Salut, it's Thursday!

Today gets a bit more personal than usual. It's about a debate that has been boiling over in my US filter bubble in recent days, but that hit me directly in my own work here in quiet Göttingen. It's about X, about Substack, and about the question of how you can still publish with integrity in 2026 without condemning yourself to invisibility.

Martin

Newton and Gruber Return to Elon Musk's X

Last week, Casey Newton, one of the most prominent tech journalists in the US, raised the white flag in his newsletter Platformer. Three years after quitting the platform, he's going back to X. Not because X has suddenly become a better place under Elon Musk—quite the opposite: he says it feels like "coworking inside a Port-a-Potty." But, Newton argues, X is simply indispensable for the debate around artificial intelligence. Anyone who wants to stay in conversation with the people at the frontier labs, in the product teams and in the policy scene—and to weigh in—can't do that from the sidelines on Bluesky or Threads.

Only a few days later, blogging veteran John Gruber followed on Daring Fireball. Though without a nose clip. He says he sees more interesting posts on X than on Threads, Bluesky and Mastodon combined. Anyone who wants to discuss new AI tools can do so on X in a matter-of-fact way, he argues, whereas on Bluesky and in the fediverse you get pounced on right away by people who consider any use of AI unethical. Gruber actually calls X "remarkably friendly and inclusive," with a straight face. MacStories founder Federico Viticci has also returned, for exactly these reasons (ticci.craft.me).

If you happened to hear the podcast with my esteemed colleague Karlmeier, you know how much all of this annoyed me at first: youtube.com/hakendran. If not: a lot!

Why Newton's X Comeback Shakes My Exit Strategy

But why does the decision of two US bloggers get under my skin so much? The honest answer: because it feels like a betrayal of exactly the ideals I've been advocating in recent years. Ideals for which I've also paid a noticeable price.

A quick reminder: in autumn 2023, I deleted my own account on X. In November 2024, Simon and I sharply criticized Robert Habeck's return to X here at the Social Media Watchblog (SMWB / "7 Reasons Why Politics and Media Should Leave X"). Our conclusion at the time:

The best time to leave X was two years ago. The second-best time is now.

And only this May, when Germany's SPD, Greens and Left Party recommended quitting X under #WirVerlassenX, I explicitly reiterated the arguments against Musk's "Nazi bar" right here in the newsletter. (SMWB)

Our premise back then: we're caught in a classic prisoner's dilemma. For any individual, it may be rational to stay on X for the reach and the contacts. But to break the pull of the network effect, people have to lead the way, take the game-theoretic risk and quit—in the hope that others will follow. I even imposed a 15-point social media manifesto on myself: no amplifying right-wing narratives through outrage, no feeding platforms whose primary aim is to monetize attention through anger. (SMWB)

I didn't just write that down. I followed through:

• I left behind my Twitter account, built up over more than a decade, with more than 10,000 followers. No backup. Deleted. Gone.
• For my social media presence, I use Bluesky (or Eurosky) first and foremost, and occasionally Mastodon.
• And when I rebuilt the newsletter's technical setup, I deliberately went with Ghost and not Substack.

So when people like Casey Newton write that they've tried every alternative but are stuck "fighting with both hands tied behind my back" as long as they avoid X and Substack, it badly undermines my theory of change from back then. Even the mockery they're getting for it from Rusty Foster at Today in Tabs doesn't help:

Who's waiting to welcome them back to the Port-a-Potty? Racist programmer David Heinemeier Hansson and a lot of guys who think that "woman talking sports is super cringe." Sounds great, I'll really consider that.

The Transatlantic Fallacy: US Tech Bubble vs. German X

What hurts me additionally about the pieces by Newton and Gruber is an almost nostalgic longing. What the two describe suggests that in the US, X still has exactly what has completely collapsed for us in Germany: a permanent debate about the future of media, democracy and technology.

A quick bit of context: without the old Twitter, the Social Media Watchblog wouldn't exist in its current form. The direct line to researchers, the quick ping-pong with colleagues, the easy exchange with people in ministries, NGOs and newsrooms... I benefited enormously from all of that for years.

