Ask HN: Why is Substack so popular?
177 comments
Many writers like them because they seem to have made both costly and cheap signals to show that they are on the side of writers:
(1) they say they are "anti-censorship" and won't evict writers from their "private platform"
(2) they let the writer own their audience / mailing list (so they can leave with their audience, if they want to)
(3) they advanced money to popular writers
These things with the addition of a simple writing/reading/subscription platform that isn't overrun with adverts gives writers confidence that substack is aligned with their interests and will make money while being on their side (this is true at least for now).
Additionally, the financial success of many writers on the platform has raised the status of creating a substack. I think this is an important secondary effect -- you can disparage this as "pseudo-intellectual" but there are people that are winning from it and doing well is always cool.
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*Edit*: Put another way, Substack's success is due to realism. They've made a realistic attempt to incentivize excellent writers to writing on their platform. They incentivize even those that are already very popular, by not locking them in and by giving them control of their audience. They have even gone as far as giving very significant upfront financial incentives to get the most famous writers on the internet onto their platform.
Other platforms try to own their writers and treat them like commodities producing SEO content. This was obviously not an attractive offer to talented or independent writers, let alone writers that have already grown huge audiences.
(1) they say they are "anti-censorship" and won't evict writers from their "private platform"
(2) they let the writer own their audience / mailing list (so they can leave with their audience, if they want to)
(3) they advanced money to popular writers
These things with the addition of a simple writing/reading/subscription platform that isn't overrun with adverts gives writers confidence that substack is aligned with their interests and will make money while being on their side (this is true at least for now).
Additionally, the financial success of many writers on the platform has raised the status of creating a substack. I think this is an important secondary effect -- you can disparage this as "pseudo-intellectual" but there are people that are winning from it and doing well is always cool.
---
*Edit*: Put another way, Substack's success is due to realism. They've made a realistic attempt to incentivize excellent writers to writing on their platform. They incentivize even those that are already very popular, by not locking them in and by giving them control of their audience. They have even gone as far as giving very significant upfront financial incentives to get the most famous writers on the internet onto their platform.
Other platforms try to own their writers and treat them like commodities producing SEO content. This was obviously not an attractive offer to talented or independent writers, let alone writers that have already grown huge audiences.
Everyone who is responding doesn’t understand the core benefit of Substack: the writer owns the relationship between them and their subscribers.
Substack has no such ownership. Substack doesn’t take payments from the subscribers and then pay the writer. The subscribers directly pay the writer and the writer is charged a fee by Substack.
It is VERY easy for writers to drop off Substack. They own their subscription lists and if they want to move to Patreon they can. But Substack’s incentive is to make their product so good that the writers stay. That is how the company is set up. They could have created a moat where Substack owns the subscribers but they chose to flip it so that it is very easy for writers to leave. Literally writers can leave Substack with the click of the button and they can take their subscribers with them, and that’s a core value of the company.
I think the company values are amazing and new and something you don’t see anymore. I actually applied to the company last year but didn’t pass the interview which was very disappointing but I plan on trying again this year. It’s a company I firmly believe in and I love the mission.
THE business plan for every new company created in the last two decades is exploitative by design, and people are fed up with it. The problem is that the relationships between the person consuming, the person producing, and the business is organized wrong. The plan is for the business to insert itself between people and extract a tax on their interaction instead of collecting a fee for providing a service. Technology has accelerated this trend by reducing the cost of this automated relationship management.
This is a gross inversion of normal relationships between people. I hope that Substack's model becomes more popular and people choose to eject exploitative mediators and force them to be third party service providers where they belong.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30420113
This is a gross inversion of normal relationships between people. I hope that Substack's model becomes more popular and people choose to eject exploitative mediators and force them to be third party service providers where they belong.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30420113
> they say they are "anti-censorship" and won't evict writers from their "private platform"
"Anti-censorship" is hugely unpopular with the mainstream intellectual community these days. It's close to being a dog whistle for the alt-right. I'm surprised this is a stance that would attract more "excellent writers".
"Anti-censorship" is hugely unpopular with the mainstream intellectual community these days. It's close to being a dog whistle for the alt-right. I'm surprised this is a stance that would attract more "excellent writers".
> "Anti-censorship" is hugely unpopular with the mainstream intellectual community these days.
I'd disagree. It's unpopular with left-leaning mainstream audiences, but among intellectuals who write for a living, I imagine that extra assurances of not getting kicked off the platform are rather attractive.
I'd disagree. It's unpopular with left-leaning mainstream audiences, but among intellectuals who write for a living, I imagine that extra assurances of not getting kicked off the platform are rather attractive.
>It's unpopular with left-leaning mainstream audiences
It is truly wild how HN often frames censorship as something coming purely from the left while ignoring the laws coming out of conservative state legislatures across the country. There is a wide spectrum of people both pushing for censorship and pushing against it.
It is truly wild how HN often frames censorship as something coming purely from the left while ignoring the laws coming out of conservative state legislatures across the country. There is a wide spectrum of people both pushing for censorship and pushing against it.
Left and right censorship are applied to very different media. In the case of online platforms, the most visible attempts of censorship are coming from the left. At least I haven't heard of any opposite examples.
When one form of censorship is coming from private companies and the other form of censorship is coming from the government, I am definitely more concerned about the latter than the former.
The only modern examples of censorship coming from the right I can think of are the anti-CRT and "don't say gay" type bills. These laws are certainly problematic, but as tools of censorship, they're narrowly targeted at children, not adults. There's a pretty longstanding cultural consensus around censoring content targeted at children, for better or worse. We may not agree with the particular choices being made on the right here about content, but it doesn't seem to me like, per se, a free speech issue in the normal sense.
Maybe you are aware of some example that i'm not, though.
Maybe you are aware of some example that i'm not, though.
>as tools of censorship, they're narrowly targeted at children, not adults.
Children eventually become adults. How do we expect the adults of the future to deal with difficult topics like race if we prevent them from learning about them?
>Maybe you are aware of some example that i'm not, though.
I linked to another example in a different comment.[1]
[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31085565
Children eventually become adults. How do we expect the adults of the future to deal with difficult topics like race if we prevent them from learning about them?
>Maybe you are aware of some example that i'm not, though.
I linked to another example in a different comment.[1]
[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31085565
When an online platform is a de-facto monopoly, like Twitter or Facebook, I don't think it should be unilaterally censoring user content. I understand that content policy is a difficult problem, but I don't think "they are a private company they can do whatever they want" is the right answer.
Name a single such law passed in the past 4 years in the US? (Laws regulating the curricula of state-funded public schools don't count. Not using taxpayer money to support a view ≠ impinging on the right of private citizens and organizations to express that view with their own resources and funds)
I will ignore the bizarre exception you are making for "Laws regulating the curricula of state-funded public schools" because I can still point to other examples. Here is a law that passed this month in Florida that dictates what topics employers can discuss in diversity training programs.[1]
[1] - https://www.natlawreview.com/article/florida-s-stop-woke-act...
[1] - https://www.natlawreview.com/article/florida-s-stop-woke-act...
It's not a bizarre exception, it's completely normal. If a math teacher tells their students that 2+2=5, it's not an assault on free speech to fire the teacher.
I like how you challenged me to listed an example thinking none existed, I list an example, and then you completely ignored that I did. You didn't even try to weasel out of it by saying that example doesn't qualify, just fully 100% ignored that I proved you wrong.
I didn't "weasel out" of anything, I didn't address a portion of your comment because I judged that another commenter had already said everything I would have said.
Why those reporting need to be intentionally biased? The bill is clearly about what the training programs can teach, not “discuss”. These two are clearly different. When a training program teaches white employees they are inherently racist, it’s totally different from a random person raises this idea from discussion.
This is a continuation of the same problem I highlighted before because it pretends that self-censorship only happens on the right. I have been through over a dozen diversity training courses in my career. Not a single one has ever said "white employees are inherently racists". This law is written against strawmen examples. Their goal isn't to stop those extreme examples. It is supposed to make companies fearful enough of a lawsuit, remember a lawsuit doesn't have to win to be costly and damaging, that they either dumb down this training or stop it entirely. The problem with censorship is not just what is actively censored. There is a much broader chilling effect that ends up censoring more topics even if they aren't explicitly banned.
Not to mention the censorship pressure exerted by family values groups’ complaints to the FCC. Those are generally very conservative groups who want to protect children from seeing a breast.
Some seem to think that "cancel culture" started 5 years ago as well. It's a strange position to take which indicates a near total lack of research into the topic.
Oh, I guess I was thinking mainly about online censorship by tech platforms. I think most censorship from the right nowadays is about public schools?
What is insane is when people frame anti-censorship as an alt-right value. That offends people like me who are staunchly liberal but completely anti-censorship to my core.
It's so pervasive that you can't even have an anti-censorship opinions on Reddit without getting lumped in with the alt-right and banned from subreddits. The nuance of "I disagree with you but defend your right to say it" is dying a painful death. Defend free speech and get accused of being alt-right or wanting to say the n-word.
Another thing dying is the defense of protests. I made a couple comments in popular Canadian subreddits about the truckers and was banned from a few for saying "protest isn't meant to make people feel happy and if the protestors don't make you feel uncomfortable you either agree with them or they're not doing their job". I got banned from one with the reason being "be gone nazi scum go try parler".
Another thing dying is the defense of protests. I made a couple comments in popular Canadian subreddits about the truckers and was banned from a few for saying "protest isn't meant to make people feel happy and if the protestors don't make you feel uncomfortable you either agree with them or they're not doing their job". I got banned from one with the reason being "be gone nazi scum go try parler".
If you are talking about r/Ottawa, I can explain their reaction. What happened in downtown Ottawa was not a protest, but an occupation with heavy machinery in an attempt to make the PM look bad, and have to step down. There were many, many posters in that sub trying to paint the whole thing as a peaceful protest, but after a week of 150 air horns for ~18 hours a day, the benefit of the doubt was gone, and everyone repeating the same garbage was turfed.
Additionally, the sub saw many multiples of normal traffic, so mods were quick to ban anyone posting anything resembling a Fox talking point.
Additionally, the sub saw many multiples of normal traffic, so mods were quick to ban anyone posting anything resembling a Fox talking point.
>What happened in downtown Ottawa was not a protest, but an occupation
Here's exactly my problem. This is the only narrative people are allowed to have on mainstream subreddits.
I'll admit it wasn't 100% peaceful but let's be honest here - it wasn't violent either and it wasn't an occupation. They demanded the PM step down or be removed by the GG because they don't understand how politics work here but visit some Canadian subreddits and what was done is widely regarded as a coup attempt. The view that it was a coup, or even an attempted coup, is literally insane and hysterical.
