The Scam of Substack — Executive Summary
The scam of Substack, in a nutshell, was to create a "honeypot" to attract truth-tellers exposing "government" corruption and criminality who had already been demonetized and censored on every other platform — with the promise of earning revenue from subscriptions. For a while, Substack allowed these authors to grow organically. Our own growth on Substack was doubling and coming close to tripling year-over-year, until someone flipped the switch in July 2025, when we (and many others) saw our revenue and organic growth crater at the same time Substack began "masturbating" us with fake accounts, censoring comments from readers pointing to our work, and simply not publishing many of our articles — even though we had hundreds of paid subscribers who were paying Substack to deliver them.
We detail many other aspects of the Substack scam, including how other "Control of Perception" cartel monopoly media platforms like CIA Google and Twitter/X wouldn't publish content from Substack, keeping Substack authors stuck in an algorithmically controlled ghetto.
We aren't just complaining — we're providing a solution. We've built our own censorship-resistant publishing platform (I say "resistant" because we can't do anything about censorship at the spam-filter level with CIA Google Gmail, Yahoo, etc., so you still have to whitelist, monitor, and visit us directly to make sure nothing is getting blocked).
Join Us Here
TODAY we are introducing the new home for REAL freedom on the internet — the real "tip of the spear" in the information war.
ArtOfLiberty.Foundation — Important News from the Art of Liberty Foundation
Voluntaryist.News — The Daily News from the Art of Liberty Foundation
FiveMemeFri.org — Five Meme Friday
These new websites cost us $25,000 to set up and harden against censorship — $5/mo for full access, or $50/yr including a paperback copy of The Greatest Theft in Human History. Sponsor tiers from $125 to $25,000 available.
Why the Art of Liberty Foundation Is Being Censored on Substack
The Art of Liberty Foundation is not your average Substack newsletter. We are exposing what are, essentially, the biggest secrets in the world:
- The most important information in the world is being censored from the public through monopoly media and algorithmic censorship of monopoly search engines, social media, streaming sites, and platforms like Substack.
- The most important thing being censored: monopoly "government" is illegitimate on its face and is being run as a criminal enterprise in every country on earth. It is impossible to have a moral, legitimate "government." We call this thesis Organized Crime Theory (OCT) — a surprisingly prestigious academic pedigree, and also the most censored political philosophy in the world, because it frees the population from the rigged game of "voting harder" in elections run on unauditable "black box" voting machines and mail-in ballots.
- "Government" is best thought of as a technique to rob and control populations, whose legitimacy is forcefully indoctrinated using mandatory "government" schools, monopoly media, and algorithmic amplification (and censorship) of monopoly internet platforms like Substack. We call this technique "Brute Force Manufactured Consensus."
- The US "government" runs a variety of unethically manipulative techniques in its mandatory schools, scouting programs, and police/military training — subliminal programming, anchoring, product placement of the flag, and propaganda inserted into movies and television.
- Every "government" on the planet is being run as a criminal enterprise. It is impossible to have a moral, legitimate, consent-based "government."
Organized crime "banks" are at the top of the pyramid, using "government" to "legalize" fractional reserve banking — creating money out of thin air when they issue loans, which is inflationary and steals value out of everyone else's money.
The inflation from fractional reserve banking, confiscatory taxes, and the underpayment of Social Security (via manipulated COLA calculations) is costing the typical American earning $60,000/year over $1.40 million over a 40-year career and 20-year retirement. The theft roughly doubles at $120,000, and keeps doubling at higher income levels.
"Control of Perception" Is the Most Powerful Weapon in Organized Crime's Arsenal
Since organized crime banks and "government" have stolen over $182 trillion from the American people since 1913 alone, it's easy for them to spend a couple hundred billion a year to buy up and monopolize media, search engines, streaming sites, and now AI — making sure no major platform ever explains the reality of the situation to the population.
If you were the organized crime banks and "government" officials that had been perpetrating THE GREATEST THEFT IN HUMAN HISTORY for over two centuries… what would your strategy be to keep the most important information in the world from the population?
What Evidence Do We Have That We (and Others) Are Being Censored on Substack?
Plenty. On July 17, 2025, Substack announced a $100 million investment from BOND (partners include "ex"-Goldman Sachs, "ex"-In-Q-Tel — the CIA's VC fund — and a member of the Pentagon's Defense Innovation Board), The Chernin Group (ex-News Corp), and Andreessen Horowitz (previously funded other platforms caught similarly censoring content, including Twitter/X, Facebook, BuzzFeed, and Medium).
Immediately following this investment:
- Important News from the Art of Liberty Foundation: Revenue growth flatlined after consistent year-over-year doubling, and paid subscribers began trending downward for the first time ever.
- The Daily News from the Art of Liberty Foundation: Views dropped from 750–2,000+ per post to 6–17. Open rates show "N/A" — indicating emails are not being sent.
