Substack is heading the wrong way and I'm heading the right way

Digital ID is creeping into Substack and I want nothing to do with it.

What Substack is doing is a bad idea.

It is allowing in the slow creep of digital ID.

Good question.

The answer has nothing to do with ‘online safety’ and everything to do with surveillance, social credit, and centralisation of personal data. Substack is bending to the whims of governments.

Which, in my view, is unprincipled.

After all, Substack isn’t PornHub. It’s mostly just a collection of news articles, stories, and opinion pieces.

So, in my view, this amounts to little more than erecting a fence around critical thinking—making it harder to reach.

The Cathedral (media plus government plus academia) doesn’t like too many apostates.

There are a number of excellent articles about why Substack’s direction is terrible, so I won’t rehash them.

The road ahead

Okay, so now what?

Well, I’m not going to moan and do nothing more.

As I said previously, over the course of 2026, I’m going to distance myself from Substack and encourage my readers to follow me to my website jermwarfare.com.

It has a subscription model like Substack, and follows the same newsletter-driven structure.

But I control it.

There is no age verification required.

And there is a lot more on offer, like my private Telegram and WhatsApp groups (which have like-minded people from all around the world), and my new weekly live stream (which will soon be upgraded to twice weekly), as well as my other content like cartoons and opinion pieces, like my recent one on why the US attacked Venezuela.

• Please go to jermwarfare.com and subscribe.

• You can select the free option, but I’d appreciate you selecting the paid option, since it isn’t much and helps me remain independent, but you also get full access to everything. (For example, paid subscribers get access to my archived podcast episodes, like the two with RFK, the one with Alex Jones, the one with David Icke, the one with John McAfee, and many more.)

• Those who can spare a few dollars per month get preferential treatment from me, since you scratching my back means me scratching your back. It’s only fair.

What about Substack subscribers?

Obviously, Substack subscribers will need to come across to jermwarfare.com.

My website uses Ghost software, which is similar to Substack, and both Ghost and Substack use Stripe, which means I can migrate paid subscribers fairly easily.

In other words, Substack paid subscribers don’t need to do anything.

But there’s no rush just yet. This process will take a few months, but I have begun decreasing my Substack output in favour of my jermwarfare.com output.

Social media

I’ll repeat this.

At the end of 2025, I deleted some of my social media as promised. I am no longer on Twitter/X, Facebook, or YouTube. Technically, my YouTube channel still exists, but it has no videos. My Instagram account is still active, but I don’t use it. I’ll probably kill it too.

I do, however, have channels on Telegram and WhatsApp (not the same as my private groups). My Telegram channel can be found here, and my WhatsApp channel can be found here.

To join my private Telegram and WhatsApp groups and interact with me and others directly, you will need to be a paid subscriber, as I said.

Why am I doing this?

Because I want to focus on what matters and what adds value to both me and those who follow my work.

Absorb what is useful. Discard what is not. Add what is uniquely your own.

— Bruce Lee

By reducing the noise, I can hear better.

Less clutter equals more simplicity.

I can’t be of value if I’m all over the place.

See you in the jermwarfare.com trenches!