In a second piece, Newton advances an interesting thesis for why X now feels to him almost like Twitter in the early 2010s: because the broad mass and many liberal political accounts have left, so-called context collapse (that is, the clash of completely different audiences in a single feed: SageJournals / Alice E. Marwick and danah boyd) has receded. Daily use may be falling, but the tech and AI bubble has the place to itself again. For Newton, a "reverse eternal September." (Platformer)

But, but: even if that observation holds for a specific Silicon Valley niche, it's completely useless for the German-speaking world.

German X is not American X. The critical mass for expert discourse on media or internet policy is simply gone here. According to the latest ARD/ZDF Media Study, only six percent of Germans still use X at least weekly (SMWB). Anyone who ventures into the German timeline doesn't land in a cozy tech niche but straight in the far-right swamp.

On one side, guys like Ulf Poschardt tirelessly rail against everything they deem too 'woke'. On the other, an unhinged, far-right AfD milieu dominates, one that not only questions female politicians' competence on an hourly basis but openly wishes to see them hanged. And enthroned above it all is Elon Musk, who regularly lends this activity reach and legitimacy through personal retweets. In an environment like that, there's no expert discourse you could "weigh in" on.

The Substack Dilemma: Reach Machine vs. Ghost Sovereignty

Of course, I could now pat myself on the back and say: fine, let them do what they want, I'll just stay in exile. But that falls short. The underlying problem—platform oligarchs tolerating toxic content as "free speech" or simply as growth fuel—isn't confined to X.

It's worth taking a representative look at where many of us have long since made ourselves comfortable: Substack. I'll spare you the vile original quotes in detail, but to give you a sense of the scale:

• In August 2026, an account called "White Kolovrat" published a sprawling text titled "On Aryan Beauty," in which it calls Jews "worthless incestuous parasites" and openly fantasizes about a "colossal fire storm" that will turn them into "ash and smoke."
• Another account, "Ancestral Vril" published a ranking of the "worst migrants" as early as July 2024, with racist IQ claims about Indians, sub-Saharan Africans, Somalis, Turks and Muslims. He calls Muslims "the apex Jewish bioweapons." His stated reason: Musk's X had throttled his thread, so he had to continue elaborating on Substack.
• And a "National Socialist Lit Archive" says it translates Nazi texts into English and puts them online with no discernible contextualization—including a manuscript attributed to Nazi chief ideologist Alfred Rosenberg (sometime after June 1941). In it, Christianity is described as "a serious illness of the German-Germanic people," the Church is accused of an alliance with "Judaism and Marxism," and the swastika banner is celebrated. In the comments, a reader who appears to count himself part of "the movement" argues about how Christianity and National Socialism belong together.

I'm not a lawyer, but in my view we're talking here, under German law, about incitement to hatred (Volksverhetzung, § 130 of the German Criminal Code) and the use of symbols of unconstitutional organizations. Even under Substack's own, extremely lax guidelines, calls for genocide and violence are supposedly prohibited (Substack / Content Guidelines). But because the platform forgoes proactive moderation and entrenches itself behind a radical American notion of "free speech," this kind of content stays online until someone stumbles across it and reports it.

And yet: where is the newsletter business booming? Where do many of the most interesting writers from my own filter bubble sit? Which platform did I link to several times in the last issue? Substack. Because Substack long ago stopped being a pure email tool and, through Notes and mutual recommendations, has built one hell of an effective discovery machine.

Those who, like me, bet on Ghost.org do get full sovereignty and don't help fund a platform that sends push notifications with swastikas (Usermag). But you pay a steep discovery tax for it: since I left Twitter and opted out of a closed recommendation network like Substack, it's become infinitely harder to win new readers for the SMWB.

And it gets even more uncomfortable when I look at my own usage in the mirror. Do I really have moral integrity just because I avoid X and Substack?

• I upload my podcast and videos to YouTube because that's where I reach new people and where the algorithms help my work get discovered: youtube.com/@martinfehrensen
• I'm back on Instagram because I realize I'd otherwise lose touch with many colleagues who have become really dear to me: instagram.com/martinfehrensen

But aren't YouTube and Instagram part of Alphabet and Meta? The very corporations whose chiefs have been sucking up to the government in Washington just as shamelessly since Trump's second inauguration? And didn't Meta just have to agree to a settlement worth billions because its algorithms are suspected of making teenagers mentally ill?

