangulated in a matter of seconds. We will run out of options for mass communication very, very quickly, when the decision is made that our message threatens the regime.
Perhaps decentralized, small, guerilla communications strategies are the only way to combat this when that day comes?
Which means our redundancy hardening must contemplate that last redoubt we will have. And how best to utilize it without rising to the "large enough threat to the regime" determination. Euphemism and other coded language that AI hasn't learned how to spider crawl for...yet.
Returning to the "change the government and courts that wield censorship and propaganda as weapons against the people they work for and serve" option as the only long term solution. And ensuring the replacement doesn't just take their place atop the censorship infrastructure.
My adult, professional tech/web designing son laughed at me decades ago when I told him I wanted to skip the electronic communication age and go straight to telepathy.
NO chips, just hearts, minds and souls.
Still my only suggestion for truly dystopian days, coming or not.
Some have suggested that our species already possesses telepathic ability. But it has been dumbed out of us over time. They suggested we once had many more senses than sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell. Perhaps another four to seven more. Telepathy being one of them. Our brain still possesses the ability, but unused it is like any other muscle that is unused, it atrophies. Nature doesn't evolve brain capacity to sit unused, and many parts of the brain have no activity attributed to them. While not quite the "half the brain goes unused" common refrain, a much larger percentage than natural evolution would ever develop. Nature isn't that inefficient, brains consume large amounts of energy to operate, nature's "CPU's."
The theory being that we are immensely powerful creatures. And to be controlled, subdued, either by hostile captor elites or our species has proven itself to be too undisciplined and capable of great destruction if allowed to utilize all nine or twelve senses.
Theory continues, the move to transhumanism, virtual reality, digital avatars, etc is one that will soon remove other senses we have. Eliminating interactions with the physical world will cause the sense of touch to atrophy. Future generations only able to imagine touch, as we imagine telepathy. How it's been done to the others that have atrophied.
I don't know the validity of these suggestions and theories. I first heard them at a conference I attended where David Martin, the patent guy, in Plandemic, the movie, described what I've tried to relate in this post much more comprehensively than I've laid out. Who knows. Anything is possible these days. Maybe reactivating telepathy out of necessity for our survival will become a mission, taught by freedom fighters?
So much new age stuff was taught in the 60's and 70's and is still being taught - though people's motivation for teaching and learning esoteric skills is the key to mastery, probably.
Most teach the little they know to people who want to have more power, money or youth - The Temptation on the Mount explains this simply, I think.
I suspect we people need to learn focus and humility and exactly who created us and all life before we receive our owner's manuals for telepathy.
We - myself included - seem to always be hopelessly distracted!
This is why they haven't censored us. We have too small of an audience to matter.
We should be developing hard copy and snail mail batch methods of staying in touch through emergencies and local internet networks (Their all over farm country) to use until someone decides the little people are talking too much and shuts them off.
Committees of Correspondence style if we think what we're saying shouldn't be read by the NSA, which could be a real need if government were truly scared of organized social action, general strikes, or just the sharing of stuff that will make them have to lie even harder.
Thanks Bill for articulating the problem. You have a real knack for getting to the root of the matter. Reminds me of George Orwell.
Thank you very much, Mr. Happ. I try to do the very best I can. I wish I was better and had 1/15th of the readers and subscribers of Mr. Reich.
*angry face*
Ha!
True.
Bonus Analysis/Update on Mr. Reich's subscriber numbers:
In recent articles, one of my main points is that the “growth rate” of many “Contrarian” Substack authors has slowed dramatically. I know my numbers have (see below).
However, liberal “All-Stars” on Substack seem to be experiencing record subscriber growth. For example, Robert Reich.
When I first researched Reich’s subscription numbers (on Jan. 7), he had 518,900+ total subscribers. On Jan. 16 - nine days later -, his number of total subscribers had grown to 537,900+.
In a period of nine days, Reich’s total subscriber numbers have grown by 3.66 percent.
Here's the increase:
Jan. 7: 518,900+
Jan. 16: 537,900+
= + 19,000 (+3.66 percent)
But, wait, there's more!
Jan. 17 (today's numbers): 570,900+
Note: Yes, Reich's total subscribers increased by 3,000 in one day and have grown by 22,000 in 10 days!
For context, on my list of 137 "Contrarian" authors, only X newsletters had a total of 22,000 subscribers.
Expressed differently, Reich acquired more total subscribers in 10 days than the majority of the Contrarian author have achieved in YEARS.
For more context, it took Reich about five or six days to acquire more subscribers than my newsletter has reached in 28 months.
To provide additional context, I can use my own newsletter, which also experienced a significant spike in total subscribers - no dout because my “Top 137” story was shared so often. However, this brief spurt of growth was atypical or anomalous.
My total subscriber numbers:
Jan. 7: 6,951
Jan. 16: 7,068
= + 117 (+ 1.68 percent)
However, more typical is my subscriber growth the prior nine days:
Dec. 30, 2024: 6,929
Jan. 7, 2025: 6,951
= + 22 (+ 0.317 percent)
In the past nine or so months, in most months, I’ve averaged adding only between 30 and 60 new subscribers per month. In my first year as a Substack author, I had many WEEKS where I added 400 to 800 subscribers in seven days.