Regarding the length of the protest - Ottawa police sat on their hands and did nothing to stop or remove the truckers. When they finally did lift a finger to remove them they successfully removed them. It took 3 days but if they had just done something earlier it wouldn't have grown to as big as it did.
Here's exactly my problem. This is the only narrative people are allowed to have on mainstream subreddits.
I'll admit it wasn't 100% peaceful but let's be honest here - it wasn't violent either and it wasn't an occupation. They demanded the PM step down or be removed by the GG because they don't understand how politics work here but visit some Canadian subreddits and what was done is widely regarded as a coup attempt. The view that it was a coup, or even an attempted coup, is literally insane and hysterical.
Regarding the length of the protest - Ottawa police sat on their hands and did nothing to stop or remove the truckers. When they finally did lift a finger to remove them they successfully removed them. It took 3 days but if they had just done something earlier it wouldn't have grown to as big as it did.
The other odd thing is to see so many journalists who have walked away from supporting free speech. They used to be some of the strongest supporters.
The cynical take is that free speech is great when you're the institutional gate-keeper, but not so much when the plebs can publish what they want.
The cynical take is that free speech is great when you're the institutional gate-keeper, but not so much when the plebs can publish what they want.
Is there an example of a thriving online community that has absolutely no censorship? One gets the sense that once a platform commits publicly to never censor, it's overrun by people with extreme opinions, and the platform loses more reasonable people, who actually are the largest majority.
There's a difference a mile wide between censoring discussions between adults about complex current issues and censoring books being given to children.
On the right, banning books means trying to prevent their kids from reading them. But on the left it often means trying to prevent anyone from reading them.
https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1515563419386191880
https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1515563419386191880
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Do you have any sources that indicate anti-censorship is “hugely unpopular” with the mainstream intellectual community? For example, esteemed scientists speaking out against it?
It may be important here to separate journalists and political activists from the intellectual community. Not to say that they aren’t intellectuals, but the issue could be limited to that set of intellectuals in particular.
It may be important here to separate journalists and political activists from the intellectual community. Not to say that they aren’t intellectuals, but the issue could be limited to that set of intellectuals in particular.
See NYT "hit" pieces on substack:
* https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/11/business/media/substack-n...
* https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/13/business/media/substack-g...
Along with one of Substack's founders responding to it: https://twitter.com/lulumeservey/status/1514318085083340807
* https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/11/business/media/substack-n...
* https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/13/business/media/substack-g...
Along with one of Substack's founders responding to it: https://twitter.com/lulumeservey/status/1514318085083340807
Thanks for sharing these. From what I can see, the criticism here is coming entirely from journalists/activists.
It makes me wonder: how many of the opinions that we are exposed to originate from journalists/activists? How much are we mixing up the opinions of these people as representing the opinions of scientists, engineers and philosophers? How much are we mixing up the opinions of journalists/activists as representing those of your average person?
I'm starting to see a deep issue with the preeminence of journalist/activist opinion.
It makes me wonder: how many of the opinions that we are exposed to originate from journalists/activists? How much are we mixing up the opinions of these people as representing the opinions of scientists, engineers and philosophers? How much are we mixing up the opinions of journalists/activists as representing those of your average person?
I'm starting to see a deep issue with the preeminence of journalist/activist opinion.
Totally agree.
"Anti-censorship" is definitely a dog whistle call out to the right wing: "Feel free to lie and spread dangerous misinformation on our platform."
I don't know if Substack actually allows "Fauci is the devil, all liberals are socialist pedophiles" writers on their site, but that's what they're promising to support.
"Anti-censorship" is definitely a dog whistle call out to the right wing: "Feel free to lie and spread dangerous misinformation on our platform."
I don't know if Substack actually allows "Fauci is the devil, all liberals are socialist pedophiles" writers on their site, but that's what they're promising to support.
It's not surprising if you think the non-mainstream intellectual community is large enough to contain excellent writers that were currently under-utilized and under-financed.
Excellent writers could have been ignored by the mainstream market previously if they were outside of the norm and sometimes found in baskets with bad apples (e.g. "alt-right"). The non-mainstream is actually a collection of smaller minority groups -- it tends to be the mainstream that is more homogenous. It doesn't surprise me that Substack has found success by not treating the non-mainstream as equally worthy of scorn.
It also won't surprise me when they start to attract more writers from the mainstream. The mainstream can sometimes appear to be totally homogenous in their hatred of liberal content policies but this is mostly due to the efforts of a small minority. If the offering is good, others will slowly come aboard.
As another commentator noted (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31084791), Substack's policy is politically more in line with neoliberal complaints of censorship than the complaints from those in the alt-right. (Their comment is better than mine since it is a more direct response to the core of your comment, which could be read as suggesting that use of Substack points towards sympathy for the "alt-right".)
Excellent writers could have been ignored by the mainstream market previously if they were outside of the norm and sometimes found in baskets with bad apples (e.g. "alt-right"). The non-mainstream is actually a collection of smaller minority groups -- it tends to be the mainstream that is more homogenous. It doesn't surprise me that Substack has found success by not treating the non-mainstream as equally worthy of scorn.
It also won't surprise me when they start to attract more writers from the mainstream. The mainstream can sometimes appear to be totally homogenous in their hatred of liberal content policies but this is mostly due to the efforts of a small minority. If the offering is good, others will slowly come aboard.
As another commentator noted (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31084791), Substack's policy is politically more in line with neoliberal complaints of censorship than the complaints from those in the alt-right. (Their comment is better than mine since it is a more direct response to the core of your comment, which could be read as suggesting that use of Substack points towards sympathy for the "alt-right".)
People are pushing many indepedent flavors of "anti-censorship" at the moment. Some of them clearly are dog whistle's for the alt-right by people who just want to say bigoted things without repercussions. The Substack version is more inline with the neoliberal complaints of censorship. This letter from Harper's Magazine[1] from a couple years back is a great example of this thinking. Whether the signees of this letter are "excellent writers" is certainly up for debate, but most of these clearly aren't alt-right thinkers.
[1] - https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/
[1] - https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/
It's unpopular among people who consume the writings of the intellectual community. It's less popular among intellectuals themselves, and even the pro-censorship intellectuals only want other people to be censored, not themselves.
It's well-aligned with "writers own their audience" - together this positions substack as a platform for monetizing writing, not as more of a publisher.
> "Anti-censorship" is hugely unpopular with the mainstream intellectual community these days.
I don’t know where did you get this idea? What did you mean “mainstream intellectual community”? Do you have any evidence like mass signatures supporting censorship from mainstream intellectuals?
People consume too much Reddit / Twitter sometimes live in an alternative reality.
I don’t know where did you get this idea? What did you mean “mainstream intellectual community”? Do you have any evidence like mass signatures supporting censorship from mainstream intellectuals?
People consume too much Reddit / Twitter sometimes live in an alternative reality.
Another interesting thing is that they don't rank what's "popular" by clicks. Crazy good idea IMO
Yes, it's very well-executed.
I took a step back while writing my comment and realised that it must seem kind of like random success to some people. I don't think it is at all. Other startups tried to create "blog platforms" and worked on the product/technology/UI, but the founders of Substack took a look at "what will make good quality writers sign-up" and executed on this.
It shows me that even when an idea looks simple and like it has been done before with no success, if your thinking isn't clouded by what has gone before and you actually have a new perspective and are able to understand the market incentives better than others you have a chance to do much better.
I took a step back while writing my comment and realised that it must seem kind of like random success to some people. I don't think it is at all. Other startups tried to create "blog platforms" and worked on the product/technology/UI, but the founders of Substack took a look at "what will make good quality writers sign-up" and executed on this.
It shows me that even when an idea looks simple and like it has been done before with no success, if your thinking isn't clouded by what has gone before and you actually have a new perspective and are able to understand the market incentives better than others you have a chance to do much better.
>Does it have some kind of a hidden feature that makes it very appealing?
My number one assumption would be that it uses a global userbase, so people who write on Substack can collect subscribers/readers much faster.
Substack has a different financial incentive structure that attracts writers away from alternatives such as Medium.com or hosted WordPress:
- monetization is easy to go from "free" to "paid newsletters". The pricing is set by the author and the revenue isn't shared with other writers
- for paid subscriptions, the writer has the subscribers' email addresses for a more direct relationship
In contrast, Medium does not reveal email addresses and does a revenue share of a flat $50 subscription price.
Looked at a certain way, Substack replaces MailChimp (an email audience relationship tool) more so than Medium.
The founder of Substack gave an interview and he said that Substack is a SaaS backoffice of Ben Thompson's "Stratechery" paid newsletter. Ben was one of the early pioneers of the paid email newsletters resurgence but since Substack didn't exist, he had to string together the payments and emails logistics himself. The later writers wanting to get paid for newsletters can just use Substack instead of reinventing Ben's tech stack.
Substack has a different financial incentive structure that attracts writers away from alternatives such as Medium.com or hosted WordPress:
- monetization is easy to go from "free" to "paid newsletters". The pricing is set by the author and the revenue isn't shared with other writers
- for paid subscriptions, the writer has the subscribers' email addresses for a more direct relationship
In contrast, Medium does not reveal email addresses and does a revenue share of a flat $50 subscription price.
Looked at a certain way, Substack replaces MailChimp (an email audience relationship tool) more so than Medium.
The founder of Substack gave an interview and he said that Substack is a SaaS backoffice of Ben Thompson's "Stratechery" paid newsletter. Ben was one of the early pioneers of the paid email newsletters resurgence but since Substack didn't exist, he had to string together the payments and emails logistics himself. The later writers wanting to get paid for newsletters can just use Substack instead of reinventing Ben's tech stack.
I'm one of the Substack founders. My (obviously biased) view is that we are trying to do something that is genuinely important, and that we're willing to sweat the details in service of the people who use Substack. I'll try to give that quick barbell of lofty vision and practical details.
Big picture: we believe that what you read matters, and that therefore great writing (and great intellectual culture in general) is valuable. In our view the great promise of the internet is that it can unlock a flourishing of culture, but the first phase was dominated by a land-grab for attention which gave us the current landscape of ad-driven platforms which optimize for the wrong things and don't serve great writing. Substack is an attempt to create an alternate universe on the internet, with different laws of physics, that fulfills the original promise. Where writers can make real money by earning and keeping the trust of an audience who deeply values their work. Where readers can take back their mind, and decide for themselves who to trust and how to spend their attention.