- Five Meme Friday: Same pattern — growth broke sharply at the July 2025 investment date, with "N/A" open rates.
- Restacking blocked: Subscribers report being unable to restack our content, with the message "I am not allowed to restack your post."
This is not subscriber fatigue — we had more Substacks than ever restacking and syndicating our content when growth stopped.
Other Publishers Affected Simultaneously
- Dr. Meryl Nass (merylnass.substack.com): Growth trajectory reversed after July 2025, subscriber count declining from ~50,000.
- DJ Mike Winner (djmikewinner.substack.com): 62,787 subscribers, lost ~5,000 (-7.2%) post-investment.
- Zowe Smith (zowe.substack.com): Growth flatlined precisely at the investment date.
Precipitous Declines After Publishing Something Especially Incriminating
From Debbie Lerman's article Is Substack a Censored Platform? — Here's Some Evidence That Suggests It Is: a truth-teller published something both important and massively popular (690 likes, 197 shares), and their paid subscribers cratered while free subscribers continued to climb.
Substack Censorship Is Part of a Documented Pattern
What we're experiencing is not new — it's the latest chapter in a well-documented pattern of coordinated censorship of independent media.
October 2018 — The Facebook/Twitter Purge
On October 11, 2018, Facebook and Twitter simultaneously deleted hundreds of liberty-oriented pages. Facebook removed 559 pages and 251 accounts in a single action — Free Thought Project (3+ million followers), Art of Liberty Foundation's Etienne de la Boetie2 Facebook account, The Anti-Media (2.1 million followers), Cop Block (1.7 million followers), Police the Police (1.9 million followers), and journalist Rachel Blevins (69,000 followers) — under the pretext of "inauthentic behavior." The purge was later traced to the Atlantic Council, a NATO-affiliated organization funded by Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and the U.S. government.
2020–2023 — The Twitter Files and Congressional Testimony
Journalist Matt Taibbi's Twitter Files investigation and subsequent congressional testimony before the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government documented a formal infrastructure for government-directed censorship:
- The FBI, DHS, DOD, CIA, and other agencies submitted spreadsheets of accounts to Twitter for suppression.
- For every government agency flagging content, roughly 20 quasi-private entities did the same.
- Stanford's Election Integrity Partnership operated as a government cutout, flagging millions of posts.
- The Atlantic Council's DFRLab received State Department funding while advising platforms on content removal.
- Taibbi mapped 50+ organizations in this "Censorship Industrial Complex."
July 2025 — Substack Begins Censoring Right Before It Receives $100M From CIA & Pentagon-Connected Investors
Participating investor Marc Andreessen, a member of Peter Thiel's Dialog Society, is also an investor in multiple other platforms caught algorithmically suppressing, demonetizing, and deindexing content creators — including Facebook, Medium, and Quora. One of his employees, Hanne Winarsky, an Editorial Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, had already been installed at Substack as Head of Writer Acquisition & Development — where we believe she was recruiting controlled-opposition voices to dilute the impact of truth-tellers. Other investors included BOND Partners, whose partners include "ex"-Goldman Sachs, "ex"-In-Q-Tel, and a member of the Pentagon's Defense Innovation Board.
Shortly after this funding, our traffic — and the traffic of other truth-movement creators on Substack — began to crater. We think the $100M was a reward for the management team for turning off the truth-tellers.
How Is Substack Censoring Us (and the Rest of the Truth Movement)?
This is speculation on our part, based on the documented history of similar platforms — many with the exact same investors — caught doing the exact same thing. Here is what we think is going on:
1. Not e-mailing or sharing specific content via Notes
This one isn't speculation — it's documented. Our Daily News articles and Five Meme Friday newsletter simply aren't being e-mailed to paying or free subscribers, even though Substack is being paid by subscribers to deliver the content. We call this "Freedom of Speech without Reach." Substack publishes the article — anyone can read it if they have the link — but it isn't shared via email or Notes, and readers aren't allowed to restack it.
2. Not Allowing Cross-Posting or Restacking of Our Content
Keep in mind: even content where the reader thinks they've successfully cross-posted or restacked might not actually be shown to their own subscribers.
3. Censoring Positive Comments and Links to Our Work
Christopher Cook, proprietor of the Freedom Scale Substack, shared visualizations from our article pointing to ArtOfLiberty.org/Inflation. When we tried to "Like" the comment, we were forbidden — then the comment and link disappeared completely from the thread. A follow-up comment exposing the censorship was itself censored.
Important warning to other Substack creators: we were lucky to catch this with screenshots — this may be happening to you without your knowing it.
4. Recruiting and Algorithmically Boosting Controlled-Opposition Voices
We believe this was the #1 job of former Andreessen Horowitz employee Hanne Winarsky — recruiting both controlled-opposition voices and legitimately talented writers on unrelated topics to dilute and distract from the triple-digit growth the leading truth-tellers were having on the platform.
