In yesterday's dispatch on more curious Substack metrics, I mentioned that I would be curious to see what metrics this particular story produced. Well, it's been 25 hours and the first-round of metrics are now in.
The story generated 3,510 Page Views, among the lowest figures I've recorded in years - and 1,100 fewer readers than I generated, on average, 27 months ago.
The story, so far, has produced no new subscribers - which is now par for my dispatches but 14 fewer than I generated two years ago.
Stories on Substack metrics have either jumped the shark ... or, maybe, the reach of my Substack is being de-amplified?
Or I've just lost my mojo as a Substack author or ... something.
Still, I'm glad I wrote that article and I appreciate everyone who did read it and contributed some excellent comments in the Comments Section.
I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend. Be sure to pull for Bama against the Bulldogs tomorrow night.
I have learned you cannot post Substack links (URLs) to X or FB. Their Censor Nazis flag the Substack base name. You have to "cloak" sharing by getting a new URL, usually offered free by various sites (TinyURl, etc.), or for fees with Bitly or Canva, which are just mumbles of letters and/or numbers not as easily detected as a URL containing "substack.com."
Matt Taibbi is flat-out banned from posting his Substack material on X. I doubt much SS info reaches X audiences at all. You have to be clever, with new URLs, and using only images to make points, or even s p r e a d i n g out letters to fool algorithms. I like to screenshot key sentences from SS articles to share on FB ... Lasts at least a little longer. Until their Censor Nazis flag comments. All cat-and-mouse BS.
Maybe things have just quietened down a bit, reached an equilibrium?
And the paid subscription model of Substack is interesting in that some people charge a lot of money for not many articles - I found this with Isabel Oakeshott for instance.
It’s useful that Substack also has writers who write not seeking payment, as this provides content for readers to balance against the expensive and infrequent content of some writers.
For activists challenging specific wrongs, I suggest it remains essential to seek accountability from the actual perps, eg the treacherous politicians and their collaborators who sold us down the river with ‘Covid’, and publish their efforts on substack.
Recently I challenged a doctor about vaccine mandates, questioning if he collaborated with mandates, which would violate the ethical and legal obligation to obtain valid voluntary informed consent for vaccination. I published my email to him on substack, see: "We take informed consent very seriously." A doctor. How does this work with vaccine mandates? https://elizabethhart.substack.com/p/we-take-informed-consent-very-seriously
Bill, Have you considered the possibility that your Substack (and others) got readers during the beginning of COVID when we were trying to figure out what was what, because who would believe the government? Now that COVID is withdrawing, many such readers are no longer interested in spending a lot of time reading essays, even if they are worthy. So they do not read and do cancel subscriptions.
I'm certainly reading less. I barely remember what life I had in 2019.
Even today, some people say that Substack’s army of niche writers didn’t make a real difference, but they did. The reason 90 percent of Americans aren’t getting their next round of booster shots is because the citizen journalism of Substack writers escaped out into the mainstream.
On Substack, Bobby Kennedy, now arguably the second most important person in the world, wasn’t a reviled “disinformation super-spreader” … He was a brave, truth-speaking hero.
President Trump probably wasn’t supposed to win his re-election campaign - that person was supposed to be a dementia-addled puppet of the Deep State named Joe Biden.
Thanks in part to Substack authors (who don’t just write about Covid), the 2024 presidential election became “too big to steal.”
…. And, then, instead of embracing and celebrating the heroic figures who used Substack to try to save the world, the company amplified the very people these writers spent years warning us about.
Bill, you make a strong case for how much oxygen Substack gave to ideas that would’ve otherwise been smothered. It’s easy to forget how quickly the “fringe” can move the needle once their words escape the walled gardens. I agree that the platform mattered maybe more than even its founders realized.
That said, I’d still be careful about giving Substack the sole credit (or blame) for any single political outcome. What you’re really describing, I think, is the power of uncaptured space. When a forum stays open long enough for people to speak freely, the old narrative machinery starts to wobble on its own. Substack just happened to be the venue where a lot of that energy collected.
Where I’m completely with you is on the disappointment. The same platform that proved independent voices can change public opinion now seems eager to curry favor with the very institutions those voices exposed. That pivot feels like a slow self-censorship, proof that every “safe harbor” eventually gets pressured to join the club.
So yes, citizen journalists made a difference. And the real lesson might be that the next wave of truth-telling will probably pop up somewhere new, just as soon as Substack decides it’s more comfortable with gatekeepers than with gadflies.