Practical terms: we try to focus really hard on serving the people that use Substack. The writers, obviously, by giving them something that genuinely works. I think of this as "we do everything for you except the hard part". Which means if you can write something great, the job of the product is to handle the rest. This means not just the right features, but smart defaults everywhere that help you succeed. For readers, we try to make the experience very clean and frictionless, and communicate right from the get-go that this is a place that respects you and your attention, to the point that it might be worth paying for. The things others have noted - smart defaults, fast loading, clean design, etc. etc. are expressions of this. We're focused serving people, and we're not shy about using 'boring' technology (like email, for example) to make it happen.
Putting this together, the magic of the Substack model is not that it gives writers a way to get paid for doing the thing they might have done elsewhere. It creates a system where the kind of thing you do to succeed is qualitatively different and better than what succeeds elsewhere. For writers, that can mean getting paid -- sometimes very handsomely -- to do the work you actually believe in. It can unlock this for people who weren't professional writers before. And for readers, it means a lot of the best writing to be found anywhere is on Substack.
That's the theory at least! We're hiring, by the way: https://substack.com/jobs
Big picture: we believe that what you read matters, and that therefore great writing (and great intellectual culture in general) is valuable. In our view the great promise of the internet is that it can unlock a flourishing of culture, but the first phase was dominated by a land-grab for attention which gave us the current landscape of ad-driven platforms which optimize for the wrong things and don't serve great writing. Substack is an attempt to create an alternate universe on the internet, with different laws of physics, that fulfills the original promise. Where writers can make real money by earning and keeping the trust of an audience who deeply values their work. Where readers can take back their mind, and decide for themselves who to trust and how to spend their attention.
Practical terms: we try to focus really hard on serving the people that use Substack. The writers, obviously, by giving them something that genuinely works. I think of this as "we do everything for you except the hard part". Which means if you can write something great, the job of the product is to handle the rest. This means not just the right features, but smart defaults everywhere that help you succeed. For readers, we try to make the experience very clean and frictionless, and communicate right from the get-go that this is a place that respects you and your attention, to the point that it might be worth paying for. The things others have noted - smart defaults, fast loading, clean design, etc. etc. are expressions of this. We're focused serving people, and we're not shy about using 'boring' technology (like email, for example) to make it happen.
Putting this together, the magic of the Substack model is not that it gives writers a way to get paid for doing the thing they might have done elsewhere. It creates a system where the kind of thing you do to succeed is qualitatively different and better than what succeeds elsewhere. For writers, that can mean getting paid -- sometimes very handsomely -- to do the work you actually believe in. It can unlock this for people who weren't professional writers before. And for readers, it means a lot of the best writing to be found anywhere is on Substack.
That's the theory at least! We're hiring, by the way: https://substack.com/jobs
A common criticism in this thread -- and elsewhere -- is the accumulation of subscription fees to authors. I can justify $10/month for my favorite writer's weekly work, but not another $90/month for my next 9 favorite writers' biweekly or monthly work.
What are your thoughts on handling this aspect of the economic piece of the content puzzle?
What are your thoughts on handling this aspect of the economic piece of the content puzzle?
The solution may simply be that consumers should get used to consuming less. We all bemoan what has become of the modern internet (tracking/privacy violations, clickbait, the 'attention' economy, a never ending stream of low-effort, low-value content), but one of the single biggest contributors to this state is that it has built up around users getting addicted to consuming content for no monetary cost.
This probably extends outside the digital realm and applies to modern consumerism in general. If paying for the actual cost of consumption goods is unbearable, perhaps it's a sign we should be cutting back on how much of it we are consuming?
This probably extends outside the digital realm and applies to modern consumerism in general. If paying for the actual cost of consumption goods is unbearable, perhaps it's a sign we should be cutting back on how much of it we are consuming?
But you're not paying Substack, you're paying the writers directly. So how would Substack create a bundle?
Desperately need a bundle type offering. I wouldn't pay $5 x 5 different subscriptions, but I'd do a $10 bundle for 4 newsletters, or the like.
I strongly disagree. Their focus should continue to be 100% on making it possible for their authors to make a living. Anything else is a distraction. Bundling, while a possible option to help this, is probably a distraction at this point, and could also muddy the waters, in terms of the Substack/Author relationship.
Getting more money out of my pocket helps their authors make a living.
Substack was really good at getting writers with dedicated followings on their platform and properly monetizing their skills.
Take a look at someone like Freddie deBoer. He was a very popular blogger, had written for all the prestigious publications, and was about to accept a $15/hr manual labor job before substack offered him a contract. Now he's making 200k+ a year.
Once enough popular writers were on the platform, and with some help from twitter controversies, the network effect took over.
I love it because it's fast and minimalist. No ads, no nonsense, just the text.
Take a look at someone like Freddie deBoer. He was a very popular blogger, had written for all the prestigious publications, and was about to accept a $15/hr manual labor job before substack offered him a contract. Now he's making 200k+ a year.
Once enough popular writers were on the platform, and with some help from twitter controversies, the network effect took over.
I love it because it's fast and minimalist. No ads, no nonsense, just the text.
>I love it because it's fast and minimalist.
Minor quibble about this: On large pages, it can be quite slow. E.g., on https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ivermectin-much-more-t... , it takes a few seconds after initial loading for it be responsive to pressing the PgDown key, at least on my machine.
Minor quibble about this: On large pages, it can be quite slow. E.g., on https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ivermectin-much-more-t... , it takes a few seconds after initial loading for it be responsive to pressing the PgDown key, at least on my machine.
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> No ads, no nonsense, just the text.
I tried it out and was kind of shocked by the formatting lock-in and all the embedded tracking... I couldn't make it just default to plain text and I wasn't sure what the GDPR implications would be, i.e. whether I as an EU resident can do a Substack newsletter for EU subscribers and if so what do I have to ask them to agree to exactly.
But yeah if you don't care about that stuff it's pretty frictionless and I will probably give it another try if I get my newsletter act together. And I like that I can save Substack articles (the web versions) to Pocket for plain-text reading offline, a lot of sites don't support that.
I tried it out and was kind of shocked by the formatting lock-in and all the embedded tracking... I couldn't make it just default to plain text and I wasn't sure what the GDPR implications would be, i.e. whether I as an EU resident can do a Substack newsletter for EU subscribers and if so what do I have to ask them to agree to exactly.
But yeah if you don't care about that stuff it's pretty frictionless and I will probably give it another try if I get my newsletter act together. And I like that I can save Substack articles (the web versions) to Pocket for plain-text reading offline, a lot of sites don't support that.
I'm about halfway into his book. I'm not someone familiar with the education field so I just nod along during his discussions of the studies, but that introduction chapter was so good. I want to send it to everyone I know.
Make sure to spend a little extra time after reading this review of that book: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-the-cult-o...
Also coincidentally on substack...
Also coincidentally on substack...
Because I can't resist reading a dialogue, I read this now. I appreciate the summary of the book as it's written but I break with it here:
"He wants a world where smart people and dull people have equally comfortable lives, and where intelligence can take its rightful place as one of many virtues which are nice to have but not the sole measure of your worth."
IMO the more accurate claim is that FDB wants everyone's lives to have an equally comfortable floor. Whatever happens after this floor gets established (by a state, or otherwise) is not his main concern... and in my view, at least, it'll be a very different world so what happens is less important argue about.
Alexander then writes as if FDB hates whenever meritocracy dictates anything, but to me the important point is that the meritocracy dictates the floor.
"... Teacher tourism might be a factor, but hardly justifies DeBoer's "charter schools are frauds, shut them down" perspective."
I think FDB wants to shut down charters because he recognizes that they're immoral, and public schools are simply what we're supposed to maintain for taking care of and educating our kids (at this moment in history.) It seems like Alexander is just saying "you're dreaming too big!"; in every era some people always exist to say this.
"Still, I worry that the title - The Cult Of Smart - might lead people to think there is a cult surrounding intelligence, when exactly the opposite is true."
What Alexander describes here is the reactionary progressive strain of anti-IQ that is only as strong as progressivism's enemies' focus on IQ. It's an inverse function; I don't think liberals actually care that much about less intelligent people, people with educational disabilities and so on.
"DeBoer not only wants to keep the whole prison-cum-meat-grinder alive and running, even after having proven it has no utility, he also wants to shut the only possible escape my future children will ever get unless I'm rich enough to quit work and care for them full time."
I had to skim this ending part. Maybe I missed it, but Alexander doesn't mention that: FDB wants to lower the dropout age to 12; Schools guarentee that kids get to have interactions with lots of other kids, even in very rural areas; Schools guarentee parents time to themselves, to not worry about keeping their kids safe. Aren't these important points?
Respectable and respectful review, but I am still with FDB in ethos.
"He wants a world where smart people and dull people have equally comfortable lives, and where intelligence can take its rightful place as one of many virtues which are nice to have but not the sole measure of your worth."
IMO the more accurate claim is that FDB wants everyone's lives to have an equally comfortable floor. Whatever happens after this floor gets established (by a state, or otherwise) is not his main concern... and in my view, at least, it'll be a very different world so what happens is less important argue about.
Alexander then writes as if FDB hates whenever meritocracy dictates anything, but to me the important point is that the meritocracy dictates the floor.
"... Teacher tourism might be a factor, but hardly justifies DeBoer's "charter schools are frauds, shut them down" perspective."
I think FDB wants to shut down charters because he recognizes that they're immoral, and public schools are simply what we're supposed to maintain for taking care of and educating our kids (at this moment in history.) It seems like Alexander is just saying "you're dreaming too big!"; in every era some people always exist to say this.
"Still, I worry that the title - The Cult Of Smart - might lead people to think there is a cult surrounding intelligence, when exactly the opposite is true."
What Alexander describes here is the reactionary progressive strain of anti-IQ that is only as strong as progressivism's enemies' focus on IQ. It's an inverse function; I don't think liberals actually care that much about less intelligent people, people with educational disabilities and so on.
"DeBoer not only wants to keep the whole prison-cum-meat-grinder alive and running, even after having proven it has no utility, he also wants to shut the only possible escape my future children will ever get unless I'm rich enough to quit work and care for them full time."
I had to skim this ending part. Maybe I missed it, but Alexander doesn't mention that: FDB wants to lower the dropout age to 12; Schools guarentee that kids get to have interactions with lots of other kids, even in very rural areas; Schools guarentee parents time to themselves, to not worry about keeping their kids safe. Aren't these important points?
Respectable and respectful review, but I am still with FDB in ethos.
I think Alexander and I would agree wrt the floor. Saying "equally" was probably a mistake on Alexander's part.
>'FDB wants to lower the dropout age to 12; Schools guarentee that kids get to have interactions with lots of other kids, even in very rural areas; Schools guarentee parents time to themselves, to not worry about keeping their kids safe. Aren't these important points?'