5. Not Indexing Content on Google, Twitter/X, and Other Platforms
Substack author Debbie Lerman: "At this point it seems indisputable that Substack — or at least a notable subset of Substack writers — is heavily blocked and censored on major platforms from X to Google." Famously summarized by one X user in 2023: "Substack writers cannot embed tweets in their posts. Twitter users cannot retweet or like tweets with Substack links."
Author John Leake noted that none of his most popular Substack posts and video interviews — some with over 100,000 views — appeared in Google search results for his own name. He compared Substack to the old Jewish ghettos of Europe: large and flourishing neighborhoods, but walled off from the rest of the city, and vulnerable to occasional pogroms.
6. "Masturbating" Authors with Fake Free Subscribers
Right around the time paid subscribers declined precipitously, we noticed an uptick in what appear to be fake accounts — subscribed to 600–900+ Substacks, with no-cost email addresses on CIA Google Gmail or similar platforms. We reached out to numerous suspicious accounts; none replied. Our ratio of paid to free subscribers has dropped significantly, supporting this thesis.
Other Creators and Readers Are Confirming It Too
Etienne Note: In the comments on the article, comments on the Daily News version of the article, private e-mails, and Substack Notes, we have had around a dozen other Substack creators contact us to let us know they are experiencing the exact or very similar censorship. We have had another half a dozen subscribers contact us to let us know that Substack is not allowing them to restack, forward, or cross-post our article promoting the censorship. One reader reported that right after we blew the whistle, our e-mails began going directly into the trash… not the spam filter, the trash!
Keep in mind that the only Substack authors getting censored are the ones exposing corruption — if you are keeping people trapped in the fake left-right paradigm of "voting harder" in easily-rigged elections where organized crime owns both candidates and wins either way, then you won't be censored. Also, the rule of thumb in retail is that for every comment you receive, there were 20–30 people who felt the same way but didn't take the time to write a comment, so multiply this list by 20X!
Here is just a small sampling of comments and emails that we have received:
So… We Are Leaving Substack — and YOU Should Too!
Once we realized the extent to which Substack was censoring us — and all the tricks it plays on readers — we decided to leave and build our own censorship-resistant platform. Building and hardening the new websites cost $25,000, so we're asking subscribers (and anyone who values freedom of speech) to become paid members on the new site.
If you're already a paid subscriber to any of our Substacks, we will continue your subscription on the new website automatically. If you can afford to rejoin as a yearly subscriber, or become a Sponsor at the $125, $500, $1,000, $5,000, or $25,000 level, it would help us defray the cost of the new publishing platform.
We've moved Important News from the Art of Liberty Foundation to ArtOfLiberty.Foundation, the Daily News from the Art of Liberty Foundation to Voluntaryist.News, and Five Meme Friday to FiveMemeFri.org.
We Want YOU to Join Us!
$50 Yearly Members get their choice of a paperback copy of The Greatest Theft in Human History — How the Banks and "Government" Will Steal at Least $1.40 Million From the Typical Worker… "Legally," any other book, or a Liberator flash drive.
Even Better — Become a Sponsor of the Art of Liberty Foundation
We simply can't do this without the help of "heavy hitters," and we have some amazing perks to say thank you.
Become a Liberty Member
The Art of Liberty Foundation is exposing the most important information in the world — and you won't find it on a free, monopoly media platform designed to trick you and censor what we're exposing.
Join Us at ArtOfLiberty.org →"The truth is not for all men, but only for those who seek it." — Ayn Rand
PS — A Final Message to Substack Employees
Please check out our exposé, The Greatest Theft in Human History — How the Banks and "Government" Will Steal at Least $1.40 Million from the Typical Worker… "Legally" — to understand how this inter-generational organized-crime system is robbing you, your family, friends, neighbors, and colleagues.
If you want to be a hero instead of a zero, please contact us at Evidence (at) ArtOfLiberty.org, where we guarantee to keep you anonymous — we recommend you don't share any personal information in the exchange. Just send us evidence of algorithmic suppression, blacklists, and any other incriminating information, especially the names of the specific executives and programmers involved in the censorship.
About the Author
Etienne de la Boetie²
Etienne de la Boetie² is the founder of the Art of Liberty Foundation, editor of Voluntaryist.News — our daily survey of the best of the alternative media from a voluntaryist perspective — and Five Meme Friday, which delivers hard-hitting voluntaryist memes and the best of the alternative media. He is an internationally recognized expert and speaker on voluntaryism and government illegitimacy, criminality, and corruption. His original writings and research can be found at ArtOfLiberty.Foundation.
He is the author of multiple books exposing the illegitimacy and criminality of government, including The Greatest Theft in Human History, To See the Cage Is to Leave It, and "Government" — The Biggest Scam in History… Exposed!, with two upcoming titles: Organized Crime Theory (OCT) and Voluntaryism.