Community Guidelines for Substack company programs, events, and publications

At Substack, we believe in putting writers and readers in charge. That includes letting writers set the rules in their own community spaces.

We want to set an example of this in our community spaces, which include the On Substack publication, as well as Substack company events and programs, where our mission is to celebrate and accelerate writers.

These Community Guidelines ONLY apply to spaces that we manage, like our company publications, events, and programs, and are completely separate and distinct from the Substack Content Guidelines, which outline what is and is not acceptable on the Substack platform as a whole as part of our hands-off approach to moderation that puts writers and readers in charge. 

Guidelines for Substack programs, events, and publications:

1. Be kind to each other.
   Substack is founded on the belief that writers and their work deserve respect. Keep conversations civil in the comments of this publication and other Substack community spaces, such as events. Respect one other’s perspectives and life experiences in your conversations, and refrain from cruel or derogatory language.

2. Stay on-topic. We want this publication to support thoughtful discussion around writers’ work. It is not a place for irrelevant rants or off-topic digressions. That includes spam and repetitive self-promotion. 

3. Criticizing Substack is fair game. We welcome and value critiques of Substack and its policies (as long as you keep the language civil). 

How we’ll enforce Community Guidelines in our own events, programs, and publications

If you believe someone has violated these guidelines, please report the offending comment to the Substack Community team by using the “Report comment” option next to the comment. 

We approach Community Guidelines enforcement with a baseline assumption of positive intent. If we take action on a comment, we’ll provide a reason where it makes sense to do so. Transparency and good faith are important to us, and we want to communicate our expectations as clearly as possible.

Our team has full discretion to remove comments that we deem misaligned with the Community Guidelines, or to suspend individuals—temporarily or permanently—for behaviors that we deem inappropriate.

Moderators

The Substack Community team is here to support you as moderators. They can be reached at community@substackinc.com.

If you’d like to learn more about how to moderate your own Substack publication, visit our guide to Substack’s moderation tools.