Hello from Ghost!

The short version is that I've moved my blog to Ghost. If you're subscribed, you'll keep receiving my reviews in your inbox, no action required. The only change is the email of the sender (take-em-to-the-movies-austin@ghost.io), so you might need to update your filters. That's it!

Now. Why am I doing this?

You may have heard some hubbub earlier this year about Substack's approach to content moderation, or lack thereof. It was initially raised by a piece in The Atlantic called "Substack Has a Nazi Problem", and details the presence of a number of newsletters run by and promoting the ideas of neo-Nazis, white supremacists, white nationalists, and other hateful ideologies. Many accept paid subscriptions, and some have thousands of subscribers. Not only does this spread abhorrent and violent ideas, but as Substack takes a commission from all subscriptions on their platform, Substack is profiting off them.

It's not like Substack is the only platform to face this issue: hell, I found this article from the SPLC about YouTube from way back in 2007. To be faced with hate is to be on the modern internet. None have done a particularly good job at handling the problem, but they also don't claim that kicking them off the platform makes the issue worse, and thus refuse to do so (well, except for the Elon Musk helmed Twitter/X). Which is what CEO and co-founder Hamish McKenize said in response, along with the normal hiding behind cries of "we support free speech!".

As such, I've been looking for a new platform since February, when these events came to my attention. I was hoping to find a free solution, given I don't get any money from this. But I also wanted to keep my site design, which wasn't possible given the limited customization on most free tiers. Beehiiv almost worked, but I never quite loved the immutable elements. I'd heard good things about Ghost, and thought about self-hosting, but decided I just want to focus on writing, not maintenance. A free trial left me impressed, hence the decision to eat the cost in order for my work to live somewhere which takes the responsibility of running a platform seriously.

Next steps involve updating all the existing links I have out in the world. I'll leave up the existing blog so as to not break anything, I'll just cease updating it. I'm in the process of adding a note to the top of each post which announces the move. I'm also going to see about updating all the links to come here, but that may prove too tedious.

To prevent this from being necessary in the future, I've set up a custom domain name for my blog: takeemtothemoviesaustin.reviews. This way, if I ever change platforms again, I'll have exactly zero URLs to update, and same for you.

And of course, you can still reach me by email at takeemtothemoviesaustin@gmail.com.

Alright, that's all for now. Back to watching an absurd amount of movies and writing reviews!