In fact, looking at the current dance going on, it seems like the same sort of political games which you had going on with Big Tech.
Perhaps, it's time to skip the games and exit early onto something that you can control yourself.
At the end of the day, Substack is a blog hosting platform too. A blog is far easier to self-host than any of these other things.
It's not really clear why someone really needs yet another middleman coming along here. It's even less clear when using that middleman involves getting dragged into that middleman's own political drama.
At the end of the day, someone just wants to host a blog. Why so many games?
Setting policies, quietly "reinterpreting policies" (to avoid the embarrassment of publicly backing down), these are like Big Tech shenanigans, and not particularly fun ones.
It's not even particularly good for free speech. The approach of the neutral hoster might be better (and would include things related to sex) than acting as if they're out there to save journalism.
It's also the sort of platform that is entirely optional.
My opinion is more nuanced than just "You should use Substack", in fact I think you shouldn't use Substack (self-host, if possible), but I don't see the value in piling onto platforms either because of apparently a few very unpleasant accounts (when historically that hasn't gone anywhere good).
Of course, like Elizabeth, I also have to question whether nit-picking a few accounts posting, alright, very offensive content, isn't doing a disservice to free expression (particularly when you consider how over the top Big Tech has gone). Is it really contributing?