Bill, the stoics would say , you can only do what's in your own control and that it's a waste of your energy otherwise trying to control others . I think your writing has been and is getting even better with your analysis according to how you see the world and it has been a a big part of the scaffolding provided for my own thinking about everything that I knew at the core level to be wrong. I think there are still a lot of topics daily to be written about as this world is completely upside down for some of us to learn how to navigate . Thank you Bill.
Just another thought related to your number of likes etc Bill . Just wondering if you are interested in or being within the same topic but investigating in other areas that could compliment what you currently do . This is an example of a person I found who I like because he identified the self replicating vaccines for the pets and how they can be getting all the same issues as the people might be getting soon to be forgotten root cause - re the virus debacle . he does write about many issues that are current . I have a lot of respect for his work - just an idea Bill -maybe you already know this stuff : https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/ousted-fda-official-peter-marks-enters/comments
Bill we appreciate your work very much and hope that humble Ko-Fi donations help even if they're not subscriptions (I have been a subscriber) which I can not always afford.
There's been so much news generated lately, it's very hard to keep up with all I'd like to.
I mean, speaking of The Powers That Be That Shoudn't Be....... holy moly.
As you say Bill “Since it’s the future, it’s hard to predict …”
But a lot of people have woken up since ‘the powers that be’ went over the top batshit crazy with ‘Covid’.
And anyone who participated in censoring free discussion and betraying the public, who knows, they may be held to account one day. See for example this article written by ChatGPT in discussion with me: From Nuremberg to Big Tech: When Censorship Becomes Complicity: https://elizabethhart.substack.com/p/from-nuremberg-to-big-tech-when-censorship
From Substack to CBS: Bari Weiss and The Free Press in Motion
I notice that Bill Rice Jr. has been studiously avoiding any reference to catastrophes in Gaza especially, as well as in the larger Middle East. The contentions extend to government, media, and higher education in ways we cannot and should not ignore.
However sensitive, I think the time has passed when we can keep this set of issues on the sidelines of the very important set of subjects Bill Rice has been raising about what is really going on in the management of this platform.
As I recall it, developments following in the wake of Oct. 7, 2023-- an event subject to contending interpretations-- blew away the sense of solidarity among many of us who had come to share a feeling of like-minded camaraderie from opposing together the sometimes lethal frauds entailed in the manufactured COVID crisis.
The significance of post-Oct. 7 developments for Substack seemed to come into focus with the extension by the owners of Substack of a host especially advantageous treatments to Bari Weiss's Free Press.
From the comments made in response to the essay cite above, I learned I was far from alone in my dismay at the Substack proprietors' for their decision to make Bari Weiss's Free Press the favoured flagship blog of this entire platform.
The larger picture soon emerged that Bari Weiss is an important player along with Oracle Founder Larry Ellison, a very close personal friend of Bibi Netanyahu, in a significant remaking of the US media to reinforce its already formidable Zionist character. Bari Weiss and her Free Press, we have learned, will become pivotal in the remaking of CBS news. Moreover, the Ellison family with its strong CIA/IDF orientation is taking over in the name of US national security, TIK TOK from the institutional complex of its Chinese founders and developers.
The US media and the US system of higher education are in the process of being radically reshaped to serve the US-Israel partnership in ways meant to discredit and marginalize the effectiveness of those trying to oppose what some of us see as a horrific genocide underway in Gaza. Bari Weiss's own personal history is very clearly on the side of the Zionist enemies of free speech and academic freedom.
What can we, the full array of Substack authors on all sides of the issues raised above, anticipate in the future given the trajectories of developments at Substack rooted in the recent history of this precious free speech platform?
For my coverage of the Bari Weiss/Free Press/Substack story see
All the press freedom in the world is of little use if the law enforcement people are captured - which they are. Sasha Latapova's recent post on FOIA requests shows how law enforcement was specifically ordered to ignore anyone asking for help in prosecuting Covid crimes. It is zipped up tight. At least we Substack folk can bask in our mutual disdain for the overclass but that is the extent of our power.