So, unlike Mr. Reich, my growth rate has dramatically slowed.
I wonder how many “Covid Contrarian” authors on my list have been experiencing subscriber growth of 3.66 percent every nine days or have added thousands of subscribers in one day?
My strong hunch: Probably not many (if any).
I think the subscriber growth rate of the vast majority of Covid Contrarians has slowed dramatically. I KNOW the subscriber growth rate of Mr. Reich is rapidly ... growing by eye-popping numbers.
This, to me, is very interesting.
He's being pushed. You're being throttled. I've only experienced it as an online seller when Ebay would throttle the number of people getting to see the items I was selling and yet at the same time big sellers selling the same thing, would have spikes in views and searches.
I very much doubt it is left to it's own devices.
“…..contrarian authors who are generating large percentages of the company’s revenues … and readers who are generating large percentages of its “users”
And THAT is why they won’t kick us off.
I agree Bill - my many peeps who know the truth don’t know that Substack exists.
Let’s just keep sharing and encourage others to share. This is a marathon, not a sprint.
God bless you Bill. I think I can speak for all here - we are grateful for your writings.
Note: despite Substack’s shenanigans, my stack continues to grow. As of this moment 2,040 subs.
Tom Haviland will be on Steve Kirsch’s VSRF webinar on 2/13. I fully expect to get many more subs after that.
I'll update your numbers Laura, which are encouraging. Tom being on Steve's webinar could be huge news for our side. Thanks to Steve for this interview.
UPDATE: For Reich subscription numbers through January 17, see this new article I just posted. Reich has added 22,000(!) subscribers in the past 10 days.
https://billricejr.substack.com/p/robert-reich-continues-to-blow-up
Substack is my go to go. I don’t go hardly anywhere else. I sure appreciate all you contrarians. Y’all made me feel like I was not alone. Not jabbed. Sixty one. Still hard to believe all that has happened. And I’m certain it is not over yet. God Speed.
While whining about being 60 last evening my fair bride reminded me I have a 6 with a 1 now, not a 6 with a 0.
61 Januarys. and I assure you I have only liked a handful of the total.
I have read both of your articles pertaining to the leadership at Substack. They need to step up. The Contrarians, real journalists who research and question, are at Substack, and if Substack does not support them, they can get together and start their own Platform. I as a reader will follow the journalists I now count on for REAL information wherever they go. Substack leadership should start to realize that. It’s not about them. You just earned a new paid subscriber!
"No Substack authors are ‘hire-able’ in the MSM" Well you got that right. Substack writers tend to be more truth tellers of the world than MSM writers are. Eventually people want the truth which is where we come in at. Though we may have some arrows in our backs as being a truth teller comes with risk.
Wouldn't it be nice if just one subject, for me, the Ukraine War, was covered honestly?
Agreed. It's something that if I were going to be responsible for growth metrics that I would showcase. I will say that they did a Whitehouse press correspondents and I only like certain creators on you tube that push Substack writers, good or bad because it means more critical thinking is being called upon and people who you come across most of the time in day to day want to know why you aren't on anything else and it's like Substack is better than the nerdiest thing Silicone valley has tried to dangle in front of us. Let it be an underground scene then.
I kind-of assume that if I wanted to come out of retirement and return to work as a librarian that my contrarian (lite) posts on Substack might prevent me from finding employment. I assume the same thing has happened to the 9/11 Truthers-- many have done a lot of investigative work around 9/11 and none of them seem to have been lauded for it or even given any attention at all by the mainstream press.
No job I want would disqualify me but if I did seek that type of work I would NOT be considered just by random comments. As we age, we get less willing to ignore the BS. But, then again, we also get better.
My wife and I can watch a TV show for an hour, then as we are standing up to go do something useful, mock all the plot holes, unnecessary romance, bits of almost nakedness, poor writing and researching before we've taken 5 steps.
Then not watch that show ever again.
Same way with neighbors, relatives, loud dogs, neighborhood cats, gossips, mean people, one neighbor is a thief another a liar. We just ignore them, and they don't bother us a bit.
I want the Oklahoma City Bombing brought onto prime-time TV and all the questions the citizens investigation uncovered asked again.
Especially why the first responder to respond first, a black cop, was executed a few miles away and dumped in a field about a mile away, after reporting being followed.
The media science is settled: obscure contrarianism is widely accepted over discredited popular contrarianism.
I don't think I'm smart enough to get the joke.
Substack is a ghetto for contrarians . An echo chamber with thick walls, preventing access to the general public. It provides a space in which to write, but no guarantee of reach.
Why was the first Jewish ghetto invented in Venice? It permitted the Jews to live in close proximity to their place of work, but limited interaction between the 'classes'.
Little seems to have changed in the Empire.
The enemy keeps us under close surveillance and learns how to counter our contrariness.
Substack is compromised enemy terrority and has been for awhile now.
Many whom you have identified as contrarian are actually very supportive of the govt's core pandemic narrative
The number of military- and intelligence-directed accounts on this platform is not small.
Proceed with caution.