Update

Hi, everyone.

First, I wanted to thank everyone in this community for the support over the last 24 hours - and over the entirety of my time here. I appreciate you profoundly.

Second, thank you profusely to folks who very kindly upgraded to paid subscriptions in the aftermath of last post. I am extremely, extremely grateful.

Regarding the issue I became aware of last week, thought I should share an update:

I have confirmed that Substack has been essentially flushing new paid subscriptions through ApplePay down the drain since at least March. Possibly earlier.

To date, here is the complete list of what Substack has done to help:

<end of list>

The only action Substack has taken a full week since acknowledging the catastrophic problem on its end has been to…

…actually make it harder for people to subscribe to my newsletter by shutting off ApplePay altogether for my account.

To my knowledge, I am presently the only author on this “digital platform for writers” whose audience is unable to subscribe to their feed with the digital payment system installed on the most popular digital device in the world.

For real, the only tangible action Substack has taken is to make it even harder for me.

I have, however, received many assurances. Many, many assurances. Form-letter assurances. Personal assurances. Public assurances. Private assurances.

Yet, here I am exactly where I was yesterday and the day before and the five days before that:

Fucked royally with no resolution or remedy.

In terms of the impact of all of this…

Financially, huge. A huge amount of what would have been income has been destroyed.

Emotionally?

Honestly, I can’t even manage it well enough to talk about it. Gutting.

I don’t even know what else to say.

Mike