p. 44: " Early on in the Corovax vaccination campaign, anti-vaccination groups began emerging on social media platforms. These groups initially came from four primary sources: Muslim groups across the country, who opposed the vaccine on the basis that the original formulation was used to treat pigs; African Americans, who refused vaccination based on continued fear of governmental experimentation on African American populations; alternative medicine proponents, who had also been active in campaigning against Kalocivir; and anti-vaccination activists, who were galvanized by the anti-antivaccination sentiment associated with the nationwide measles outbreak in 2015. With the exception of this last group, none of the anti vaccination movements were cohesively
organized initially, existing primarily in small, isolated pockets across the country. The general antivaccination proponents, however, existed as a core, national group long before the SPARS pandemic. Following the 2015 measles outbreak in the United States, this group united online. By 2016, they had created several primary Facebook groups and numerous Twitter accounts and began using hashtags like #NoVaccines4Me and #VaccinesKill. The anti-vaccination movement migrated to ZapQ upon its emergence in 2022 due to its ability to combine feeds from across multiple platforms, including realtime text, picture, and video messages from members as well as select traditional media posts such as videos, texts, or streaming news feeds on a single interface that could be used on IAT and other mobile platforms. Additionally, through their ability to control group membership, these groups ensured that they would not be exposed to pro-vaccine “propaganda” from pharmaceutical companies, the federal government, or public health or medical authorities. By 2026, many core members of the anti-vaccine movement obtained their national news almost exclusively from anti-vaccine ZapQ sites and that natural immunity resulting from contracting the disease was a more effective means of conferring protection. Many of these messages also contained suggestions (once again drawing on carefully selected and edited quotes from CDC, NIH, and other government officials) regarding how to manage SPARS symptoms. The anti- vaccination movement’s ubiquity, motivation to prevent vaccine
injury, and social media expertise meant that numerous Americans heard their message. National polls conducted in mid-August 2026, for example, showed that 68% of US citizens had seen a post or read a comment from someone expressing anti-Corovax sentiments.
also see pp. 55 and 75 for how they planned to manage the backlash
People have been having problems with Substack censoring content and shadow banning for some time. Notes in particular is notoriously unpredictable and uses different algorithms for each user.
In addition to that, Substack doesn’t offer the ability to search comments on your own or other stacks, even comments you made yourself. The search for content on other stacks does not allow for multiple word search or other advanced searches and is not very useful. No API, or Application Programming Interface is available so that third parties can’t improve on these capabilities.
Worst of all, there is no easy way to move your content, your posts and all your comments and their context to other social media that does have the above features. Its also seems unlikely that if you delete your content yourself that it will be forgotten.
The result is a platform built to corral dissent, and prevent organization.
We The People should be looking for better alternatives. On the plus side, probably the thing that keeps many on Substack is the great content, the relatively polite level of discourse, and the relatively reduced, but not eliminated, level of censorship.
Substack works on a centralized model, everyone’s stack and comments are kept centrally on servers, and the ultimate control of those stacks and comments lies with the Substack organization and whoever controls it, whether it’s private capital, Wall Street, Big Brother or whoever.
Those with substacks should be thinking about decentralizing that model. Ideally each substacker would keep their own posts and substack together with the comments they’ve made on their own or other stacks, all on their own device or on a server they control.
The transnational ruling class, and I'm talking about less than 10,000 people, not your average wealthy doctor or lawyer, faced an existential crisis by 2019 and a full blown mutiny by the Yellow Vests, a mutiny verging on success. They unleashed the Covid operation ahead of schedule to deal with that.
Then the ruling class faced the Canadian Truckers. And they face the breakup of the legacy media and the emergence of truth on social media, in spite of the obfuscations and shadowbanning, an emergence which they have to allow because their very tiny numbers force them to rely on their credibility, which is rapidly eroding.
They will lose. Its only a question of time and how much damage they will do. AI will not save them. That bubble is popping too.
The centralization of the means of production has been accelerating, alongside the socialization of labor. Mergers and acquisitions continue to weed out capitalists and workers alike, while at the same time tools that people use inevitably evolve into tools only usable in common. The hoe becomes a plow which becomes a combine controlled by GPS, the blacksmiths hearth and anvil become a factory run by robots, the handbill becomes a newspaper which becomes a social media app.
At some point, when enough capitalists have been weeded out, and tools like social media become ubiquitous and powerful enough, the balance of power begins to shift from the capitalist to the starving blog editors in their multitudes, and the integument of capitalism is burst asunder, like an eggshell cracking or an animal shedding its skin for a new one.
Attempts to prevent, forestall or control this is exactly why the “Great Reset”, the pseudopandemic, the climate scams, depopulation, medical tyranny, and related enclosures of the commons have been unleashed upon us.
Its all centralized worldwide and the proof of that is that "Covid" was rolled out worldwide overnight.
This is a war being waged on many fronts, an Omniwar. The ruling class has shrunk in numbers but not in wealth, and they have become correspondingly more vicious in their struggle for existence, a struggle which they will inevitably lose.
Capitalists expropriate other capitalists and this has been accelerating with the advent of the internet. Some of them may now be very wealthy, but they no longer rule. There is a core that is primarily concerned with ruling over everyone, and they ask if they don't, who will? Its human nature, which I think is the best guide.
