Back to Europe
Substack blocked my newsletter. A mistake, they said. Now my texts have moved to Europe, to digital independence.
My Newsletter Leaves Substack
That was quick. OF COURSE they want to silence me now. The topics are explosive, I write freely, quickly, anarchistically. That doesn't fit the concept of American newsletter and blogging platforms. NATURALLY it gets blocked, switched off, made inaccessible.
Thoughts of this sort ran through my head when I wanted to check whether my New Year's letter had reached my English-speaking friends — that is, you — safely. Instead, I found the letter in Substack's rubbish bin and all my texts switched off, with a message splashed across the screen: the content of my articles was not in compliance with Substack's terms. The account was suspended.
Silenced
Right, right, no panic. It was New Year. I waited a day or two and then sent a complaint to customer service. A while to stew in my own sauce: the anarchic scribbler silenced by the big US corporations and so forth.
After a few days, an answer came:
Hi Markus, Landry here from Substack Standards & Enforcement. Thanks for taking the time to submit this appeal. It looks like your account was incorrectly flagged as spam. I've corrected the issue and you should now be able to use it again.
Haha. That simple. That banal. Pity, I thought for a moment. It would have done my ego more good if they had objected to some actual content.
But my decision, which had been ripening for some time and sharpened in those first days of January, to leave Substack and publish blog and newsletter independently, was now made.
It's enough that they have the power
It doesn't matter why they turn off the tap. The fact that they have the power to do so is reason enough to escape their clutches.
Of course, in reality it's all not that dramatic, and it has its justification too. Platforms like Substack must control content and filter or moderate it in one way or another. They use technology that searches for trigger words, for problematic content or intentions. Sometimes they miss. And everything was resolved quite quickly and without fuss.
The decision was taken
Nevertheless: the decision was taken. Also because it coincided with my intention, which had been growing for some time, to make myself and us, my theatre company, independent of American technology and data storage.
So, with the support of two assistants, I rented a server in the EU, installed the open-source publishing software Ghost on it. Pulled the texts and images over from Substack, relinked everything, and so on and so forth. Hundreds of steps I won't bore you with now.
100% European
In just under a week, it was done. If you're receiving this message now, it's 100% European: written in Switzerland, published on a server in Germany. Run by a German company.
This is important, because all the big American IT companies have server farms in the EU. But it cannot be ruled out that data hosted in Europe will be treated according to American customs.
The sending of the emails is also handled by a European company (Sinch / Copenhagen) via servers in Frankfurt.
Long story short: another step, fundamental for me, into independence.
Two sisters in Bavaria
While I was at it, I moved the sister publication Backstage Magazine (Italian), which had previously been published with Ghost at DigitalOcean, an IT company in New York, and the German one, which also lived on Substack. The three blogs are now physical neighbours — they share the same server in Nuremberg.
What comes next
First, I'm sending you this sign of life. Then, if all goes smoothly, in a day or two, you'll receive the New Year's greeting that Substack intercepted at the beginning of the year and threw in the bin before it could reach you.
I look forward to the future!
A new era begins.
Markus Zohner
P.S. You may also receive my German letters Markus Zohner from markus.zohner.com.
Some content overlaps, some is unique to each language, like news about workshops, books, projects.
If one language is enough, you can unsubscribe from the other anytime.
More on this soon.
Questions?
What happens to my Substack subscription?
Your subscription was automatically transferred here. You don't need to do anything. If you can read this text, everything worked. Welcome to Europe!
...what if I had a paid subscription on Substack?
In the coming days, all paid subscriptions here will be converted into Travel Mates, which besides being an enormous help to me means for you, among other things, access to the Desire Lines.
Do I need to subscribe to the emails again?
No. Your email address was taken along in the move. You will continue to receive my texts as usual. If you would like to support my work and are interested in members-only texts, you can simply become a Companion.
How often will you send emails?
I want to move away from the concept of "newsletters". Instead of firing off "newsletters" at some more or less regular intervals, I would rather write to you when there is something to write. That might be two or three times a week, then perhaps not for two or three weeks. We'll see. In any case, I'm certain it's better and more beautiful for you and for me if the whole thing happens with intention, rather than in some made-up structures or plans.
Will anything change about the content?
Who knows what future brings. All texts will be written by myself, guaranteed (or if by a guest writer, that will be signed).
For the moment: only the infrastructure is different. 3.2 times faster than before, by the way.
What about Artificial Intelligence?
What is the question?
Let's be clear: I write because I want to write. There are many things in my life I would love machines to do for me. But writing is one of the things I live for. Why should I delegate my life to processors?
Having said that: I use AI assistants for technical help, for correcting drafts, and for translations. My mother tongue is German. English is my first foreign language, and I live in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland (Ticino).
What do I do now with the Substack app on my phone?
Depends: if you follow other authors on Substack, just keep reading there. If not: away with it. Ballast is the only thing in life you don't need. And throw the phone away with it — then you'll become human again.
Markus Zohner
