A Note About Yesterday's Announcement of Our Migration to Rumble and Locals

A few points of clarification and responses to some emails from subscribers after last night's announcement

Last night we explicitly announced what we had signaled for a couple of months would happen: namely, in connection with our new nightly live show on Rumble, we are migrating our written journalism and all other features — including my original written reporting, the show's transcripts, freelance contributions, and the live interactive show we do each night — to Locals, the community-based publishing platform which Rumble purchased last year. In last night's post, I explained at some length both our rationale for this move and how it will work, so I will avoid repeating all of that in this note. Those who have not yet read that announcement and our explanation can do so at this link to last night's announcement.

Despite my attempt to be comprehensive, there appears — based on a few subscriber emails — to be some lingering questions and confusions that I may not have sufficiently explained, so I am returning to address the few points raised by those emails:

1) Because we are migrating all of our written content from Substack to Locals, and our content will no longer appear on Substack, your paid subscription was automatically changed from my Substack page to a subscription to my Locals page (pending your approval, which happens when you sign up for Locals). That is why some of you saw a note at the end of my article yesterday noting that you are a “free Substack subscriber” even though you paid a Substack subscription that has not yet expired. The subscription to this Substack page will, in essence, no longer have any value since — for the reasons I explained last night — we will cease publishing content here. Instead, all of that content will now be available exclusively on Locals, meaning that everything your Substack subscription previously provided will now instead be provided by the Locals subscription, to which you are autonatmically entitled without the need for any additional payment or cost.

2) Locals functions exactly the same way as Substack does. Whenever we publish a new article, including a new transcript to our SYSTEM UPDATE program, you will be notified automatically via your email. In other words, you never need to scroll through Locals or look to see if there is new content. The minute we hit “publish” on a new article, the Locals system will immediately send it to your email inbox, just as it works now on Substack.

3) I explained the sign-up process yesterday, and we tried to make it as easy and annoyance-free as possible, though it does require one or two steps. That was done primarily to allow anyone who wishes to do so to opt-out. To obtain your new subscription to our Locals page — without any additional cost — you simply go to my Locals page here, enter the same email address as you use for your Substack subscription, click “forgot password” and Locals will email you your new password (which you are of course free to change). The Locals system will automatically recognize you as a paid Substack subscriber and thus your new membership on Locals will be treated as a fully paid subscription for however much time is remaining on your Substack subscription (in other words, if you have seven months remaining on your Substack subscription, then you will automatically receive a seven-month fully paid Locals subscription as soon as you sign up). No additional cost of any kind is required to access all the content there, including my articles, our after-show, the transcripts or anything else.

4) We know that any kind of move or change can be irritating, so we did everything possible to minimize the inconvenience associated with the move. For those who have any issues with accessing your account on Locals, please email Support@Locals.com. For feedback and questions about content, please email anthony@systemupdate.tv Both emails are very attentive and will respond very promptly to any questions or requests for assistance.

As we noted last night, our condition for moving was that Locals upgrade its site, appearance and functionality so that my articles render as professionally as they do here on Substack. Their coders, designers and engineers have made enormous strides toward that end and while the process is not fully complete, we are very happy with both its functionality and appearance. There are, beyond that, new community-based functions there that will enable us to provide even more to our subscribers.

We realize that changes can be jarring — not just on the internet but in life generally. Our decision to undertake the responsibility to produce a nightly, one-hour live show has produced a non-trivial amount of work and stress, but we felt that change was necessary to reach an all-new audience with our journalism.

We explained our reasons last night for why we believe this move is the right way to maximize the impact of our journalism and hope that you will have only a small amount of time needed to adjust to the new venue. Nothing is changing in terms of the journalism. It is just being published on a different platform.