Yes, but 5 - 12 is still a looong time for a kid. All those points are orthogonal to charters.
>'I think FDB wants to shut down charters because he recognizes that they're immoral [citation needed], and public schools are simply what we're supposed to maintain for taking care of and educating our kids (at this moment in history.) It seems like Alexander is just saying "you're dreaming too big!"; in every era some people always exist to say this."'
Personally, I'm very fond of Alexander's passage against public-schools-only near the end:
"I am so, so tired of socialists who admit that the current system is a helltopian torturescape, then argue that we must prevent anyone from ever being able to escape it. Who promise that once the last alternative is closed off, once the last nice green place where a few people manage to hold off the miseries of the world is crushed, why then the helltopian torturescape will become a lovely utopia full of rainbows and unicorns. If you can make your system less miserable, make your system less miserable! Do it before forcing everyone else to participate in it under pain of imprisonment if they refuse! Forcing everyone to participate in your system and then making your system something other than a meat-grinder that takes in happy children and spits out dead-eyed traumatized eighteen-year-olds who have written 10,000 pages on symbolism in To Kill A Mockingbird and had zero normal happy experiences - is doing things super, super backwards!"
>'FDB wants to lower the dropout age to 12; Schools guarentee that kids get to have interactions with lots of other kids, even in very rural areas; Schools guarentee parents time to themselves, to not worry about keeping their kids safe. Aren't these important points?'
Yes, but 5 - 12 is still a looong time for a kid. All those points are orthogonal to charters.
>'I think FDB wants to shut down charters because he recognizes that they're immoral [citation needed], and public schools are simply what we're supposed to maintain for taking care of and educating our kids (at this moment in history.) It seems like Alexander is just saying "you're dreaming too big!"; in every era some people always exist to say this."'
Personally, I'm very fond of Alexander's passage against public-schools-only near the end:
"I am so, so tired of socialists who admit that the current system is a helltopian torturescape, then argue that we must prevent anyone from ever being able to escape it. Who promise that once the last alternative is closed off, once the last nice green place where a few people manage to hold off the miseries of the world is crushed, why then the helltopian torturescape will become a lovely utopia full of rainbows and unicorns. If you can make your system less miserable, make your system less miserable! Do it before forcing everyone else to participate in it under pain of imprisonment if they refuse! Forcing everyone to participate in your system and then making your system something other than a meat-grinder that takes in happy children and spits out dead-eyed traumatized eighteen-year-olds who have written 10,000 pages on symbolism in To Kill A Mockingbird and had zero normal happy experiences - is doing things super, super backwards!"
I guess I was reading between the lines:
p174 : "There is no such thing as a 'public charter.' 'Public' does not just denote public money but also public accountability; most charter schools are not under the control of the parents and local citizens at all and thus cannot be called public."
p177: "[T]he very competitive landscape that charters are meant to foster creates a structural bias toward dishonest practices."
All public guarantees in this modern time are going to end up with a lot of shitty conditions and outcomes, when people in power don't care about them. Maybe that's a poor reply but it's my reply. The book indeed mixes "just overthrow the culture and machines of capitalism" and "here's some reforms I like, each of which may or may not be precluded by the overthrowy bit, at least a little." I think an unstated and reasonable assumption of FDB's is that if we enact these reforms, it will be because we've convinced the public that public schools and teachers are important. The ideas aren't just to put legal language on paper, they are cultural reforms advanced through appeals to compassion ("As a socialist, my interest lies in expanding the degree to which the community takes responsibility each all of its members, in deepening our societal commitment to ensuring the wellbeing of everyone.") Did the gay and lesbian community get marriage legalized by just crafting the most perfect bill texts?
It's hard to deny that leftism is in a confused way right now. They (generally, not deBoer afaik) think prostitution is liberating!
p174 : "There is no such thing as a 'public charter.' 'Public' does not just denote public money but also public accountability; most charter schools are not under the control of the parents and local citizens at all and thus cannot be called public."
p177: "[T]he very competitive landscape that charters are meant to foster creates a structural bias toward dishonest practices."
All public guarantees in this modern time are going to end up with a lot of shitty conditions and outcomes, when people in power don't care about them. Maybe that's a poor reply but it's my reply. The book indeed mixes "just overthrow the culture and machines of capitalism" and "here's some reforms I like, each of which may or may not be precluded by the overthrowy bit, at least a little." I think an unstated and reasonable assumption of FDB's is that if we enact these reforms, it will be because we've convinced the public that public schools and teachers are important. The ideas aren't just to put legal language on paper, they are cultural reforms advanced through appeals to compassion ("As a socialist, my interest lies in expanding the degree to which the community takes responsibility each all of its members, in deepening our societal commitment to ensuring the wellbeing of everyone.") Did the gay and lesbian community get marriage legalized by just crafting the most perfect bill texts?
It's hard to deny that leftism is in a confused way right now. They (generally, not deBoer afaik) think prostitution is liberating!
I think the appeal of Substack can be seen by comparison to their closest big competitor, Medium:
1. Substack pages load quickly and cleanly. You don't have to watch your browser have a seizure as it brings in a long tail of weird ad/tracking crap.
2. The page is very low-distraction. The writing is given pride of place.
3. I hit paywalls and login walls on Medium much more often than on Substack.
4. I know many interesting writers on Substack. I don't know any interesting writers on Medium.
1. Substack pages load quickly and cleanly. You don't have to watch your browser have a seizure as it brings in a long tail of weird ad/tracking crap.
2. The page is very low-distraction. The writing is given pride of place.
3. I hit paywalls and login walls on Medium much more often than on Substack.
4. I know many interesting writers on Substack. I don't know any interesting writers on Medium.
I agree. Medium made the editor clean for writers but made the interface messy, cludgy and just a pain for readers.
Substack kept it clean for both.
Substack kept it clean for both.
The paywall one is huge for me. I know Medium is a business, but the paywall hits you so fast. For a lot of the articles I'm reading, I'm not very invested in reading them (think "this looks interesting, I'll take 5 to look it over"), so blocking me with a paywall isn't going to get me to pay, it just keeps me from interacting with your site and content.
The first two points are also important! I love reading articles on substack. It's fast, it's clean, I know I'll be able to get to the article, read it, and maybe sub if I want to read more of the author's work. It's a great experience. Medium is the opposite. It feels slower, and if the article happens to not be interesting, I feel annoyed because I used up one of my free articles. It's bad enough that I now actively avoid Medium if I can.
The first two points are also important! I love reading articles on substack. It's fast, it's clean, I know I'll be able to get to the article, read it, and maybe sub if I want to read more of the author's work. It's a great experience. Medium is the opposite. It feels slower, and if the article happens to not be interesting, I feel annoyed because I used up one of my free articles. It's bad enough that I now actively avoid Medium if I can.
The UI/UX stuff is in the mix for me, but I think the writer group is bottom line the biggest thing. To be honest, I still haven't paid for anybody's Substack, but if I were to pay for something, I can name a couple people I'd pay for on Substack. I have no idea who is on Medium that might be worth paying for.
I like it because it centers around the writer not the content.
I used Medium before. Medium treats your data as its a generic post about some topic. If I wrote an article on AI, it would recommend other articles about AI from various authors. That's fine for some purposes, but as a writer trying to build an audience, I'd like to think people come to my post because they like something I have to say and would prefer a recommender system to recommend other posts by me.
Medium's monetization model is to get people to pay for Medium articles, not those of the author.
Another gross example of this is that you cannot easily see a publications from a publication. On a site, you see a tiny link called "archive" to see a writer's historical posts. There you can filter on month but can't see a dump of everything the person has written. They don't even offer "load more posts" or a calendar view. It's very hostile to the writer.
I had around 1k followers on Medium but if I posted something and didn't publish it on social media, I would get maybe a few dozen readers. Whereas Substack I consistently get around 20-25% of people that are subscribed open my publication.
Is there something between Medium and Substack? Probably, but I don't really care to look around. Substack offers you a chance to build a reader base, gives you access to emails and lets you easily monetize directly without being part of the global pool of generic low quality articles like Medium does.
I wrote more about it here.
https://mleverything.substack.com/p/migrating-from-medium-to...
I used Medium before. Medium treats your data as its a generic post about some topic. If I wrote an article on AI, it would recommend other articles about AI from various authors. That's fine for some purposes, but as a writer trying to build an audience, I'd like to think people come to my post because they like something I have to say and would prefer a recommender system to recommend other posts by me.
Medium's monetization model is to get people to pay for Medium articles, not those of the author.
Another gross example of this is that you cannot easily see a publications from a publication. On a site, you see a tiny link called "archive" to see a writer's historical posts. There you can filter on month but can't see a dump of everything the person has written. They don't even offer "load more posts" or a calendar view. It's very hostile to the writer.
I had around 1k followers on Medium but if I posted something and didn't publish it on social media, I would get maybe a few dozen readers. Whereas Substack I consistently get around 20-25% of people that are subscribed open my publication.
Is there something between Medium and Substack? Probably, but I don't really care to look around. Substack offers you a chance to build a reader base, gives you access to emails and lets you easily monetize directly without being part of the global pool of generic low quality articles like Medium does.
I wrote more about it here.
https://mleverything.substack.com/p/migrating-from-medium-to...
It's popular on HN because it's VC-backed, and VCs regularly "pump" their investments by writing articles and posting them to HN. Here's one from A16z about the idea of monetizing passion projects:
https://future.a16z.com/passion-economy/
I'd wager it's also popular on HN because of the current debate about free speech online and 'cancel culture'. Substack is the upstart here against the stodgy big media status quo, so that will always pull in some level of ideological support.
https://future.a16z.com/passion-economy/
I'd wager it's also popular on HN because of the current debate about free speech online and 'cancel culture'. Substack is the upstart here against the stodgy big media status quo, so that will always pull in some level of ideological support.
There are two questions here, really. The first is why does Substack appeal to readers? To me, it doesn't. What appeals to me are the writers. If I care to read what they write, I'd read it on any platform. They happen to be on Substack, so I read them on Substack. The other question is why does it appeal to writers, in particular the more popular high-quality, high-prestige writers that are attracting readers?
I don't think that's a question to be asked of Hacker News readers in general, as presumably most of us aren't Substack writers, just readers.
To be honest, I don't like Substack as an application. Their commenting defaults are terrible. I'm not a fan of the push model of newsletters in general and prefer the pull model of going to the site whenever you feel like being updated on your own schedule. But I like the writers, so I go there anyway.
I don't think that's a question to be asked of Hacker News readers in general, as presumably most of us aren't Substack writers, just readers.