The bitter realization: I've maneuvered myself into a moral dead end. I believed I could solve a structural monopoly and infrastructure problem through individual consumer abstinence.

The Platform Dilemma for Media, Newsrooms and Creators

I don't have a ready-made solution for this dilemma that you could simply work through. I can't and won't imagine returning to X, not for the life of me. My disgust at what happens there every day is far too great.

But the Newton/Gruber case forces me to take honest stock:

1. The moral boycott hasn't weakened the platforms—it has weakened me. My hope from 2024 that a departure of prominent accounts would set off a domino effect and plunge X into irrelevance has only half come true. Yes, X has shrunk and its advertising business has collapsed. But because there is no full-fledged replacement (Bluesky is even shrinking again in daily users, Threads doesn't want politics, Mastodon remains a niche), those who left have above all sacrificed their own visibility and their agenda-setting leverage. These days I see people speaking, and reaping reach, on topics where I'd actually like to be the one heard.
2. Under platform capitalism, there is no "right life in the wrong one." Anyone who applies the standard of only being present on platforms whose owners are impeccable democrats has to switch off the internet. Whether Musk, Zuckerberg or Pichai: the difference often isn't moral integrity, only the volume at which they flaunt their opportunism. If I use Instagram or YouTube but shun X and Substack, in the end I'm just practicing selective hygiene.
3. Presence isn't the same as legitimacy, but the company you keep rubs off on you (x.com/Anil Dash). You can argue that journalists simply have to go to unpleasant places when their sources are there. But Nilay Patel's line applies here too: distribution always changes what you make (SMWB). Anyone who operates in a toxic arena long enough adapts to its rules. Or goes numb.

For now, I'm sticking with my setup: my own infrastructure with Ghost, open protocols with RSS, Bluesky/Eurosky and Mastodon, flanked by the bitter pills I've swallowed: YouTube, Instagram and LinkedIn. But the feeling of moral superiority has thoroughly left me. Individual abstinence is, truly, not media policy.

As long as we as a society fail to force real interoperability (keyword: taking your social graph with you), fail to ensure politically that antitrust law is enforced, and fail to seriously fund open infrastructure like Eurosky, we all remain prisoners between two bad options: loss of relevance in clean exile, or collaboration with the broligarchy.

Note: I normally publish in German. This English version was translated with the help of Claude (Anthropic) and reviewed by me. You can find the original post here:

Rückkehr zu X: Das Scheitern des Boykotts | SMWB

Casey Newton und John Gruber kehren zu X zurück. Was wie Verrat an alten Idealen wirkt, legt ein tieferes Dilemma offen: Individueller Konsumverzicht bricht keine Plattform-Monopole. Er kostet vor allem diejenigen Relevanz, die Haltung zeigen.

Social Media Watchblog (SMWB)Martin Fehrensen

On My Radar

• With Muse Wonder, Meta is genuinely back in the frontier game. It's fascinating how close together the companies all are now. In the end, what will decide things is who has the greatest strategic leverage to also get the models to users. Meta holds a lot of trump cards here. (Meta, WIRED)
• Life of Riza is one of the most exciting channels on YouTube for me. Few creators have managed as well as Kariza Santos to turn vlogs into a cinematic art form. Now she's taking the next step, reworking her vlogs into a show with individual episodes. The backdrop is YouTube's push to have an even bigger presence on living-room smart TVs. Santos's approach could catch on. (YouTube/LifeOfRiza, The Publish Press)
• The German federal cabinet has adopted a key-points paper with twelve initiatives on child and youth protection online. Among other things, it provides for a national minimum age of 13 for platforms such as TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram, as well as tiered restrictions for teenagers between 13 and 18. For teens aged 13 and up, "mini accounts" set up and supervised by parents are planned, with limited functions and a usage limit of one hour per day. In addition, a nationwide AI training program for primary school children and an information campaign are to be created. The exact date on which the rules will take effect is still open. (Tagesschau)

You can find all the latest news on my Radar: socialmediawatchblog.de/radar