an open letter to the substack team- a platform slowly turning into a sanctuary for online abuse

Dear Substack/ Substack Team,

We are a coalition of women, feminists and LGBTQ+ writers and we come here enraged not just as users or writers but as victims of online abuse. Your platform claims to be creating community while outright ignoring our community needs.

Every time we post a note, our inboxes flood with rape threats, slurs and hate from men. There’s no escaping it anymore, and we are beginning to remove our faces from profile pictures, beginning to doubt if our opinions are worth our nervous systems as unfiltered hate speech becomes the default comments sections.

This isn’t a complaint but a documentation of repeated gendered online abuse and this team’s inaction towards it. We report, we block but the only response is a ‘thank you email’ from your team. It’s not enough because this type of harassment doesn’t stop with blocking one account. It’s a continuous pattern of cyber violence due to our gender.

Protecting writers from harassment isn’t ‘censorship’ but a basic safety requirement for any digital infrastructure. This isn’t free speech, it’s unfiltered hate that your team doesn’t care about. ‘Free speech’ is not shielding bad actors at the expense of our safety on this platform

For most, if not all of us, Substack has been a “safe” corner of the internet but that illusion has been taken by men who view the racially and sexually derogative language towards us as normal. Not only is it normal to them, they feed off of it. We can only handle so much as independent creators and this abuse has gone on far too long and hits on such sensitive topics. Vile language around loved ones who have passed away, the threat of deepfake pornography creation, racial slurs.

This toxic and hateful environment forces women and LGBTQ+ to leave the platform, self-censor, or feel unease instead of writing and expressing their art.

What does it say to the Substack Team when there’s proof of harassment and the response is total inaction?

Substack saved us in many ways because it gave us a creative outlet and reignited our passion for the written word, but to know it might come at the cost of our mental health breaks our hearts. We shouldn’t have to choose between the two, we shouldn’t have to tolerate these things just because we want to exist online creatively or express our opinions.

We encourage other women to speak up and share their own experience because we aren’t alone. We can’t ‘block’ or ‘report’ this hate away. They stay with us even if we try to ignore them or be off this app.

And even if we hadn’t blocked them, that still wouldn’t justify racial abuse or rape and death threats. Even if they’re “just bots” or “just trolls”, we don’t want to be racially abused or threatened online. How is that hard to understand? We don’t care who’s behind it or why - it’s unpleasant, unwarranted, and a clear violation of Substack / Substack Team Content Guidelines and Terms of Use.

Substack’s Content Terms of Use and Content Guidelines states that:

“Substack cannot be used to publish content or fund initiatives that incite violence based on protected classes. Offending behavior includes credible threats of physical harm to people based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability or medical condition.”

Many of the recent troll accounts targeting women on Substack have been doing exactly that: rape threats on the basis of sex, race, using racial slurs, ableist slurs and misogynistic slurs.

These threats are credible as they are repeated, detailed and egged on by other trolls/abusers.

“These guidelines also apply to Substack comments, notes, and other community surfaces. We believe that writers are responsible for moderating their own communities as they see fit and readers for curating their own experiences on the platform. Don’t create accounts for the sole purpose of circumventing boundaries like blocks and bans imposed by other users. We may intervene to remove accounts engaged in artificial or inauthentic activity on community surfaces”

Many of these trolls create new accounts to harass women who have blocked them.

Depending on the country/state/territory making abusive comments online or in person targeting someone’s race, gender, sex, sexuality is a crime. Making threats is also a crime.

Substack, improve your moderation, banning, and reporting systems. When users repeatedly report accounts for hate speech, sexual harassment, abuse, or similar violations, those reports should be promptly investigated - and those accounts should be promptly removed from the platform.

Substack also needs to introduce stronger user-side safety settings. For example, the ability to automatically block certain words from comments, or to prevent brand-new accounts from commenting at all. If an account is one day old, has no followers, and isn’t following anyone, they shouldn’t be able to comment or at the very least, they shouldn’t be able to comment without the user’s explicit approval.

We urge anyone on here, especially women and LGBTQ+ creators, since it’s overwhelmingly them being targeted - to take action whenever you receive an abusive comment or see abuse on someone else’s post.

You are not alone. Screenshot it, report it to Substack / Substack Team, and then email Substack directly at: tos@substackinc.com.

This email is for reporting violations of Substack’s Terms of Use. Attach the screenshot of the abuse, note when you reported it and under which category, and briefly explain how the behaviour violates Substack’s Terms of Use (21/04/25). Their own policy states that Substack is within its rights to remove content and accounts that violate these terms.