To be honest, I don't like Substack as an application. Their commenting defaults are terrible. I'm not a fan of the push model of newsletters in general and prefer the pull model of going to the site whenever you feel like being updated on your own schedule. But I like the writers, so I go there anyway.
RSS does work, fwiw (you may know this but for others too ...): just add "/feed" to the end of the root URL, for example: https://bariweiss.substack.com/feed
I work at Substack. We are building https://reader.substack.com/ for people who prefer pull. Supports both Substack and RSS. Still early days for that product but we are investing in it.
Thank you. I fully understand prioritizing the features that get you off the ground fastest and appreciate it when a platform eventually goes back to accommodate the outliers. To me, the issue with newsletters is just that push notifications of any kind are so absolutely drowned in spam that I don't want to deal with them for anything other than absolutely essential things I need to remember on a time-restricted basis, like "hey, remember you have a flight later today."
> The other question is why does it appeal to writers, in particular the more popular high-quality, high-prestige writers that are attracting readers?
Getting paid directly for writing, without dealing with the administrative overhead of things not specifically built for writing, like Patreon.
We can talk about censorship all day until we're prohibited from doing so by a private entity and move to another platform, but it won't change the fact that the writers yelling the most about it could've easily set up a Patreon with a monthly plan and published long-form text there. Plenty of people still do it. Substack just does that one thing better.
Getting paid directly for writing, without dealing with the administrative overhead of things not specifically built for writing, like Patreon.
We can talk about censorship all day until we're prohibited from doing so by a private entity and move to another platform, but it won't change the fact that the writers yelling the most about it could've easily set up a Patreon with a monthly plan and published long-form text there. Plenty of people still do it. Substack just does that one thing better.
They are very pro free speech, so you tend to get more interesting (and potentially more heretical) writers compared to other platforms.
Could you provide a link or two of content that might be censored elsewhere? I am curious to read “banned literature”.
I became aware of substack after Gleen Greenwald moved to it after being censored by the newspaper he literally founded himself...
Matt Taibbi recently started a substack for anti-war Russian journalists whose work had been censored in Russia.
https://russiandissent.substack.com/
https://russiandissent.substack.com/
El Gato Malo, was banned from twitter for what was an innocuous post, probably for being 2 years ahead on the COVID narrative and used public data sources to refute the consensus on lockdowns.
https://boriquagato.substack.com/
https://boriquagato.substack.com/
Here’s one: https://alexberenson.substack.com/
(Former NY Times reporter)
(Former NY Times reporter)
Here is, for example, a post by unabashed Russian nationalist, in support of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, blaming “Western Supremacist (…) miscreants” for the blood being spilled:
https://akarlin.substack.com/p/happening-the-ukraine-war-202...
One of his previous posts is his analysis of the (then, upcoming) war, its context, and causes.
Of course, you need to take it with an open pit sized block of salt — eg he predicted that the Russia will most likely conquer Ukraine in less than a week. This, needless to say, turned to be laughably wrong, and makes rest of his analysis rather questionable.
The point is, however, that you are unlikely to see this sort of unabashed (indeed, proud) and undistorted Russian perspective elsewhere in western media sphere — indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised if this comment got downvoted for “spreading Russian propaganda”. Myself, I think it is extremely important to understand the perspective and motivation of the enemy, so that you can predict their movements and effectively prevent or resist them.
https://akarlin.substack.com/p/happening-the-ukraine-war-202...
One of his previous posts is his analysis of the (then, upcoming) war, its context, and causes.
Of course, you need to take it with an open pit sized block of salt — eg he predicted that the Russia will most likely conquer Ukraine in less than a week. This, needless to say, turned to be laughably wrong, and makes rest of his analysis rather questionable.
The point is, however, that you are unlikely to see this sort of unabashed (indeed, proud) and undistorted Russian perspective elsewhere in western media sphere — indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised if this comment got downvoted for “spreading Russian propaganda”. Myself, I think it is extremely important to understand the perspective and motivation of the enemy, so that you can predict their movements and effectively prevent or resist them.
Which is why publishing pieces like this is so important.
Gives an insight into the thought processes behind starting and continuing this war, and why some Russians might be supporting Putin and the war, and what to expect going forward.
Even wrong perspectives can be valuable and informative.
Gives an insight into the thought processes behind starting and continuing this war, and why some Russians might be supporting Putin and the war, and what to expect going forward.
Even wrong perspectives can be valuable and informative.
[deleted]
I'd say one example would be Curtis Yarvin:
https://graymirror.substack.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin
Also Nick Land:
https://zerophilosophy.substack.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Land
https://graymirror.substack.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin
Also Nick Land:
https://zerophilosophy.substack.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Land
According to [1] anti-vaxxers "have flocked to Substack, podcasting platforms and a growing number of right-wing social media networks over the past year after getting kicked off or restricted on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube."
If you're interested in censored material more broadly, you might be interested in the ALA's most challenged books lists [2] which include such classics as "Of Mice and Men" and "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" along with books as widely loved as "Harry Potter" and "James and the Giant Peach"
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/01/27/substac... [2] https://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbook... https://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbook...
If you're interested in censored material more broadly, you might be interested in the ALA's most challenged books lists [2] which include such classics as "Of Mice and Men" and "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" along with books as widely loved as "Harry Potter" and "James and the Giant Peach"
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/01/27/substac... [2] https://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbook... https://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbook...
Here's what I would consider a boring example of such anti-vaxx heresy:
https://www.eugyppius.com/p/maximum-vaccination
According to this Guardian article, the "Center for Countering Digital Hate" (also mentioned in your article) would be happy if Substack hadn't given it the platform:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jan/27/anti-vaxx...
The idea that Yet Another Generic NGO needs to "counter hate" because someone on the internet thinks the vaccine is not going to stop the pandemic is completely bonkers.
What I want to say is, a lot of the controversy around Substack seems to be that it is not aligned with the Right Side in the Culture War. I think they have some great writers, but they're not the next WikiLeaks or anything.
https://www.eugyppius.com/p/maximum-vaccination
According to this Guardian article, the "Center for Countering Digital Hate" (also mentioned in your article) would be happy if Substack hadn't given it the platform:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jan/27/anti-vaxx...
The idea that Yet Another Generic NGO needs to "counter hate" because someone on the internet thinks the vaccine is not going to stop the pandemic is completely bonkers.
What I want to say is, a lot of the controversy around Substack seems to be that it is not aligned with the Right Side in the Culture War. I think they have some great writers, but they're not the next WikiLeaks or anything.
Not to lionize him as an important voice on the issue, but any of Greenwald's posts on gender.
What makes you think HN would allow such links?
I mean I'm not opposed to people voicing their opinion as long as it's legal content and there's no algorithms that can be abused to push one article over another. I do believe this is an issue with other platforms like Twitter and Reddit; you can give everyone an equally sized soapbox to voice their whatsits on, but because of their algorithms and the other part of user interaction, upvotes, they open themselves up for algorithmic abuse, pushing the "controversial" opinions up higher.
This was pretty obvious in 2015/2016 with the Trump campaign managing to get a lot of exposure everywhere.
But it's also a self-reinforcing thing, because e.g. Twitter has earned millions from all of the engagement that anything Trump did on the platform; he tweeted, millions would flock to the replies, and tens or hundreds of millions would know that he tweeted through the thousands of news outlets that pounced on it. I'm pretty confident that if it wasn't for Trump, Twitter would've petered out years ago.
This was pretty obvious in 2015/2016 with the Trump campaign managing to get a lot of exposure everywhere.
But it's also a self-reinforcing thing, because e.g. Twitter has earned millions from all of the engagement that anything Trump did on the platform; he tweeted, millions would flock to the replies, and tens or hundreds of millions would know that he tweeted through the thousands of news outlets that pounced on it. I'm pretty confident that if it wasn't for Trump, Twitter would've petered out years ago.
Their success reminds me a lot of Slack. They did a simple thing, but they did it really well. That seems to be an underrated strategy for startups.
It's pro free speech, which is the opposite of almost every other platform in 2022.
You mean because it's mostly gated communities they can be a bit more leisure with the ban hammer. :P
So this is an interesting distinction. Isn't "free speech" much easier to support if your platform is zero/minimal discovery to it? I.e. if you actively are searching for <insert taboo topic> and subscribe to it, you're actively signaling your choice. Whereas, YT, Twitter, etc. content gets throw at you whether you like it or not.
i think it is much easier for substack because of this.
Twitter wasn't like that. In the beginning you only received content you subscribed to. But they decided to change that.
Wait, what? Twitter is still primarily (other than ads) content from people you follow, the main change is screwing around with non-chronological order. Unless you are talking about the Trending sidebar or something?
When I use it I get in my timeline popular tweets from accounts that I don't follow and likes given by people who I follow (these are not retweets). I shouldn't see either.
The second Nazi's, militant cop-killer proponents, and child porn enthusiasts start publishing on Substack, we'll see how "pro free speech" they are.
Yeah going through their "Content Guidelines" there's a lot of stuff that's clearly up to the moderators to decide according to their ideology. For an easy example:
>We don’t allow content that promotes harmful or illegal activities, including material that advocates, threatens, or shows you causing harm to yourself, other people, or animals.
I have seen plenty of substacks talking about the war in Ukraine (for example [0]). This is _clearly_ advocating harm to other people -- you're talking about soldiers and weapons in war after all. Is this breaking the guidelines? Taken literally yes, but of course not in practice.
Eventually, somebody's idea of what is acceptable will clash with the moderation, and we will see the same cries of censorship and deplatforming we see everywhere else.
[0] https://patrickfox.substack.com/p/lets-fck-with-vlad-part3
>We don’t allow content that promotes harmful or illegal activities, including material that advocates, threatens, or shows you causing harm to yourself, other people, or animals.
I have seen plenty of substacks talking about the war in Ukraine (for example [0]). This is _clearly_ advocating harm to other people -- you're talking about soldiers and weapons in war after all. Is this breaking the guidelines? Taken literally yes, but of course not in practice.
Eventually, somebody's idea of what is acceptable will clash with the moderation, and we will see the same cries of censorship and deplatforming we see everywhere else.
[0] https://patrickfox.substack.com/p/lets-fck-with-vlad-part3
CSAM isn't covered by "free speech" in any major developed country, and there are international treaties to combat its spread [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_child_pornography
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_child_pornography
For me, I think their simplistic approach to blogging/newsletters is it's main benefit. Sign up, choose a subdomain/domain, upload a logo and start building a subscriber userbase! It takes no time to get up and running, and not having to care about billing/hosting/SEO/coding/design and such is very important for people who want to start writing fast and not worry about those things.