The U.S. is not sovereign. Trump, Biden, Obama, Clinton, or whoever is the current POTUS just takes orders from the Rothschild syndicate and their Rockefeller front, just as with Boris Johnson in the U.K. who once famously said "I have to do what they tell me."
The "Great Reset" was unleashed when it was because the Yellow Vests were *winning*. Yes, it was prepared over many years, but the Rothschild syndicate and their Rockefeller front unleashed it ahead of schedule, because they *had to*. Their financial world was falling apart because of years of consolidation and financialization and the mountain of derivatives was threatening to detonate. Their inevitable financial collapse was imminent.
Then they managed to jury rig the economy with "going direct" bail outs for banksters and keeping people quiet with "Covid", but it was rushed out of necessity.
They won't be able to stop the next one. They are just one or two black swans away from having the sovereign immunities removed from their international organizations like the Bank for International Settlements and the UN, then they will be fully exposed.
AI will not save the ruling classes because its inherently limited.
Jobst Landgrebe: Skynet Will Not Become Self-Aware, AGI Is Impossible!
“Globally, the ruling classes have no choice but to join forces and push for a world state /global dictatorship, while the rest of humanity has no choice but worldwide social revolution if it wishes to avoid permanent subjugation”. writes Hughes.
Thanks for laying this out so comprehensively. Reading it, I’m struck by two things at once. First, you’re absolutely right that fear of losing everything, status, wealth, legacy, is a far more powerful motivator than most people realize. It explains why so many institutions seem to “pre-capture” anything that could expose them. It’s not paranoia to point out that the incentive structure exists.
Second, though, the very fact that this incentive exists doesn’t automatically mean every powerful actor or every major organization is part of one perfectly coordinated syndicate. In my experience, it’s usually a messy mix: some genuinely bad actors, some careerists looking the other way, some “captured” institutions because they depend on the same funding or political patronage, and some plain incompetence. That’s not less dangerous but it’s different from a single omnipotent plan.
Your description of a world-wide protection racket is compelling because the motives you list, keeping wealth, titles, reputation, even personal freedom are undeniably real. People who sense they could lose everything will reach for every lever they can: censorship, narrative-control, discrediting anyone who might light the fuse on a truth bomb. That matches what we actually see, algorithms quietly throttling dissent, major outlets ignoring uncomfortable stories, regulators dragging their feet. It’s all explainable by fear of exposure more than by cartoon-villain evil.
The other reality is that total information control has never been achieved for long. The same technology used to censor also leaks; the same networks used to surveil also let people organize. Citizen journalists, independent researchers, whistleblowers, this is where you’re exactly right they are now the biggest wildcard. In a sense they’re a rolling “truth-bomb factory,” which is why so much effort is spent on throttling their reach.
So I’d sum it up like this: you’ve identified a real dynamic (fear + incentive to suppress exposure), and it’s one of the great tensions of our time. But history also shows cracks appear sooner or later, often in unexpected places, and sometimes the “truth bomb” goes off even when nobody thinks it can.
The global elite is weakening. Their media, their wealth, their AI—none can stop the tide. Ordinary people, truckers, bloggers, and millions with truth on their side are breaking through the walls of control. Their power is diminishing, their credibility falling apart. The world is being reshaped by the many, not the few. They will lose. The only question is how much harm they will try to cause before they fall.
Actually, I think about chucking it all...the news, the media, politics, even substack. Not much would change. I already know where I stand with myself and the outside world where the many monsters of death reside. Is there really any big news that changes your life outside of your own circle of family and friends?
Substack may be something a bit rare these days, but I do not trust it to stay that way.
Nixon potential impeachment was said to be a CIA construct to eliminate him from wanting to to reopen the JFK assassination inquirey. Why else would each President there after refuse to release the files?.
In yesterday's dispatch on more curious Substack metrics, I mentioned that I would be curious to see what metrics this particular story produced. Well, it's been 25 hours and the first-round of metrics are now in.
The story generated 3,510 Page Views, among the lowest figures I've recorded in years - and 1,100 fewer readers than I generated, on average, 27 months ago.
The story, so far, has produced no new subscribers - which is now par for my dispatches but 14 fewer than I generated two years ago.
Stories on Substack metrics have either jumped the shark ... or, maybe, the reach of my Substack is being de-amplified?
Or I've just lost my mojo as a Substack author or ... something.
Still, I'm glad I wrote that article and I appreciate everyone who did read it and contributed some excellent comments in the Comments Section.
I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend. Be sure to pull for Bama against the Bulldogs tomorrow night.
I'm going to go rest my brain.
