Substack is now my main social media channel. Here's why.

My main channel used to be YouTube, but now I will focus on Substack. Sure, this platform is also owned by an American company, but unlike YouTube, it allows creators to have their own publication, so you have more control over being seen. You don’t have to rely on a faulty algorithm that suppresses your videos because of the current political climate in one country, which isn’t even your own!

I’m (probably) “shadowbanned” on YouTube

Shadowban

a covert content moderation tactic where social media platforms or websites restrict a user’s visibility—such as hiding posts from hashtags, search results, or feeds—without notifying them. The user can still post and see their own content, making it look active to them while it is hidden from others.

My partner actually introduced me to this word. Because I had not heard about it before. But this is what happens to my channel, no doubt, and I’ve had a feeling something was wrong for at least a year now!

Why is this happening? Because I dare to be a queer, left-leaning witch, and I talk about it. The biggest indicator that I’m probably shadowbanned on YouTube is that I get comments that subscribers don’t even see my videos, despite having notifications on. And I also see a current trend in my newest uploads that doesn’t look promising compared to my uploads 3 years ago.

I had more success 2-3 years ago than now. I had at least a few hundred views when it was a bad upload, but today I don’t even reach 50 views. I doubt it’s my quality, because I see other creators getting more views for poorer quality in both production and topic. Mine don’t get a chance because I’m a channel about queer identity, have the “wrong” religion, and I hate capitalism.

I see that my older content performed better, and I’m not new to content creation, despite having a small channel. My channel isn’t small because the content is bad; it’s small because it has no chance of growing when YouTube has arbitrary rules based on American politics.

I live in Sweden, so why should I be quiet anyway?!

When I made “useless” content, something happened…

So I made a little thing, a little experiment. I posted some videos just about our cute cat, and it got thousands of views! Probably by new viewers since my subscribers don’t even know they’re subscribed due to the shadowban, but this says a lot… So tell me again that I’m delusional?

Sidenote!

It may, of course, have other factors, such as:

1. People just judge the video because it’s little views, so they assume it’s bad just because of that.
2. It might be that I’m just ugly! Conventionally attractive people tend to be more successful in content creation, unfortunately.
3. It can be plain bad content, I don’t know, but why do my topics of, say, witchcraft and queerness perform better in the past, then?

But it’s strikingly obvious that something is wrong, nonetheless. Because I used to have comparatively more views and surely most often people grow over time, not shrink… It can be entirely my own fault, and it’s not a human necessity to be on YouTube. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just pointing out flaws in the current system.

YouTube’s discrimination towards progressive minorities

I get actively silenced because of who I am, which is discriminatory, so I won’t bow down to YouTube anymore; I will migrate to Substack instead. I don’t care who gets offended by my existence, but YouTube makes it very clear I’m not welcome as a creator on their site. And it’s sad, because I love filmmaking, and YouTube is the biggest platform for video posting.

I put my entire soul into every single video, and it’s hard to show up when people don’t get notified about my upload, nor do new people see what I have in store on my channel. It is simply discouraging to any creator.

However, we live in a fallen, unfair world, and I won’t pretend it’s something new that is happening. Even huge content creators have complaints about this treatment and “dictatorship.” Yes, it’s a form of dictatorship since YouTube is the world’s biggest platform for video, and I’m not breaking any laws, but I somehow still get silenced… I simply don’t know what to say. More than that, YouTube has discriminated against me for the last time.

And just to be clear!

This has nothing to do with breaking any laws, and has everything to do with people’s very subjective opinions! YouTube shadowban people with the “wrong” opinions and wrong political leanings. Right now, white Christian nationalism is the big thing in America, and that affects not just Americans but everybody in the world who uploads to YouTube… I have done nothing wrong in this, just to make it abundantly clear.

How I will move on from here

It’s exhausting and certainly not very rewarding to upload videos to a vacuum of nothing, so here is where I have to admit something isn’t working, and I have to move on from YouTube.

So, well, you can expect a lot more content here from now on. Sometimes I may upload to YouTube, but it will probably be around once a month or more casually over there. I won’t delete my channel; it is an archive, and people might enjoy looking back, including myself. I’ve grown a lot over the years.

But everything new will come here first. I will post in the Notes section of Substack a lot more, too. My podcast “Late to Bloom” will probably be my main project here, but I will also post vlogs, chatty art videos, music videos, and everything about my solo filmmaking!

Features I really like on Substack!

And by the way, it’s not a matter of if I’m now moving here because “oh, well, this is a lesser choice, but what shall I do?!” No, I genuinely love Substack! I tend to gravitate back here, no matter what else I try out. Here is what I love about Substack:

• No public view counts, meaning people won’t judge if something is good before they’ve at least given it a chance.
• The algorithm is not everything, since it’s a publication that can stand on its own. It’s more up to me and others to share the link, and you can find it outside the app!
• It’s not a closed ecosystem, because you can always export your mailing list or content. You can also see the Substack publications without being a member on the app, which makes it different from Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, for example. It’s more of a real home page for content to be found.
• It’s focused on written content, unlike many other social media platforms. This is fortunate for people like me, who communicate more effectively in text. It’s rare for written content to be the main focus these days, so it’s surprisingly refreshing!
• Features are native to the platform, which makes it a competitor to YouTube because Substack has its own video feature, other podcast hosting sites, since it has its own podcast publisher, other social media since it has “Notes”, and a mailing list, of course, is included as well.

I hope time does not make this platform as discriminatory and useless as many other social media has become… And I really, really hope these features will stay as good as they are in the future, even if they decide to enhance them.

Conclusion

Thanks for reading this and letting me vent over this. I will treat Substack even as my main video platform now, so stay tuned for more stuff!

xx

Trix