As someone who switched my newsletter to substack from mailchimp (plug: lastweekin.ai) last year, here is my take:
* It's free. Mailchimp gets surprisingly expensive pretty quick as your audience grows, with no path for revenue.
* It's easy to start. Very easy to move over to it from mailchimp and set it all up. Even after two years of additional features, it's quite streamlined.
* It's simple. The feature set is pretty minimalist in a good way, puts composing and putting out content first in a way that makes it pretty frictionless to use.
* It's monetizable. Kinda obvious, but I was surprised by how many people are willing to be paying subscribers tbh.
I do have some gripes: like Medium it provides very few options for customization, and it is very much designed with the assumption the newsletter is stand-alone (meaning no associated website for which the newsletter serves to provides updates). Still, on the whole it's quite nice.
From a reader perspective, I would assume it's popular because a lot of good writers/newsletters have been started with it lately due to the above reasons.
* It's free. Mailchimp gets surprisingly expensive pretty quick as your audience grows, with no path for revenue.
* It's easy to start. Very easy to move over to it from mailchimp and set it all up. Even after two years of additional features, it's quite streamlined.
* It's simple. The feature set is pretty minimalist in a good way, puts composing and putting out content first in a way that makes it pretty frictionless to use.
* It's monetizable. Kinda obvious, but I was surprised by how many people are willing to be paying subscribers tbh.
I do have some gripes: like Medium it provides very few options for customization, and it is very much designed with the assumption the newsletter is stand-alone (meaning no associated website for which the newsletter serves to provides updates). Still, on the whole it's quite nice.
From a reader perspective, I would assume it's popular because a lot of good writers/newsletters have been started with it lately due to the above reasons.
1. They've astroturfed a lot. (By paying famous people to use their service.) This has given them a lot of credibility.
2. They basically solve the business model issue for writers, so you really can focus on the writing. At least, more so than the alternatives.
3. Their design is actually pretty nice, and focused on just two things: list building and content.
4. The defaults make sense, and solve real problems for people who want to make money with their writing.
2. They basically solve the business model issue for writers, so you really can focus on the writing. At least, more so than the alternatives.
3. Their design is actually pretty nice, and focused on just two things: list building and content.
4. The defaults make sense, and solve real problems for people who want to make money with their writing.
> 1. They've astroturfed a lot. (By paying famous people to use their service.) This has given them a lot of credibility.
Paying for what is essentially celebrity endorsements seems like the exact opposite of "astorturfed".
Paying for what is essentially celebrity endorsements seems like the exact opposite of "astorturfed".
I understand what they meant though: paying celebrities to join while giving people the impression that those celebrities joined by free choice* (ie because the platform was so great).
* edit: free choice as in "not swayed by payment"
* edit: free choice as in "not swayed by payment"
They signed a contract of their own free choice because it was a good deal for them. This isn't hidden. There's no reason to hide it any more than a musician would hide getting signed by a record label.
Sure, but it was a good deal for them because Substack advanced them a lot of money. Substack's platform features and general content creator revenue model may be better than most but are incidental to why those heavy hitters chose to join.
Musicians complain a lot about Spotify being a poor deal for them financially, but there's no doubt it was an excellent deal for Joe Rogan.
Musicians complain a lot about Spotify being a poor deal for them financially, but there's no doubt it was an excellent deal for Joe Rogan.
We know that for writers, Substack normally charges 10% of subscription revenue. Also, some writers said they would have made more money taking the normal deal over the Pro deal.
However, a guaranteed paycheck for the first year is lower risk, so they took the deal.
This all depend on your own efforts building an audience and it's still the case that most authors won't make much. But it seems like better terms than Spotify for moderately successful authors.
However, a guaranteed paycheck for the first year is lower risk, so they took the deal.
This all depend on your own efforts building an audience and it's still the case that most authors won't make much. But it seems like better terms than Spotify for moderately successful authors.
Did they mention that Substack paid them to post? I believe disclosure is a defining factor between astroturfing and "just" marketing/sales/paid promotions.
It's going to depend on the author and I only read a few of them, but some authors were quite transparent about the details of the deals they signed, much more than is usual for professional authors. For example:
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/financial-transparency
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/financial-transparency
You have a very different definition of “free choice” than I think is typical.
I mean free choice as in they decided unprompted. It's still a free choice in terms of free will either way - I'm not sure what the better term would be. Unprompted I guess.
I mean. I'd probably post less shitposts on HN if someone offered me a financial incentive.
>giving people the impression that those celebrities joined by free choice
Paying writers for their work means they didn't choose to join Substack?
Paying writers for their work means they didn't choose to join Substack?
They didn't necessarily choose it for the merits of the service. There's no all-things-equal decision on features, model, or viability that the rest of us make when one throws significant money at you and the others don't. It's a free choice, yes, but it's one biased by an external factor (money) rather than an intrinsic one (good tools, support, long-term viability).
But then people who don't know or understand this yet might subscribe to one of these paid contributors and think, gee, Substack must be a great platform because Famous McBrain writes on it, as opposed to the subtly more accurate point that Substack's _money_ must be great because Famous McBrain took it.
But then people who don't know or understand this yet might subscribe to one of these paid contributors and think, gee, Substack must be a great platform because Famous McBrain writes on it, as opposed to the subtly more accurate point that Substack's _money_ must be great because Famous McBrain took it.
The only writer I follow on substack, Scott Alexander S. (Previously of SlateStarCodex fame, now AstralCodexTen) went into all the details - what he was offered, and why it was a good offer - it wasn’t a bribe like most celebrity deals are - it was more like a book advance.
He most definitely didn’t pretend to “just go there”, and his post on the subject mentioned a few others with similar deals by name.
Do you have a problem when a publisher pays an advance to (say) Stephen King in order to get him to publish through them?
He most definitely didn’t pretend to “just go there”, and his post on the subject mentioned a few others with similar deals by name.
Do you have a problem when a publisher pays an advance to (say) Stephen King in order to get him to publish through them?
Although they are minor celebrities, it's not quite celebrity endorsement either. More like a book advance. They expect to make the money back from the author's own subscriptions.
2,3,4 are the technical answers, and I agree with them. If you're a writer, you can try to build some kind of a mix of Facebook/Twitter clout for your self-hosted blog (with all of the technical pains that entails), or you can try to get hired at lower-class wages by a print publication.
Substack is a better solution for this, and it includes the mailing list building features that make it a superior solution to the social media treadmill.
1 is a marketing ploy, and while "astroturfing" sounds bad, it's fairly accurate and also a really good idea for what is a pretty niche market.
All that said, I wish it wasn't this way. Siloing Internet content, even if the operation was an open, squeaky-clean, First Amendment-loving angel, is antithetical to the Internet ethos. And based on extensive experience, even the angelic operations eventually become not-so-angelic.
Substack is a better solution for this, and it includes the mailing list building features that make it a superior solution to the social media treadmill.
1 is a marketing ploy, and while "astroturfing" sounds bad, it's fairly accurate and also a really good idea for what is a pretty niche market.
All that said, I wish it wasn't this way. Siloing Internet content, even if the operation was an open, squeaky-clean, First Amendment-loving angel, is antithetical to the Internet ethos. And based on extensive experience, even the angelic operations eventually become not-so-angelic.
"Astroturfing" means many fake accounts pretending to be real accounts. Hence the name. Like fake grass.
Celebrity endorsements are not astroturfing.
You could make the argument that there are enough celebrity accounts and that those accounts are run by the substack marketing team that it should be considered astroturf but that seems like a long stretch to me.
Celebrity endorsements are not astroturfing.
You could make the argument that there are enough celebrity accounts and that those accounts are run by the substack marketing team that it should be considered astroturf but that seems like a long stretch to me.
Several of the absolute best journalists working today, some of whom were more or less canceled elsewhere (e.g., Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Alex Berenson), are featured there, and are making serious money -- enough to hire whole crews to help in their reporting.
I'm happy to pay $50/year to support these independent voices.
So they are a proven-successful platform, and that attracts other writers.
I'm happy to pay $50/year to support these independent voices.
So they are a proven-successful platform, and that attracts other writers.
Because it makes it easy to do journalism and get paid to do journalism.
The get paid part is important. You like one writer on substack, you give em 5 bucks a month. You like someone else, it's exactly the same process to give 5 bucks.
It's the same as Twitch (for gamers) - where people give 5$/month to people who just stream themselves playing computer games. It's because it's a single click and it's the same click for all other streamers.
The barrier substack has broken, is the shitshow that is payments online - they did it for journalists, twitch did it for gamers, onlyfans did it for chicks showing their body parts, etc.
Of course the problem that'll destroy Substack is when they will inevitably raise their fees, piss off their writers and in 10 years, some other Substack like thing will pop up, that'll do the same thing and so the cycle continues.
The get paid part is important. You like one writer on substack, you give em 5 bucks a month. You like someone else, it's exactly the same process to give 5 bucks.
It's the same as Twitch (for gamers) - where people give 5$/month to people who just stream themselves playing computer games. It's because it's a single click and it's the same click for all other streamers.
The barrier substack has broken, is the shitshow that is payments online - they did it for journalists, twitch did it for gamers, onlyfans did it for chicks showing their body parts, etc.
Of course the problem that'll destroy Substack is when they will inevitably raise their fees, piss off their writers and in 10 years, some other Substack like thing will pop up, that'll do the same thing and so the cycle continues.
> Because it makes it easy to do journalism and get paid to do journalism.
It makes it easy to write and get paid for writing; the incentives are very much against doing journalism, and even the former journalists on substack that I’ve seen mostly aren't doing journalism, and some are quite open that escaping journalistic standards and norms and was a big part of their motivation.
It makes it easy to write and get paid for writing; the incentives are very much against doing journalism, and even the former journalists on substack that I’ve seen mostly aren't doing journalism, and some are quite open that escaping journalistic standards and norms and was a big part of their motivation.
Good point - there's nothing in Substack that's specific to journalism - it is a platform for presenting text and basic media with a date attached, really.
The most prominent figures on there are journalists or ex-journalists however.
It is a bit like Twitch - it doesn't have to be for gamers, but since 99% of the streamers and 99% of the watchers are interested in games when they go there, it is what it is.
As for doing journalism - there is no incentive to do good work in just about every field. Sad face shrug.
The most prominent figures on there are journalists or ex-journalists however.
It is a bit like Twitch - it doesn't have to be for gamers, but since 99% of the streamers and 99% of the watchers are interested in games when they go there, it is what it is.
As for doing journalism - there is no incentive to do good work in just about every field. Sad face shrug.