Many in the general public don't know anything about Substack. I don't have a solution, but maybe more exposure via Facebook, X or Truth Social?
Duane - I would say the overwhelming majority of people I ask know nothing about Substack. And these people are wide awake to the lies.
I have learned you cannot post Substack links (URLs) to X or FB. Their Censor Nazis flag the Substack base name. You have to "cloak" sharing by getting a new URL, usually offered free by various sites (TinyURl, etc.), or for fees with Bitly or Canva, which are just mumbles of letters and/or numbers not as easily detected as a URL containing "substack.com."
Matt Taibbi is flat-out banned from posting his Substack material on X. I doubt much SS info reaches X audiences at all. You have to be clever, with new URLs, and using only images to make points, or even s p r e a d i n g out letters to fool algorithms. I like to screenshot key sentences from SS articles to share on FB ... Lasts at least a little longer. Until their Censor Nazis flag comments. All cat-and-mouse BS.
"The story, so far, has produced no new subscribers"
changed that
Thank you
Maybe things have just quietened down a bit, reached an equilibrium?
And the paid subscription model of Substack is interesting in that some people charge a lot of money for not many articles - I found this with Isabel Oakeshott for instance.
It’s useful that Substack also has writers who write not seeking payment, as this provides content for readers to balance against the expensive and infrequent content of some writers.
For activists challenging specific wrongs, I suggest it remains essential to seek accountability from the actual perps, eg the treacherous politicians and their collaborators who sold us down the river with ‘Covid’, and publish their efforts on substack.
Recently I challenged a doctor about vaccine mandates, questioning if he collaborated with mandates, which would violate the ethical and legal obligation to obtain valid voluntary informed consent for vaccination. I published my email to him on substack, see: "We take informed consent very seriously." A doctor. How does this work with vaccine mandates? https://elizabethhart.substack.com/p/we-take-informed-consent-very-seriously
Bill, Have you considered the possibility that your Substack (and others) got readers during the beginning of COVID when we were trying to figure out what was what, because who would believe the government? Now that COVID is withdrawing, many such readers are no longer interested in spending a lot of time reading essays, even if they are worthy. So they do not read and do cancel subscriptions.
I'm certainly reading less. I barely remember what life I had in 2019.
Cutting-room-floor text ….
Even today, some people say that Substack’s army of niche writers didn’t make a real difference, but they did. The reason 90 percent of Americans aren’t getting their next round of booster shots is because the citizen journalism of Substack writers escaped out into the mainstream.
On Substack, Bobby Kennedy, now arguably the second most important person in the world, wasn’t a reviled “disinformation super-spreader” … He was a brave, truth-speaking hero.
President Trump probably wasn’t supposed to win his re-election campaign - that person was supposed to be a dementia-addled puppet of the Deep State named Joe Biden.
Thanks in part to Substack authors (who don’t just write about Covid), the 2024 presidential election became “too big to steal.”
…. And, then, instead of embracing and celebrating the heroic figures who used Substack to try to save the world, the company amplified the very people these writers spent years warning us about.
Bill, you make a strong case for how much oxygen Substack gave to ideas that would’ve otherwise been smothered. It’s easy to forget how quickly the “fringe” can move the needle once their words escape the walled gardens. I agree that the platform mattered maybe more than even its founders realized.
That said, I’d still be careful about giving Substack the sole credit (or blame) for any single political outcome. What you’re really describing, I think, is the power of uncaptured space. When a forum stays open long enough for people to speak freely, the old narrative machinery starts to wobble on its own. Substack just happened to be the venue where a lot of that energy collected.
Where I’m completely with you is on the disappointment. The same platform that proved independent voices can change public opinion now seems eager to curry favor with the very institutions those voices exposed. That pivot feels like a slow self-censorship, proof that every “safe harbor” eventually gets pressured to join the club.
So yes, citizen journalists made a difference. And the real lesson might be that the next wave of truth-telling will probably pop up somewhere new, just as soon as Substack decides it’s more comfortable with gatekeepers than with gadflies.
Have a great weekend! ☺️
Bill, the stoics would say , you can only do what's in your own control and that it's a waste of your energy otherwise trying to control others . I think your writing has been and is getting even better with your analysis according to how you see the world and it has been a a big part of the scaffolding provided for my own thinking about everything that I knew at the core level to be wrong. I think there are still a lot of topics daily to be written about as this world is completely upside down for some of us to learn how to navigate . Thank you Bill.
