Yeah, so... Substack, I'm out.

The Polymarket partnership is the last straw.

Substack announced a new partnership with Polymarket earlier this week. I guess if Substack is the future of media (it isn’t), then the future of media is gambling. (That’s bad though. You see why that’s bad, right?)

Unsurprisingly, I hate it. This is noxious for society and particularly toxic for writers. Basketball blogger Tom Ziller articulated the problem well in his newsletter this morning:

How could deep integration of Polymarket into a content platform cause problems? Well, you can bet on NBA MVP futures on Polymarket. (Sorry, you can “buy event contracts on who will win MVP.”) Now it’s seamless to write a Substack post on why Marvin Bagley III should win MVP, embed a Polymarket ticker showing the odds (sorry, the “price of that event contract”) go up or down and put your readers one click away from betting on that (sorry, “buying event contracts on that”).

Substack writers, even the biggest ones covering the NBA, aren’t going to tilt an MVP race. But what about an event like “will Giannis get traded?” You have legitimate newsbreakers on Substack and other platforms – not just the big names we all know, but team beat writers, too. There’s a slippery slope from all this integration with shady quasi-gambling to these folks becoming straight-up touts. Is that what anyone wants?

And set aside the NBA and sports. These platforms let you put money on whether countries will be bombed or invaded! What the hell? Is that what anyone wants?

All of this is wrapped up in that fact that insiders are likely to be the only people with actual chances of making money playing the prediction markets. (We still haven’t seen a good explanation as to why someone made a killing buying up event contracts on the eve of Nicolas Maduro’s capture.) So Substack writers will potentially be selling out their own readers to participate in a tilted game they are likely to lose ... just like the writers and podcasters pitching tilted parlays at their readers and listeners already are.

Is that what anyone wants?

The future of Substack is going to tilt toward writers with large audiences running completely unregulated pump-and-dump schemes through prediction markets. Buy low, tell your readers why X outcome is undervalued, sell high, pocket the difference. Not all Substack writers will make use of the Polymarket widget. But if you want the company to algorithmically promote your content, maybe you should try out this hot new gambling trend.

It is wildly awkward to treat this as a breaking point. A lot of writers I deeply respect have left the platform because it subsidizes and amplifies white nationalists. I stuck around through all that, and now draw the line at… Polymarket? (C’mon Dave. Really?!?)

Nonetheless… yeah, I’m out. Over the next few weeks, I’m going to figure out an alternate newsletter host and migrate to them. I suspect none you will mind.

FWIW, I see this less as a bridge-too-far than as a long overdue catalyst. I was bound to move on from Substack eventually, and this seems like an opportune time. A few reasons why:

(1) I fully expect Substack to enshittify. The platform’s business model doesn’t add up. It is a company with a $1.1 billion valuation, whose primary revenue stream is taking a 10% cut from paid newsletter subscriptions. The largest newsletters can seamlessly decamp to competitors that charge a flat monthly fee (Ghost, Beehiiv, Buttondown, Patreon).

That means, in practice, that the company’s business model is keep the VC investors impressed, so they continue to pump in fresh liquidity. This is one reason why the Substack-Polymarket partnership makes so much sense. The VCs that like Substack also like prediction markets. Who cares if it degrades journalism, or further promotes gambling addiction, or (just in general) does nothing to improve the core newsletter product? The future of Substack is catering to whatever the folks at Andreessen Horowitz are into right now. It’s going to become an escalating pile of gimmicks and unsavory partnerships, all aimed at catering to the tastes of people who I criticize.

Back in 2023, when I left Twitter for good, I wrote a post titled “Does Anyone Think Twitter Gets Better from Here?” I feel like the same vibe is in play at Substack now. I’m not predicting the imminent collapse of the platform or anything. Plenty of writers I enjoy are going to keep using the product — they just won’t use the polymarket widget, in the same way they don’t link to the white nationalists, etc. But at some point, I figure we’re all gonna realize this place is getting worse and won’t get better.

(2) The vibes are bad, and they won’t get any better. This has been true for a long time. Back in December 2023, when news of the Substack-nazi problem broke, I wrote a piece titled “On Substack Nazis, laissez-faire tech regulation, and mouse-poop-in-cereal-boxes.” The main point was that I don’t expect a platform like Substack to have zero white nationalists, but it ought to endeavor to have only trace amounts of white nationlists — few enough that you wouldn’t notice.

Substack, instead, has been aggressively everything-goes when it comes to promoting, monetizing, and amplifying some of the worst people on the internet. This relates back to point 1: Andreessen Horowitz really digs the Dark Enlightenment and Curtis Yarvin and all the other edgelord-racists. Substack is going to fumble every crisis comms situation, because it is trying to stay on the right side of the billionaire group chats.

The downstream effect is that it has become increasingly embarrassing to mention the company that hosts my newsletter/blog-with-a-distribution-list. Any time Substack is in the news, it is bad news. Any time I mention having a Substack, I feel the need to say “I know, I know, I’m sorry.” It’s a slow-drip bummer of a situation. Each time Substack-central makes an announcement, I cringe and stare longingly at the exists.

If Substack had been able to settle on an equilibrium point where it’s just infrastructure, and no one notices which infrastructure you are using, then I would have stuck it out here. But that hasn’t happened, and it isn’t going to happen.

(3) I have more time available now than I’m going to have anytime soon. The two main reasons why I’ve stuck around for the past couple years are (a) it’s a chore and (b) I’m constantly tired and overworked. (Parenting is hard, y’all!) Both of those sticking points remain true right now. 2026 has been cognitively taxing from everyone.

But I’m handing in the last round of book edits next week, and then I’ll spend the rest of 2026 doing fun side projects while I wait for the book’s January 2027 publication date. Realistically, I am never going to be less tired and overworked than I am right now.

I don’t expect the Polymarket news to prompt a wave of writers leaving for greener pastures, and I’m certainly not going to judge any writers who stick around (particularly the unmonetized writers — see below). This is the right time for me to make the move. My guess is many others will find their own right times to do the same.

(4) The downsides of moving.

-Substack juices subscriber growth through its discovery feature. I get a tiny dopamine hit from seeing the number go up. I will have to get funnier or more insightful to keep that dopamine hit coming, or else just write for the pleasure of writing.

-Sticker shock. Substack charges me $0/month to operate this free newsletter. Once I migrate to Beehiiv or Ghost, I’m going to be paying $140/month. That means I’m going to have to turn on the monetization settings. If 28 of my readers decide to chip in $5/month, then I’m golden. If zero of my readers decide to donate $5/month, then this is going to quickly feel like a very expensive blogging habit.

-Relatedly, this means I’ll have to start occasionally asking readers to fund my blogging habit. I’m going to hate that so much. There is nothing less-pleasurable about writing than the asking-for-money part.

(5) So what’s the plan from here?

I’ll be sorting this all out in early March. (I have a March 1st book deadline. I’m going to put off migration headaches until I’ve finished fixing all the footnotes.) You might see another blog post or two here in the meantime.

I have heard equally good things about Ghost, Beehiiv, and Buttondown. Not sure which platform I’ll settle on. But I’m quite sure that won’t matter for you, the reader. At some point in March, I’ll export my reader list to another site. The URL will change. You’ll keep getting weekly emails from me, with slightly different formatting. And from there, I’ll just keep on writing while the world burns.

Thanks for reading, folks. I’ve enjoyed writing here, and imagine I’ll enjoy it a bit more at the next place.

Best,

-DK