Simply because censorship on other platforms of the FAANG is so extreme and anti-American that balanced and rational conversations are NOT POSSIBLE. So substitutes are found and substack is one of the major substitutes. Alt-media in general is the solution to censorship.
I love sun stack but I really think they need a way to pool subscriptions or lower the cost.
I’m not going to spend $100/month to follow my ten favorite bloggers.
I’m not going to spend $100/month to follow my ten favorite bloggers.
Most writers have free tiers? You can tell which posts you're missing by any given writer when you're on their free tier because it'll show the post as locked. In most cases, it's not stuff I'm interested in. But maybe I'd pay for The Diff someday...
It's the same problem as streaming services and a-la-carte programming. Maybe a side effect of subsidizing writers instead of subscriptions; it'd be easier to pull a "subscribe to 2 writers and get a 3rd subscription on us"-style deal and let the readers figure out who gets paid that Substack-funded bonus if they were spending more money on reader growth than popular writers, but it'd be less likely to result in the kinds of content they have now.
Yes that's mostly all there is to it. Nothing more than a newsletter publishing site. But it was timing. Journos and talking head bloggers were looking for something to be able to freely publish that wasn't bogged down like a Mailchimp or whatever and Substack was there. Easy signup for readers, and generally easy publishing with way to share, hence it becoming like a shared blog post url you see often..... no different than any other blogger / wordpress / etc, but had the attention of enough influencers. There are downsides like being able to run a 'free' newsletter or manage free vs. paid content, it leaning heavily to paid subsciptions of course, but what can you do.
I think the reason Substack is so popular is they value Freedom of Speech and it shows in their actions.
The UI and experience is generally pretty good, and it feels quite a lot like what Medium could have been but failed hard at. It's simple and does what it sets out to do well, which is pretty rare considering how bad most content-driven platforms have become. If you want to subscribe to the content of a specific writer, it's an easy and direct way to do that.
As a platform it's host to a lot of the kinds of semi-philosophical writing of the sort that the hacker news audience tends to rate highly, which is why you'll see it pop up a lot here. The "pro-freedom-of-speech" or "anti-censorship" stuff you'll probably see in the responses is a little overblown generally – but since it's an individual publishing platform for writers (rather than a distinct media presence in its own right) you're more likely to see views that more mainstream publications don't want to promote. Again, something that the HN crowd is pretty hot on.
(I will say generally that a Hacker News post from a Substack domain at this point has become a bit of a negative signal for me in the same way that Medium has – except instead of suffering through a terrible React tutorial you'll be sitting through a contrarian middlebrow essay. But of course exceptions abound and YMMV).
As a platform it's host to a lot of the kinds of semi-philosophical writing of the sort that the hacker news audience tends to rate highly, which is why you'll see it pop up a lot here. The "pro-freedom-of-speech" or "anti-censorship" stuff you'll probably see in the responses is a little overblown generally – but since it's an individual publishing platform for writers (rather than a distinct media presence in its own right) you're more likely to see views that more mainstream publications don't want to promote. Again, something that the HN crowd is pretty hot on.
(I will say generally that a Hacker News post from a Substack domain at this point has become a bit of a negative signal for me in the same way that Medium has – except instead of suffering through a terrible React tutorial you'll be sitting through a contrarian middlebrow essay. But of course exceptions abound and YMMV).
Financing and pricing!
Substack crunched the numbers, figured out how much people were willing to pay for certain bloggers' materials. Then they found some very prominent bloggers and paid them huge advances to join the platform. It was very risky but it clearly worked.
And now we are seeing the downstream market adapting in kind.
Substack crunched the numbers, figured out how much people were willing to pay for certain bloggers' materials. Then they found some very prominent bloggers and paid them huge advances to join the platform. It was very risky but it clearly worked.
And now we are seeing the downstream market adapting in kind.
I wrote a short thread about that noting the differences between wordpress/blogger. It begins:
An example of a product that's JOYOUS to use is Substack. It feels beautiful to write and format. There aren't tons of distracting non-features. The product team seems to consistently look for how people are using it and make sure they can use it in those ways better.
It's especially incredible in a world where Blogger and WordPress both languished for years, never bothering to simply make the authoring process pleasant. Medium was able to do this, and had a good start because of it, then (inexplicably) found 5000 ways to drop the ball.
thread: https://twitter.com/simonsarris/status/1514400886365302784
An example of a product that's JOYOUS to use is Substack. It feels beautiful to write and format. There aren't tons of distracting non-features. The product team seems to consistently look for how people are using it and make sure they can use it in those ways better.
It's especially incredible in a world where Blogger and WordPress both languished for years, never bothering to simply make the authoring process pleasant. Medium was able to do this, and had a good start because of it, then (inexplicably) found 5000 ways to drop the ball.
thread: https://twitter.com/simonsarris/status/1514400886365302784
I like it because I can subscribe through RSS
Is it just me or finding and subbing to Substack pubs is really slow on feedreader apps?
Their "hidden feature" is massively simplifying the setup of a blog for someone nontechnical who wants
(1) A modern "minimalist" themed blog focused on written content (2) An email newsletter with the same content (3) Optionally allow paid subscribers
I've tried everything in the blog world, and most are a headache to maintain. The closest would be Ghost, but they haven't done as well on the GTM side. Substack has set itself apart by landing "tech twitter" influencers who philosophize... which is probably why you're seeing it bleed into the HN world.
(1) A modern "minimalist" themed blog focused on written content (2) An email newsletter with the same content (3) Optionally allow paid subscribers
I've tried everything in the blog world, and most are a headache to maintain. The closest would be Ghost, but they haven't done as well on the GTM side. Substack has set itself apart by landing "tech twitter" influencers who philosophize... which is probably why you're seeing it bleed into the HN world.
So far they're reluctant to quash dissent of prevailing corporate/political narratives.
My list as a reader -
- No ads, popups, random paywalls.
- Authors looking for paid subs offer quite a bit of free content.
- Substack feels like it loads faster than Medium. Very snappy.
- Simple email sub/unsub.
- Substack doesn't treat me like a child & decide some ideas are too dangerous for me to read about.
- I don't worry that an article/newsletter I like (or dislike!) will suddenly disappear off the internet.[deleted]
> But, I am genuinely curious why is it getting so popular and particularly here on Hacker News. Does it have some kind of a hidden feature that makes it very appealing?
As I understand it, when Substack first started it did a funny one: it paid some successful bloggers to jump ship to substack and convinced them of a secure and promising subscription-based income. My favorite example being Scott Alexander Siskind.
I have no concern about what medium the content I want is presented in (so long as they don't use low contrast or silly fonts), I will just go wherever I can find Scott. And Scott now happens to be in substack so I go to substack.
As I understand it, when Substack first started it did a funny one: it paid some successful bloggers to jump ship to substack and convinced them of a secure and promising subscription-based income. My favorite example being Scott Alexander Siskind.
I have no concern about what medium the content I want is presented in (so long as they don't use low contrast or silly fonts), I will just go wherever I can find Scott. And Scott now happens to be in substack so I go to substack.
I don't think its anything about free speech and other social media platforms. I think its about a revival of the old blogosphere--particularly of those writers who found success there and made writing their career--with the added incentive that monetizing it doesn't require putting a whole bunch of shady ads on your site, or keeping an infrequently pinged tip jar. Writers like Noah Smith moved away from their blog to writing for newspapers and magazines because its how they make their living. They moved to Substack because they probably felt it gave them more control over their careers.
I don't really support it one way or the other, as a reader I will go wherever the writers that interest me are.
One thing I think is powerful is that they let you own your audience. If they ever fuck up, writers can just bounce. It means substack should focus on tools writers want, rather than building an indentured trap by holding their audience ransom like most other publishing platforms do. The platform's politics don't matter if they can't deplatform you.
One thing I think is powerful is that they let you own your audience. If they ever fuck up, writers can just bounce. It means substack should focus on tools writers want, rather than building an indentured trap by holding their audience ransom like most other publishing platforms do. The platform's politics don't matter if they can't deplatform you.
I realize that Substack is popular but I've never encountered a writer whose work I was so interested in that I was willing to pay them individually.
A key part of the value I get out of other subscriptions is aggregation.
I've backed lots of projects via Kickstarter etc - I'm down for supporting things and people that tick my boxes. Maybe I'm just allergic to the idea of paying for emails. I didn't sign up when the NYTimes tried to productize their newsletters either.
A key part of the value I get out of other subscriptions is aggregation.
I've backed lots of projects via Kickstarter etc - I'm down for supporting things and people that tick my boxes. Maybe I'm just allergic to the idea of paying for emails. I didn't sign up when the NYTimes tried to productize their newsletters either.
In addition to what everyone has said about Substack providing an incredibly easy-to-use platform for reaching readers with essentially no lock-in, they also provide the ability to produce podcasts.
A free service for running a mailing list and podcast with the ability to jump ship at any time (you can export your list from there) and the ability to flip a switch and start making money directly from your audience at a reasonable cost is all fantastic.
A free service for running a mailing list and podcast with the ability to jump ship at any time (you can export your list from there) and the ability to flip a switch and start making money directly from your audience at a reasonable cost is all fantastic.
I started a personal substack because of: https://twitter.com/lulumeservey/status/1511376638487019524
In such a subtle way it covers much of what substack is doing well and twitter isn't doing well.
>Does it have some kind of a hidden feature that makes it very appealing?
Really just a lack of certain hidden features. Ones that twitter excels at.
In such a subtle way it covers much of what substack is doing well and twitter isn't doing well.
>Does it have some kind of a hidden feature that makes it very appealing?
Really just a lack of certain hidden features. Ones that twitter excels at.
I'm as surprised as you: https://ja3k.com/blog/surp.html
I have a small email list that I would send out emails a few times per year. It used to be on Mailchip but they switched focus to e-commerce so much that it was painful (multi-step) process to actually send an email. I moved my list to Substack and it's fairly easy (2 clicks) to send a message.
It's not censored.
HN seems to have no idea how bad it is in the journalism field right now, so here's real facts. A lot of Substack's poularity is journalism, with some major writers for fun (e.g. I follow Chuck Palanniuk's Substack).
TLDR - First off yeah employees are posting here duh. But HN people want writers/journalism, and Substack is "getting paid to write". Or, it's Patreon before Patreon started blatantly censoring views they disagreed with politically. But I'm not even blaming Patreon per se, I mean larger world forces cutting off many forms of expression. If you haven't followed, look up how the United States government has attempted to freeze the porn industry from being able to accept credit cards or keep bank accounts (including the Obama admin just so you know the left does it too).