Just another thought related to your number of likes etc Bill . Just wondering if you are interested in or being within the same topic but investigating in other areas that could compliment what you currently do . This is an example of a person I found who I like because he identified the self replicating vaccines for the pets and how they can be getting all the same issues as the people might be getting soon to be forgotten root cause - re the virus debacle . he does write about many issues that are current . I have a lot of respect for his work - just an idea Bill -maybe you already know this stuff : https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/ousted-fda-official-peter-marks-enters/comments
Bill we appreciate your work very much and hope that humble Ko-Fi donations help even if they're not subscriptions (I have been a subscriber) which I can not always afford.
There's been so much news generated lately, it's very hard to keep up with all I'd like to.
I mean, speaking of The Powers That Be That Shoudn't Be....... holy moly.
https://x.com/BGatesIsaPyscho/status/1971537695882235947
As you say Bill “Since it’s the future, it’s hard to predict …”
But a lot of people have woken up since ‘the powers that be’ went over the top batshit crazy with ‘Covid’.
And anyone who participated in censoring free discussion and betraying the public, who knows, they may be held to account one day. See for example this article written by ChatGPT in discussion with me: From Nuremberg to Big Tech: When Censorship Becomes Complicity: https://elizabethhart.substack.com/p/from-nuremberg-to-big-tech-when-censorship
From Substack to CBS: Bari Weiss and The Free Press in Motion
I notice that Bill Rice Jr. has been studiously avoiding any reference to catastrophes in Gaza especially, as well as in the larger Middle East. The contentions extend to government, media, and higher education in ways we cannot and should not ignore.
However sensitive, I think the time has passed when we can keep this set of issues on the sidelines of the very important set of subjects Bill Rice has been raising about what is really going on in the management of this platform.
As I recall it, developments following in the wake of Oct. 7, 2023-- an event subject to contending interpretations-- blew away the sense of solidarity among many of us who had come to share a feeling of like-minded camaraderie from opposing together the sometimes lethal frauds entailed in the manufactured COVID crisis.
The significance of post-Oct. 7 developments for Substack seemed to come into focus with the extension by the owners of Substack of a host especially advantageous treatments to Bari Weiss's Free Press.
https://on.substack.com/p/the-new-media-powered-by-substack
From the comments made in response to the essay cite above, I learned I was far from alone in my dismay at the Substack proprietors' for their decision to make Bari Weiss's Free Press the favoured flagship blog of this entire platform.
The larger picture soon emerged that Bari Weiss is an important player along with Oracle Founder Larry Ellison, a very close personal friend of Bibi Netanyahu, in a significant remaking of the US media to reinforce its already formidable Zionist character. Bari Weiss and her Free Press, we have learned, will become pivotal in the remaking of CBS news. Moreover, the Ellison family with its strong CIA/IDF orientation is taking over in the name of US national security, TIK TOK from the institutional complex of its Chinese founders and developers.
The US media and the US system of higher education are in the process of being radically reshaped to serve the US-Israel partnership in ways meant to discredit and marginalize the effectiveness of those trying to oppose what some of us see as a horrific genocide underway in Gaza. Bari Weiss's own personal history is very clearly on the side of the Zionist enemies of free speech and academic freedom.
https://theintercept.com/2018/03/08/the-nyts-bari-weiss-falsely-denies-her-years-of-attacks-on-the-academic-freedom-of-arab-scholars-who-criticize-israel/
What can we, the full array of Substack authors on all sides of the issues raised above, anticipate in the future given the trajectories of developments at Substack rooted in the recent history of this precious free speech platform?
For my coverage of the Bari Weiss/Free Press/Substack story see
https://anthonyjhall.substack.com/p/barri-weiss-and-maisoon-rice
https://anthonyjhall.substack.com/p/gaza-and-silicon-valley-in-the-battle
https://anthonyjhall.substack.com/p/implementing-the-rabbi-kahane-genocide
All the press freedom in the world is of little use if the law enforcement people are captured - which they are. Sasha Latapova's recent post on FOIA requests shows how law enforcement was specifically ordered to ignore anyone asking for help in prosecuting Covid crimes. It is zipped up tight. At least we Substack folk can bask in our mutual disdain for the overclass but that is the extent of our power.
