Where to next?

The Clowder Room will be leaving Substack, but going on...somewhere

Oh, fam.

We are sad and annoyed and proud about the fact that we just have to leave this service. Substack’s CEO, Chris Best, is being — to put it mildly — wishy-washy in the face of what a platform’s responsibility is to control hate speech, couching it in the context of protecting free speech.

Turns out, running a tech company seems to muddy people’s understanding of what free speech, in the United States, actually is — even though xkcd did a pretty dang succinct job explaining it.

So, our last issue will be the last issue here, on this platform. We feel strongly enough* about this that we’re pulling our content before we even have a new home. We are a family that hails from marginalized communities, and are staunch allies of all BIPOC, LBGTQA+, and other communities. We talk cats here; but there is no peace without safety.

We would like to inform you when we do have a new home. With your permission, we are taking your email addresses with us (email me to revoke, no worries). We will send a one-time email with our new digs when we have it (a website? a blog? the ghost subscription service? a newsletter? have a suggestion? let me know!).

This may take us a bit, but we hope you’ll come to our big internet-housewarming when we have it.

Until then,

Ren, Robert, Paul: your Clowder Room

*Interested in learning the dirty details? This article pulls no punches.