A New Comments Section Policy

I moved The Glenn Show to Substack about two years ago. In that time, I’ve watched with great pleasure as our audience has grown, people have put down their hard-earned money for access to premium content and benefits, and The Glenn Show has progressed from a labor of love to a financially self-sustaining venture. I can now afford to pay a small staff to help expand the show’s reach and ambition and a professional editor to step up the video and audio quality. I can buy better recording equipment and make improvements to my home studio. Most importantly, though, your contributions ensure that I don’t have to rely entirely on advertisers or platforms that can shut me down if they don’t like what I’m saying.

I call TGS self-sustaining, but of course all that we’ve accomplished in the past two years would be impossible without you, the community of listeners, viewers, readers, and commenters. You’re a fundamental part of the larger TGS enterprise. You help to shape the larger TGS project.

But I want to make sure that the people who shape the community’s dynamic are those who have the most invested in it. It takes only one troll to throw a comment thread into disorder and make it virtually unusable. A handful of sufficiently dedicated trolls can render an entire site’s comments section virtually worthless. Nikita Petrov and I have explored ways that Substack can give more control to its writers and the broader community of readers and commenters in order to promote both freedom of expression and rich, meaningful participation. I hope they listen to our suggestions, but it’s their platform to do with what they will.

In the meantime, until more responsive community tools are developed, I feel the need to take some preventive measures. So on all posts going forward, only paying subscribers will be able to leave comments. Paying subscribers, whether or not they are active commenters, have demonstrated their investment in TGS and the community that surrounds it through financial sacrifice. That is not the only way to gauge “investment,” I know, but it is the only objective measure I have available. Several posts every week, including the main episode, will remain free to all.

I hope to be able to implement a more flexible commenting policy in the near future. For now, consider commenting another subscriber benefit, along with early access to episodes, Q&As, and bonus content.