Bill - enjoy the bama game. hope they win.
what if Table Top Planners HAD planned on Substack?
remember the SPARS tabletop exercise in 2017? they already gamed this out
https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/sites/default/files/2022-12/spars-pandemic-scenario.pdf
p. 44: " Early on in the Corovax vaccination campaign, anti-vaccination groups began emerging on social media platforms. These groups initially came from four primary sources: Muslim groups across the country, who opposed the vaccine on the basis that the original formulation was used to treat pigs; African Americans, who refused vaccination based on continued fear of governmental experimentation on African American populations; alternative medicine proponents, who had also been active in campaigning against Kalocivir; and anti-vaccination activists, who were galvanized by the anti-antivaccination sentiment associated with the nationwide measles outbreak in 2015. With the exception of this last group, none of the anti vaccination movements were cohesively
organized initially, existing primarily in small, isolated pockets across the country. The general antivaccination proponents, however, existed as a core, national group long before the SPARS pandemic. Following the 2015 measles outbreak in the United States, this group united online. By 2016, they had created several primary Facebook groups and numerous Twitter accounts and began using hashtags like #NoVaccines4Me and #VaccinesKill. The anti-vaccination movement migrated to ZapQ upon its emergence in 2022 due to its ability to combine feeds from across multiple platforms, including realtime text, picture, and video messages from members as well as select traditional media posts such as videos, texts, or streaming news feeds on a single interface that could be used on IAT and other mobile platforms. Additionally, through their ability to control group membership, these groups ensured that they would not be exposed to pro-vaccine “propaganda” from pharmaceutical companies, the federal government, or public health or medical authorities. By 2026, many core members of the anti-vaccine movement obtained their national news almost exclusively from anti-vaccine ZapQ sites and that natural immunity resulting from contracting the disease was a more effective means of conferring protection. Many of these messages also contained suggestions (once again drawing on carefully selected and edited quotes from CDC, NIH, and other government officials) regarding how to manage SPARS symptoms. The anti- vaccination movement’s ubiquity, motivation to prevent vaccine
injury, and social media expertise meant that numerous Americans heard their message. National polls conducted in mid-August 2026, for example, showed that 68% of US citizens had seen a post or read a comment from someone expressing anti-Corovax sentiments.
also see pp. 55 and 75 for how they planned to manage the backlash
People have been having problems with Substack censoring content and shadow banning for some time. Notes in particular is notoriously unpredictable and uses different algorithms for each user.
In addition to that, Substack doesn’t offer the ability to search comments on your own or other stacks, even comments you made yourself. The search for content on other stacks does not allow for multiple word search or other advanced searches and is not very useful. No API, or Application Programming Interface is available so that third parties can’t improve on these capabilities.
Worst of all, there is no easy way to move your content, your posts and all your comments and their context to other social media that does have the above features. Its also seems unlikely that if you delete your content yourself that it will be forgotten.
The result is a platform built to corral dissent, and prevent organization.
We The People should be looking for better alternatives. On the plus side, probably the thing that keeps many on Substack is the great content, the relatively polite level of discourse, and the relatively reduced, but not eliminated, level of censorship.
Substack works on a centralized model, everyone’s stack and comments are kept centrally on servers, and the ultimate control of those stacks and comments lies with the Substack organization and whoever controls it, whether it’s private capital, Wall Street, Big Brother or whoever.
Those with substacks should be thinking about decentralizing that model. Ideally each substacker would keep their own posts and substack together with the comments they’ve made on their own or other stacks, all on their own device or on a server they control.
The transnational ruling class, and I'm talking about less than 10,000 people, not your average wealthy doctor or lawyer, faced an existential crisis by 2019 and a full blown mutiny by the Yellow Vests, a mutiny verging on success. They unleashed the Covid operation ahead of schedule to deal with that.
Then the ruling class faced the Canadian Truckers. And they face the breakup of the legacy media and the emergence of truth on social media, in spite of the obfuscations and shadowbanning, an emergence which they have to allow because their very tiny numbers force them to rely on their credibility, which is rapidly eroding.
They will lose. Its only a question of time and how much damage they will do. AI will not save them. That bubble is popping too.
The centralization of the means of production has been accelerating, alongside the socialization of labor. Mergers and acquisitions continue to weed out capitalists and workers alike, while at the same time tools that people use inevitably evolve into tools only usable in common. The hoe becomes a plow which becomes a combine controlled by GPS, the blacksmiths hearth and anvil become a factory run by robots, the handbill becomes a newspaper which becomes a social media app.
At some point, when enough capitalists have been weeded out, and tools like social media become ubiquitous and powerful enough, the balance of power begins to shift from the capitalist to the starving blog editors in their multitudes, and the integument of capitalism is burst asunder, like an eggshell cracking or an animal shedding its skin for a new one.
Attempts to prevent, forestall or control this is exactly why the “Great Reset”, the pseudopandemic, the climate scams, depopulation, medical tyranny, and related enclosures of the commons have been unleashed upon us.
Its all centralized worldwide and the proof of that is that "Covid" was rolled out worldwide overnight.
