Shadow Banned On Substack Or Simply Not Good Enough?

Why do I still bother?

I did not want to write today. I felt depressed.

I have been pondering again about being ”shadow banned”.

Since my break in July, I have gained over 70 new free subscribers and four new paying subscribers in less than six weeks. This growth has been steady from almost all posts.

It was suspiciously positive because I didn’t suddenly become a better writer or do anything different. So why so much love suddenly?

But ever since I criticized Dr. McCullough in Holy Moly, Dr. McCullough Turns Full-Blown Holistic On Us, it has been like the “new subscriber tab” was turned off. I have published nine articles since then and have not received any new subscribers. To the contrary, I have lost about fifteen.

On average, I don’t think the quality of my articles significantly changed. But maybe they did, unnoticed by me.

That people who like McCullough unsubscribe is to be expected when you criticise one of the bigwig stars on Substack.

It doesn’t explain the lack of new subscribers, though.

Eight of the nine articles had nothing to do with McCullough. To get new subscribers, new people must see my posts, which can be easily manipulated.

I am considering joining a new movement:

Once upon a time, I was a completely unknown writer.

Unknown to you and unknown to any assumed AI-assisted “thing” deployed to control the narrative on Substack.

My first article, “Mask Madness”, reached six subscribers, and three opened it.

At the time, February 2023, this wasn’t a mind-blowing new topic. It was very long and, being my first ever written article, well, let’s say, far from perfect.

Yet, it somehow generated 283 views—starting from three emails and 19 new subscriptions.

Since then, I have published about 130 articles, but 19 new subscriptions for one article are still in the top ten. What does that tell us?

People must have shared, and, more importantly, the sharing must have worked somehow. Further, I had not pissed anyone off and therefore wasn’t blocked.

My fourth article, “Hard raw data: There never was a Covid Pandemic in Australia in 2020”, was opened by 13 email receivers. It was a summary of a study. It was good and actual news, but I have since written several better analyses than this. It wasn’t mind-blowing.

As you can see below, it got 6440 views from 13 emails, 70 shares (that worked) and 228 new subscribers (including my first paid one)

This is an example of how the Internet used to work when no one was watching you. This was before Elon Musk tweeted, “Freedom of speech is not freedom of reach.”

This stack went around the world in a day.

“Cool”, I thought. “There is a new career for me.”

Little did I know.

Despite being only my fourth post, starting with 13 emails, it is still my most-read post. A summary of a statistical paper gets over 6,000 views, and everything after that, with a handful of exceptions, struggles to reach 1000 views despite going out to over 600 subscribers and getting great feedback.

Fuck me - I think I can be excused for being suspicious.

I am not getting anywhere, and I don’t think it is because I write badly. I get enough encouraging and sometimes excellent feedback to justify that assessment. I gained over one-third of my current subscribers in my first four posts. To get the other two-thirds - drop by drop - I had to work my arse off for two years and write over 130 articles.

Something doesn’t add up.

Now - if it would cost money to subscribe, I would understand.

But it is fucking free.

It doesn’t make sense. I should have thousands of subscribers by now. Others do, but they don’t write better articles.

Ok, I piss people off sometimes, and the block button might have something to do with it. But I am not a racist, paedophile or Neo-Nazi. Are people’s egos so fragile that they block authors only because they have a different opinion?

That’s why I think there must be some shadow banning.

If you are wondering about my exact level of paranoia and exaggerated self-importance, you are not alone. I do too. But hear me out.

How Do They Do It?

This made me wonder how they do it in practice if they do it with small fish like me. We know that and how they do it with big fish.

The shadow banning.

It must be automatic and supported by AI algorithms. They must watch thousands of small dissident voices like mine to prevent them from spilling over into fragile mainstream brains and influencing the narrative.

They could shut me down entirely with a few buttons, of course.

But then I probably take my “dissident rebel energy” to another platform.

Or worse, into the real world.

The last thing they want is for me to take my rebellious energy into the real world.

That’s why they created the Substack echo chamber in the first place. To attract, collect and manage dissident energies.

That’s what I would do if I were a soft-totalitarian control freak. It is also much more fun for all the woke, brainy employees.

