Reading the platform. Part 7. Opening Arc II — The Holes.
Six parts were about armor. Five layers of defense, each one independent. It looks like a lawsuit against Substack is impossible. The doors are locked. The walls are solid. An author against a corporation — a loser before the first move.
It isn’t so.
From here through Part 13 I read the holes. The places where the wall is already breached, or being breached, in the courts of 2024–2026.
The first hole is the largest. It was punched in August 2024 by a federal appeals court — the Third Circuit.
The case is called Anderson v. TikTok.
What happened in the case
A ten-year-old girl died attempting the “blackout challenge” — a practice that had spread on TikTok. She did not search for the video. She did not follow the accounts that posted it. TikTok’s algorithm served it to her in the For You feed.
Her mother sued TikTok. The ground: the platform pushed lethal content to a child.
The trial court dismissed the suit. The usual outcome — Section 230, the platform is not liable for third-party content.
The Third Circuit ruled otherwise.
Judge Patty Shwartz wrote, in the opinion: TikTok’s algorithm is not a “third party.” It is the platform’s own speech.
And then: A platform’s own speech is not shielded by Section 230. The platform answers for the result of its recommendation decisions.
A handful of words that punched through the wall of 1996.
Why it matters
Before Anderson, the logic was simple. An algorithm is just a way to show users someone else’s content. Someone else’s content is shielded by Section 230. Therefore everything the algorithm does is shielded too.
That was every platform’s baseline for twenty-five years. No exceptions.
Anderson turns it a hundred and eighty degrees.
The new logic: an algorithm is not “showing someone else’s.” An algorithm is the platform’s choice. Every byte in the For You feed is the result of an active decision: show this user exactly this video at exactly this moment. That choice is “the platform’s speech” in the legal sense.
That speech, under Moody v. NetChoice (2024), is protected by the First Amendment. But precisely because it is the platform’s speech, and not the carrying of someone else’s, Section 230 immunity does not reach it.
You have the right to choose — you carry responsibility for the choice. The symmetry platforms kept slipping out of, until Anderson.
Where Substack comes in
TikTok and Substack are different animals. TikTok is a video feed. Substack is a newsletter platform. Anderson would seem to have nothing to do with it.
Look closer.
In 2023–2024 Substack rebuilt itself. It is no longer just the “newsletter tool” it was positioned as at launch in 2017. It is the Home and Rising feeds, it is Notes (opened in 2023), it is Recommendations, it is the Featured lists, it is the category rankings — “science #17.”
All of it is algorithmic feeds. Every post in Rising is a Substack choice. Every blog recommendation is a Substack choice. Every climb in the “Science” or “Culture” ranking is a Substack choice.
After Anderson, all of those choices are Substack’s speech. And the platform can be held to answer for them, if they led to harm.
What harm?
From a child’s death to an author’s ban
Anderson is a case about a child’s death. An extreme case. What is the link to an author’s ban?
The link is in the principle, not in the scale of the damage. The core of Anderson: a platform’s algorithmic decisions are its own speech, not shielded by Section 230.
What is an author’s ban? A ban is an algorithmic decision by the platform about that author’s visibility. The most radical one — visibility set to zero.
And a ban is not “inaction toward someone else’s content.” It is an active act: this author, the platform chooses to remove. Under Anderson, that is the platform’s speech. The platform answers for the consequences.
This is not yet a winning suit. No court has yet held that a ban on Substack is an expression of the platform’s speech for which the platform is liable. But the logic of Anderson lets it be framed that way.
Four things this changes
First. Section 230 is no longer absolute. It works for storing and transmitting someone else’s content. It does not work for the platform’s recommendation decisions.
Second. The “storage” / “recommendation” line now carries legal weight. These used to be technical terms. Now they are the dividing line between “the platform is shielded” and “the platform answers.”
Third. Platforms cannot be “editors” and “the pipe” at once. Before Anderson, platforms ran an illusionist’s trick: on one hand — we choose, we ban, we moderate (editor); on the other — we merely carry someone else’s (the pipe). Anderson says: pick one.
Fourth. Suits “for the platform’s choice” got a door. Before, any suit over a platform’s decision was closed by Section 230. Now there is a door.
What it means in my case
I was banned three times. Each ban is an algorithmic decision by Substack about the visibility of my texts.
Under Anderson, that is the platform’s speech. Before Anderson it would have been “platform inaction,” shielded by Section 230. Now it is speech the platform answers for.
Answers for what, exactly?
For the consequences of cutting off visibility — the break in subscriptions, the loss of income, the rupture of standing agreements with subscribers. For the consistency of the “choice” with the declared rules: if a platform states it bans for one thing and bans for another, that is a deceptive practice — not covered by the First Amendment, and now, after Anderson, not covered by Section 230. For the absence of any internal review of the “choice”: when a ban is final with no review, it sharpens the argument that the practice is unconscionable.
Where this hole is not yet formed
An honest reckoning.
Anderson is one circuit’s decision. It is binding in the Third Circuit — New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware. In other circuits it is persuasive, not binding.
The Supreme Court has not taken up Anderson directly. That may happen in 2026–2027. Whether it will be left standing is unknown.
Substack is a Delaware company — that is the Third Circuit. That technically works in our favor.
But the main thing: this hole is not yet tested on an author’s ban. Anderson was about harm to a child. Applying its logic to bans of adult authors is an extension. The extension will have to be proven.
This is a hole, not a doorway. But the hole is there. The wall of 1996 is no longer solid.
What to do as an author now
First. Track Substack’s algorithmic decisions about your content. When a post lands in Rising. When your category position jumps sharply. When your blog appears or vanishes in Recommendations. When your Notes stop showing. Document it — screenshots and dates.
Second. Shift the language from “I lost visibility” to “the platform made a decision about my content.” The difference matters. The first is the language of a victim. The second is the language in which actions and decisions are visible — the kind courts and regulators can discuss.
Third. Don’t expect Anderson to be a magic key. It is not a “fix” of the system. It is one of five-to-seven levers that together open room for a conversation. Regulators read Anderson as a signal. Authors can use its logic in complaints.
What this part shows
The wall of 1996 is breached. Not demolished — breached. The hole is there, and it is in an important place: the point of “the platform’s recommendation decisions.”
Substack, more than TikTok, lives on such decisions. Rising, Recommendations, Notes, category rankings — they are the spine of how authors grow, or fail to grow, here. A ban is the radical version of such a decision.
Before Anderson, those decisions were “outside the law” — unreachable for a court. Now they are inside the law. That is a decisive shift.
Six holes left. The next is the revenge theory — retaliation as a separate tort, the one Section 230 does not cover.
If this read earned its place — the series runs on a paid subscription. One line of support keeps the door open.
— lintara
Next: Revenge. When a platform bans an author in response to a regulator complaint or public criticism, that is not “moderation.” It is a separate tort. Section 230 does not shield against retaliation suits.
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