This is a war being waged on many fronts, an Omniwar. The ruling class has shrunk in numbers but not in wealth, and they have become correspondingly more vicious in their struggle for existence, a struggle which they will inevitably lose.
Capitalists expropriate other capitalists and this has been accelerating with the advent of the internet. Some of them may now be very wealthy, but they no longer rule. There is a core that is primarily concerned with ruling over everyone, and they ask if they don't, who will? Its human nature, which I think is the best guide.
The U.S. is not sovereign. Trump, Biden, Obama, Clinton, or whoever is the current POTUS just takes orders from the Rothschild syndicate and their Rockefeller front, just as with Boris Johnson in the U.K. who once famously said "I have to do what they tell me."
The "Great Reset" was unleashed when it was because the Yellow Vests were *winning*. Yes, it was prepared over many years, but the Rothschild syndicate and their Rockefeller front unleashed it ahead of schedule, because they *had to*. Their financial world was falling apart because of years of consolidation and financialization and the mountain of derivatives was threatening to detonate. Their inevitable financial collapse was imminent.
Then they managed to jury rig the economy with "going direct" bail outs for banksters and keeping people quiet with "Covid", but it was rushed out of necessity.
They won't be able to stop the next one. They are just one or two black swans away from having the sovereign immunities removed from their international organizations like the Bank for International Settlements and the UN, then they will be fully exposed.
AI will not save the ruling classes because its inherently limited.
Jobst Landgrebe: Skynet Will Not Become Self-Aware, AGI Is Impossible!
https://geopoliticsandempire.substack.com/p/jobst-landgrebe-skynet-will-not-become
But their Omniwar will go on, very intentionally.
“Globally, the ruling classes have no choice but to join forces and push for a world state /global dictatorship, while the rest of humanity has no choice but worldwide social revolution if it wishes to avoid permanent subjugation”. writes Hughes.
“Covid-19,” Psychological Operations, and the
War for Technocracy
Volume 1
David A. Hughes
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-3-031-41850-1.pdf
Thanks for laying this out so comprehensively. Reading it, I’m struck by two things at once. First, you’re absolutely right that fear of losing everything, status, wealth, legacy, is a far more powerful motivator than most people realize. It explains why so many institutions seem to “pre-capture” anything that could expose them. It’s not paranoia to point out that the incentive structure exists.
Second, though, the very fact that this incentive exists doesn’t automatically mean every powerful actor or every major organization is part of one perfectly coordinated syndicate. In my experience, it’s usually a messy mix: some genuinely bad actors, some careerists looking the other way, some “captured” institutions because they depend on the same funding or political patronage, and some plain incompetence. That’s not less dangerous but it’s different from a single omnipotent plan.
Your description of a world-wide protection racket is compelling because the motives you list, keeping wealth, titles, reputation, even personal freedom are undeniably real. People who sense they could lose everything will reach for every lever they can: censorship, narrative-control, discrediting anyone who might light the fuse on a truth bomb. That matches what we actually see, algorithms quietly throttling dissent, major outlets ignoring uncomfortable stories, regulators dragging their feet. It’s all explainable by fear of exposure more than by cartoon-villain evil.
The other reality is that total information control has never been achieved for long. The same technology used to censor also leaks; the same networks used to surveil also let people organize. Citizen journalists, independent researchers, whistleblowers, this is where you’re exactly right they are now the biggest wildcard. In a sense they’re a rolling “truth-bomb factory,” which is why so much effort is spent on throttling their reach.
So I’d sum it up like this: you’ve identified a real dynamic (fear + incentive to suppress exposure), and it’s one of the great tensions of our time. But history also shows cracks appear sooner or later, often in unexpected places, and sometimes the “truth bomb” goes off even when nobody thinks it can.
https://billricejr.substack.com/p/what-do-the-powers-that-be-have-to/comment/160722459
The global elite is weakening. Their media, their wealth, their AI—none can stop the tide. Ordinary people, truckers, bloggers, and millions with truth on their side are breaking through the walls of control. Their power is diminishing, their credibility falling apart. The world is being reshaped by the many, not the few. They will lose. The only question is how much harm they will try to cause before they fall.
🎯 Bingo.
Actually, I think about chucking it all...the news, the media, politics, even substack. Not much would change. I already know where I stand with myself and the outside world where the many monsters of death reside. Is there really any big news that changes your life outside of your own circle of family and friends?
Substack may be something a bit rare these days, but I do not trust it to stay that way.
substack was and still is my lifeline to truth.
Nixon potential impeachment was said to be a CIA construct to eliminate him from wanting to to reopen the JFK assassination inquirey. Why else would each President there after refuse to release the files?.