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I'm staying off Twitter even if it hinders my new Substack's reach--so I need your support [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-02-27

You may have seen in the last few years that I’ve been teasing pieces I’ve written on my Substack project, Loud, Liberal, Christian. I haven’t been able to grow it as much as I’ve wanted in the last two years. Part of it is because of the one-two punch of my mother taking a nasty fall, as well as having to move to Michigan to be closer to my wife’s family after my mother-in-law’s cancer returned.

But another reason is that I, like a lot of us here at Daily Kos, have more or less ceased engaging on Twitter. For me, the final straw was when Elon Musk essentially neutered the block function. It is now possible for people you block on Twitter to look at your tweets while not engaging with them. It’s an open door to harassment and trolling. Public figures may have the time and resources to deal with it. Most of us don’t.

I did so even though not being on Twitter would make it more difficult to reach people with my Substack posts. But I am not willing to compromise my safety—and more importantly, that of my wife and her family. I’m hoping you are willing to stand with me by getting a paid subscription, especially in this day and age.

When Musk formally neutered the blocking feature shortly before Election Day, I realized that if I decided to come back to Twitter, I faced the prospect of a repeat of what I had to deal with when I wrote about how victim advocate Amy “Watchkeep” Smith found herself the target of harassment from her own father, Allen Jordan. In case you don’t recall, former SBC president Jack Graham was pilloried for failing to report credible allegations of sexual assault by his youth minister, Jeff Langworthy. Even though Langworthy ultimately pleaded guilty to molesting boys and Graham never spoke with Guideposts, Jordan would have you believe that Graham and Langworthy have been the targets of an elaborate railroad job.

What I didn’t know when Jordan reached out to me after I highlighted Graham and Langworthy’s behavior in 2024 is that jordan had been flagrantly disregarding Smith’s request not to contact her again. And yet, Jordan copied Smith on a number of emails to me detailing his research. Knowing his history of harassing women, I suspected it wouldn’t be too big of a leap for him to harass a Black man. So I preemptively blocked his cell phone number and his sleeper Twitter account.

Had I decided to return to Twitter, this would be standard operating procedure with Musk having neutered the block feature. It is one of many reasons that I am not willing to put my safety at risk. But more importantly, I would be flagrantly disregarding my duty to protect my wife. I did so knowing that it would make it that much harder to build my Substack’s audience. But extra views and subscriptions are not worth my safety and that of my family.

At the same time, there’s a lot a want to do with this project—and I’m gonna need your help to do it. So if you can, get a paid subscription. And if you already have a free subscription, I’d appreciate it if you upgrade to paid if possible. I want to stand on an important principle—building an audience should never be so important that I should be willing to risk the safety of those closest to me.

Watch me explain more here.

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[1] Url: https://dailykos.com/stories/2025/2/27/2306733/-I-m-staying-off-Twitter-even-if-it-hinders-my-new-Substack-s-reach-so-I-need-your-support?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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