Finding staff for the old-school rounding them up and shooting them strategy is much more difficult. Unless you are an old-school brute, this doesn’t appeal to this new crop of nerdy, woke, soft-totalitarian geeks who think this is all just a simulated video game and no actual harm is done.

They will pride themselves on their compassionate secret re-education and nudging of some dissident nutcases that make up all this mis- and disinformation.

While the old totalitarian guard’s motto was: “Round up and shoot”, the new crop’s motto is “Contain and manage.”

Granted, it is more humane. But that’s not why they are doing it. After all, they are transhumane. According to Meridian-Webster, the prefix “trans” means

on or to the other side of : across : beyond

They are on the other side and beyond “humane”.

No, they “contain and manage us” without most of us even realizing it because it is much more efficient and successful than “rounding up and shooting us.”

Further, a dead body can’t work and be exploited.

A dead body doesn’t pay tax.

If I were a very smart, soft-totalitarian overlord, I wouldn’t shut them up, no matter what they say.

That would only create unnecessary resistance. I would know I couldn’t squash this silly idea of freedom, especially free speech, at least not in the old guard.

The younger ones already learn that doing research, forming an opinion, and talking about it is frowned upon by the experts and only creates friction and disharmony. But I can’t take away this bad habit from the old guard. They would rebel and do stupid stuff, even violent stuff.

Therefore, it is much better to create an illusion that there still is free speech on “some” platforms like Substack and X.

I would even give them a superhero freedom leader, the wealthiest man in the world, for example, because such a leader has so much in common with them dissidents, and they will happily see him as one of their own.

It is a well known fact that only true dissidents and lovers of free speech become billionaires. These are must-have attributes to achieve that.

It doesn’t really matter that this freedom-of-speech hero admires the Chinese social credit system and wants to turn X into a similar thing. It also doesn’t matter that he openly advocates “freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach,” which basically means that you can say anything you want, but it doesn’t matter because no one will hear it, apart from a few hundred (half of thembots) I allow to sustain the illusion.

All this doesn’t matter because dissidents are smart as hell. They know that our freedom of speech hero is only saying all this to mislead and confuse the “real” transhuman nerds.

Anyway, if I would be in charge, I would create a beautiful freedom-loving platform with no oversight whatsoever of what I am doing to attract all these freedom loving dissidents so they can vent, and vent, and vent and indulge in the most laughable and outrageous conspiracy theories before anyone else can hear all this non-sense and gets confused.

(Additionally, if things get hairy one day and soft-totalitarian fails, which I don’t hope, I have a neat list of dissidents I can round up should I need to go back to old-school totalitarian methods.)

But for now, those cute dissidents can rant all day long to each other in their echo chambers, pretending the world hears them and takes them seriously.

I would improve on the millennia-old “divide and conquer.” This is too disharmonious for the fragile, sensitive, nerdy new generations. “Digitaly herd and manage” is more appropriate now.

Here, on my beautiful free-speech platform, they can dispel and get rid of all that destructive dissident energy so they don’t have to go outside and do something stupid in the real world. It will keep them busy all day long. I will give them meaning. They truly believe they change the world and stay out of trouble.

I would create “block buttons” because these rascals fight amongst themselves and create disharmony. After a while, I would have sorted them in hundreds of neat little groups that all have the same opinion and never argue about anything and clap each other on the shoulder.

And I would create hundreds of thousands of AI bots that act like real people, “like” stuff, “subscribe”, and “unsubscribe”, and even write comments. By doing that, I can easily elevate dissidents to leaders no matter how they act or what they do in real life.

I can also dethrone them if required.

This is so much fun. I can pretty much play God.

I am sorry for today's darkness. I have to remind myself that this is just one of innumerable possibilities.

This is a paranoid fantasy, so don’t let it drag you down.

That’s what minds do: Greedy for success one day, hopeless the next.

I am just a momentarily frustrated old nagger who seeks an excuse for his failures instead of seeing the bigger picture: Logos.

Everything is perfect as it is.

Nothing changed on the inside.

Everything is ok.

Maybe I need a break. Recharge my batteries. Take care.