Hello! A friend of mine happened to text me this and I messaged the team; it appears you were caught in an automatic spam filter. It’s hard to get them to work well with no false positives, but nothing is more excruciating than causing stress and worry for writers and interfering with their relationship with their readers; it’s literally what we exist to fight.
I’m very sorry for the stress and frustration, and that it was so difficult to get this remediated. The team works learnings like this into the automated systems, so hopefully this will mean less error in the future, but again, we’re very sorry for the inconvenience and bother. It’s awful. You should be set now.
It could take a while to propagate! I’m sorry about that; I’m not sure how long these things typically take (eg due to search system caching). But: all the flags are off.
That's fascinating. Can you explain how Substack's spam filters work? Because it just seems highly unlikely that my blog would trigger any spam filters whatsoever.
My email address is attached to my website domain, which is properly registered with WHOIS. I interact organically and never leave duplicate comments. I don't go on subscription sprees. Nothing about my Substack engagent is spammy. I'd love a more technical explanation ASAP, because this is serious and I think you guys know that.
I cannot provide a more technical explanation, unfortunately, as I’m a software designer and don’t work on these systems. All I can tell you is: in our backend system, I saw your publication had spam flags which apply automatically, and when we saw them, we removed them.
This isn’t especially uncommon, sadly. I imagine it’s hard to believe how incompetent scaled software systems are, but I’m afraid Hanlon’s razor still applies to most of the technical environments I’ve worked in.
Interesting. Can you please have someone who can explain it get in touch with me?
Also, can you explain why I was unsubscribed from so many publications without my knowledge, even though my paid subscriptions remained intact? My paid subscriptions alone should have indicated that I wasn't spam. It's all just a little too strange.
I’ll pass it on to the Support team! I have no idea what they’re willing or not willing to explain —disclosing how anti-spam systems work isn’t typical because we don’t want people to know how they work, since we can’t screen spammers from normal inquiries at the scale or tens of millions of users— but maybe they can tell you something you’ll find more persuasive than my word! Fingers crossed, and I hope the caches clear / you’re back to normal soon.
I certainly do; it’s my livelihood and my family’s future; I’ve also been a writer online since 1997, and find stuff like this personally infuriating. There’s very little we take more seriously than these sorts of problems. If we don’t do well enough, we all go home!
I should say, JIC: if you’re worried about censorship, it *definitely* was not censorship or content-based or anything like that! You can find hundreds or thousands of pubs posting things that I think demonstrate our commitments on free speech. Chris Best is really serious about that stuff!
I like that you're so persistent, Erin, in clarifying why Substack shadow-banned you. Bravo!
Thank you! I still have not received a direct answer from Substack, only a boilerplate explanation about accidental "spam." Sigh. :/
Hello! A friend of mine happened to text me this and I messaged the team; it appears you were caught in an automatic spam filter. It’s hard to get them to work well with no false positives, but nothing is more excruciating than causing stress and worry for writers and interfering with their relationship with their readers; it’s literally what we exist to fight.
I’m very sorry for the stress and frustration, and that it was so difficult to get this remediated. The team works learnings like this into the automated systems, so hopefully this will mean less error in the future, but again, we’re very sorry for the inconvenience and bother. It’s awful. You should be set now.
Also, I'm not all set. I'm still not appearing in searches.
It could take a while to propagate! I’m sorry about that; I’m not sure how long these things typically take (eg due to search system caching). But: all the flags are off.
That's fascinating. Can you explain how Substack's spam filters work? Because it just seems highly unlikely that my blog would trigger any spam filters whatsoever.
My email address is attached to my website domain, which is properly registered with WHOIS. I interact organically and never leave duplicate comments. I don't go on subscription sprees. Nothing about my Substack engagent is spammy. I'd love a more technical explanation ASAP, because this is serious and I think you guys know that.
I cannot provide a more technical explanation, unfortunately, as I’m a software designer and don’t work on these systems. All I can tell you is: in our backend system, I saw your publication had spam flags which apply automatically, and when we saw them, we removed them.
This isn’t especially uncommon, sadly. I imagine it’s hard to believe how incompetent scaled software systems are, but I’m afraid Hanlon’s razor still applies to most of the technical environments I’ve worked in.
Interesting. Can you please have someone who can explain it get in touch with me?
Also, can you explain why I was unsubscribed from so many publications without my knowledge, even though my paid subscriptions remained intact? My paid subscriptions alone should have indicated that I wasn't spam. It's all just a little too strange.
I’ll pass it on to the Support team! I have no idea what they’re willing or not willing to explain —disclosing how anti-spam systems work isn’t typical because we don’t want people to know how they work, since we can’t screen spammers from normal inquiries at the scale or tens of millions of users— but maybe they can tell you something you’ll find more persuasive than my word! Fingers crossed, and I hope the caches clear / you’re back to normal soon.
I certainly hope so, because I'm not sure why writers would continue using a platform that could classify them as spam for no discernible reason.
If I hadn't been alerted to my shadow ban by someone who specializes in tech censorship, I never would have known.
I hope you realize that's not a great look for a company that built its brand around light-handed moderation and free speech.
I certainly do; it’s my livelihood and my family’s future; I’ve also been a writer online since 1997, and find stuff like this personally infuriating. There’s very little we take more seriously than these sorts of problems. If we don’t do well enough, we all go home!
I should say, JIC: if you’re worried about censorship, it *definitely* was not censorship or content-based or anything like that! You can find hundreds or thousands of pubs posting things that I think demonstrate our commitments on free speech. Chris Best is really serious about that stuff!