Writers are not "fleeing Substack" that's just legacy media trying to insinuate ways to hurt Substack's revenue by creating a false perception of "hm maybe I should consider switching" in classic divide and conquer.

A quick google search "substack site:theverge.com" will reveal that theverge hasn't written a single positive article about substack. Most posts are implying you should avoid substack.

The whole article is based on "this one guy switched to ghost" type of evidence ... no data, no stats.

This is correct. Substack was one of the first "mainstreamish" platforms to go "against the grain" and try to be neutral with respect to the topics and ideas it platformed. Notably, it allowed deviations from the "party line" on the issues of the pandemic. As became evident with the SPLC story, there are powerful organizations whose goal is not to forget such things and organize persistent media punishment campaigns against the dissenters. This can well be a manifestation of that.

You can look back through the past 100 theverge.com posts on HN and you won't find anything insightful or even actual reporting (i.e. adding new facts that aren't reported by other sources): https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=theverge.com

There are plenty fleeing Substack, and at considerable cost when a Substack subscriber decides to chargeback because they're no longer writing on Substack.

I am regretting letting my schlubstack.com domain expire now.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean your wrong