Anti-Vax Newsletters Pull in $2.5M on Substack

Popular email platform Substack generates some $2.5 million each year from anti-vaccine newsletters, according to a new report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).

The controversial physician, Joseph Mercola, DO, runs one of the platform’s most popular newsletters. Newsletters from Mercola and former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson account for more than $2.2 million of that revenue, according to the report. They rake in a combined $183,000 per month.

While Substack gets 10% of that revenue, 90% goes to the authors. Both of them are listed as having “tens of thousands” of paid subscribers, the report noted.

Three other newsletters that publish anti-vaccine claims — by Robert Malone, MD; Steven Kirsch; and an anonymous writer — generate the bulk of the remaining $300,000 in annual revenue, according to the report.

Early this year, Mercola said he would move all of his posts that were deleted by other platforms to Substack. This “Censored Library” brought him from thousands to tens of thousands of subscribers, the report stated.

Mercola has used his newsletter to push claims including: “More Children Have Died from the COVID Shot Than From COVID.”

Berenson, who was banned from Twitter last year for spreading false COVID vaccine claims, has pushed ideas such as that the vaccines won’t stop COVID hospitalizations or deaths, and that mRNA vaccines contributed to the spread of COVID.

Other claims from the five newsletters examined by CCDH include: “The mass vaccination and boosters-for-life agenda are part of the technocratic coup underway” and “The data is very clear: the vaccines kill far more people than they might save from COVID.”

Substack’s content guidelines prohibit authors from conducting “harmful” activities, but the company doesn’t outright prohibit users from spreading misinformation.

In a post published last week, Substack co-founders Chris Best, Hamish McKenzie, and Jairaj Sethi, wrote a post entitled, “Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse.”

“[As] we face growing pressure to censor content published on Substack that to some seems dubious or objectionable, our answer remains the same: we make decisions based on principles not PR, we will defend free expression, and we will stick to our hands-off approach to content moderation,” they wrote.

Imran Ahmed, chief executive officer of CCDH, told the Guardian that companies like Substack “could just say no” to anti-vaccine content and misinformation producers. “This isn’t about freedom; this is about profiting from lies,” Ahmed said. “Substack should immediately stop profiting from medical misinformation that can seriously harm readers.”

Katelyn Jetelina, PhD, MPH, an epidemiologist at UT Health Science Center at Houston who runs a popular Substack email, said she has mixed feelings about how Substack should respond.

“Proactive solutions” are needed to mend the rifts in society, and Substack’s strategy may provide a solution, she said. “I’m willing to give Substack the benefit of the doubt, but I’m not excited or happy about it.”

While she said she doesn’t want to complain without offering an alternative solution, she did note that she feels the company’s solution “is risky and I hope there’s recognition in that. Not only risky for the health of our population but risky for the personal safety of me and fellow scientists fighting disinformation every day.”

“My life and the lives of my family have been directly threatened throughout this pandemic from followers of this disinformation,” Jetelina told MedPage Today. “And we’ve had to take certain steps to ensure the security of my family. The threat is real and it is scary. It is also incredibly exhausting and I’m tired.”

“I do hope,” she added, “that it starts a constructive and meaningful conversation around what is the smart way forward and what are effective solutions to some of our societal downfalls.”

Other digital platforms have faced pressure to counter misinformation. Most recently, musician Neil Young tried to press Spotify into removing podcast host Joe Rogan over his COVID misinformation claims. Young asked Spotify to remove his music, and singer Joni Mitchell subsequently removed her own music from the platform in solidarity. Hundreds of doctors, researchers, and scientists also tried to petition the platform to remove Rogan and take a proactive stance against misinformation.

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