Credentials: Divorced from a journalism major who turned advertising and works c-level of an international company. I work as a programmer in ecommerce where I work very closely with marketers, and have seen this experience repeated.
Journalism is about as useful of a degree as Gender Studies, which given the political undertones is a good comparison as there is a ton of crossover. Journalism as a field - in America, across most types of employment - is an insanely incestuous clique of mostly liberal East Coast elitists. I mean that very literally, as in people who think either Boston or New York City are the be-all end-all of the world and how could you possibly live anywhere else. (well, pre-pandemic.)
So my ex went to an Elite East Coast College. What happens after you rack up five or six figures of student debt is that you go to a Mad Men sweatshop. Some sort of agency generating copy for newspapers or ads or whatever. You're worked 80+ hours a week for minimum-ish wage (certainly too little given the stress). You'll walk into work and get told you need to crank out something absolutely absurd. Just for fun let's say it's 20 articles of 800 words by end of day for a field you've never even written before so you don't even know the jargon. So you may end up working from 8am to 11pm, and only being paid crap wages for 8 hours that day because it's not their fault you can't make quota. You're just madly copying and pasting garbage to make requirements and hit SEO targets. That's how vast amounts of the Internet is generated. All the mommy blogs and recipe sites that seem like a word salad. "Recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookies. I recall fondly my mother used to make chocolate chip cookies..." (page length requirements, reader time on site requirements, keywords...)
So you racked up near to six figures of debt, as far as you're concerned a 40-hour week for fair pay is a myth capitalists make up to torture you, and you've spent the first 20-ish years of your life building up little more than a damaged liver.
So who's left in journalism? AKA who can Substack target?
0) Bright-eyed college kids who don't know any better. Keep in mind that if someone tells them they'd make more money at Substack, then Buzzfeed calls that an "alt-right dogwhistle" from a "controversial figure" to keep the peons in line. When a Buzzfeed goes bust as their employees finally figure out the Ponzi scheme, they all end up on other platforms anyway. No need to invest here.
1) True die-hards who stuck with it, which I'd say is people like Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenewald. You'll notice both of these people are in hot water with the political left for various offenses, and are desperately looking for a better revenue model to keep journalism alive. Substack does that for them, like Patreon but less censorship. As people posted - they're helping censored Russians of all walks of life to be able to publish after sites like Patreon have axed those people because mumble mumble oligarchs? True free speech stuff, even if you disagree with their other views, these people are net positives on the world. They're already hungry for Substack.
2) People who have other funding, like the marketers, who were probably paid to join. People like Chuck Palahniuk didn't really need Substack, but it's hot, and it's like Patreon except he presumably gets a better kickback. So why not. I know comparitively few people in this camp unless it's terribly obvious they had the following to get paid.
So Substack did the right thing in every regard. The site gets people paid, it's fairly easy to use. They went after category 1, they paid off some people in 2, and I'm sure they keep an ear to the ground and drop some timely social media posts when a 0 event happens. And yeah, look around. They're posting right here, right now, where it's effective.
They're the right tool, at the right time.
TLDR - First off yeah employees are posting here duh. But HN people want writers/journalism, and Substack is "getting paid to write". Or, it's Patreon before Patreon started blatantly censoring views they disagreed with politically. But I'm not even blaming Patreon per se, I mean larger world forces cutting off many forms of expression. If you haven't followed, look up how the United States government has attempted to freeze the porn industry from being able to accept credit cards or keep bank accounts (including the Obama admin just so you know the left does it too).
Credentials: Divorced from a journalism major who turned advertising and works c-level of an international company. I work as a programmer in ecommerce where I work very closely with marketers, and have seen this experience repeated.
Journalism is about as useful of a degree as Gender Studies, which given the political undertones is a good comparison as there is a ton of crossover. Journalism as a field - in America, across most types of employment - is an insanely incestuous clique of mostly liberal East Coast elitists. I mean that very literally, as in people who think either Boston or New York City are the be-all end-all of the world and how could you possibly live anywhere else. (well, pre-pandemic.)
So my ex went to an Elite East Coast College. What happens after you rack up five or six figures of student debt is that you go to a Mad Men sweatshop. Some sort of agency generating copy for newspapers or ads or whatever. You're worked 80+ hours a week for minimum-ish wage (certainly too little given the stress). You'll walk into work and get told you need to crank out something absolutely absurd. Just for fun let's say it's 20 articles of 800 words by end of day for a field you've never even written before so you don't even know the jargon. So you may end up working from 8am to 11pm, and only being paid crap wages for 8 hours that day because it's not their fault you can't make quota. You're just madly copying and pasting garbage to make requirements and hit SEO targets. That's how vast amounts of the Internet is generated. All the mommy blogs and recipe sites that seem like a word salad. "Recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookies. I recall fondly my mother used to make chocolate chip cookies..." (page length requirements, reader time on site requirements, keywords...)
So you racked up near to six figures of debt, as far as you're concerned a 40-hour week for fair pay is a myth capitalists make up to torture you, and you've spent the first 20-ish years of your life building up little more than a damaged liver.
So who's left in journalism? AKA who can Substack target?
0) Bright-eyed college kids who don't know any better. Keep in mind that if someone tells them they'd make more money at Substack, then Buzzfeed calls that an "alt-right dogwhistle" from a "controversial figure" to keep the peons in line. When a Buzzfeed goes bust as their employees finally figure out the Ponzi scheme, they all end up on other platforms anyway. No need to invest here.
1) True die-hards who stuck with it, which I'd say is people like Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenewald. You'll notice both of these people are in hot water with the political left for various offenses, and are desperately looking for a better revenue model to keep journalism alive. Substack does that for them, like Patreon but less censorship. As people posted - they're helping censored Russians of all walks of life to be able to publish after sites like Patreon have axed those people because mumble mumble oligarchs? True free speech stuff, even if you disagree with their other views, these people are net positives on the world. They're already hungry for Substack.
2) People who have other funding, like the marketers, who were probably paid to join. People like Chuck Palahniuk didn't really need Substack, but it's hot, and it's like Patreon except he presumably gets a better kickback. So why not. I know comparitively few people in this camp unless it's terribly obvious they had the following to get paid.
So Substack did the right thing in every regard. The site gets people paid, it's fairly easy to use. They went after category 1, they paid off some people in 2, and I'm sure they keep an ear to the ground and drop some timely social media posts when a 0 event happens. And yeah, look around. They're posting right here, right now, where it's effective.
They're the right tool, at the right time.
it was the right platform at the right time to take advantage of the trend of writers from legacy newspapers trying to break out from their newspaper brand and produce indpendent paid newsletters instead. it's very much a case of a product that was made for a market that was asking for exactly that product.
They took great advantage of that trend by directly paying newspaper writers to make it even more popular. The writers brought their existing audiences from whatever platform they were coming from, and wrote a lot about the process of switching to substack.
and then they leveraged the popularity among newspaper writers to sell an image of "make a substack and you too can be a popular and successful writer", which brought in the mass market.
They took great advantage of that trend by directly paying newspaper writers to make it even more popular. The writers brought their existing audiences from whatever platform they were coming from, and wrote a lot about the process of switching to substack.
and then they leveraged the popularity among newspaper writers to sell an image of "make a substack and you too can be a popular and successful writer", which brought in the mass market.
Publishers can email newsletters at zero cost. Every other newsletter provider charged by volume.
The reason why they are successful is because they make it easy for someone to make money.
Look around you.. any platform that does this is also successful.
It’s not about censorship, Privacy, the ability to switch or “on the side of writers” etc.
They’ve made it easy for writers to collect money. Period.
Look around you.. any platform that does this is also successful.
It’s not about censorship, Privacy, the ability to switch or “on the side of writers” etc.
They’ve made it easy for writers to collect money. Period.
Because just like clubhouse, they have fancy investors who gave them a ton of money to bribe celebrity writers to be on the platform. Same thing is also happening with "callin" podcasting app.
Here's a more skeptical article about Substack's (future) popularity in the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/13/business/media/substack-g...
The article also touches upon factors of Substack's success:
> [...] the platform portrayed itself as a haven for independent writers with fewer resources while offering six-figure advances to several prominent white men. The hands-off content moderation policy [...]
The article also touches upon factors of Substack's success:
> [...] the platform portrayed itself as a haven for independent writers with fewer resources while offering six-figure advances to several prominent white men. The hands-off content moderation policy [...]
I figured that the NYT would go for the identity politics angle when building a takedown for one of their budding competitors.
What I found most amusing about that article was the lack of mention of Bari Weiss, the extremely popular Jewish journalist who wrote for the NYT for years before joining Substack and quickly becoming one of their most popular paid newsletters. It seems like a pretty relevant detail in the Substack story, but because it doesn't aid the narrative of the platform being a haven for right-wing white males, NYT naturally left it out. Pretty poor reporting, IMO.
What I found most amusing about that article was the lack of mention of Bari Weiss, the extremely popular Jewish journalist who wrote for the NYT for years before joining Substack and quickly becoming one of their most popular paid newsletters. It seems like a pretty relevant detail in the Substack story, but because it doesn't aid the narrative of the platform being a haven for right-wing white males, NYT naturally left it out. Pretty poor reporting, IMO.
The article is pretty embarrassing for the NYT and also a good example of why people are abandoning the old media. The top talks and talks about it being dominated by white men.
Then further down the article, they list the top sellers: "The most successful is the history professor Heather Cox Richardson, who has more than a million paid and unpaid subscribers. Other notable writers include the knighted novelist Salman Rushdie, the punk poet laureate Patti Smith and the Eisner-winning comic book writer James Tynion IV."
How many of this list is white and male?
Then further down the article, they list the top sellers: "The most successful is the history professor Heather Cox Richardson, who has more than a million paid and unpaid subscribers. Other notable writers include the knighted novelist Salman Rushdie, the punk poet laureate Patti Smith and the Eisner-winning comic book writer James Tynion IV."
How many of this list is white and male?
Is it possible your own perspective is biasing your thoughts here? You're comparing two completely different things and expecting consistency..
> The platform portrayed itself as a haven for independent writers with fewer resources while offering six-figure advances to several prominent white men.
Is just describing how it was formed and indeed the list of 'recruits' was largely male and white (Greenwald, Yglesias, Singal, Deboer, Sullivan, etc). This is perhaps an unfair framing because there were indeed Women and PoC in their list of Substack Pros as well, but they had smaller audiences and their advances were substantially smaller.
> "The most successful is the history professor Heather Cox Richardson, who has more than a million paid and unpaid subscribers. Other notable writers include the knighted novelist Salman Rushdie, the punk poet laureate Patti Smith and the Eisner-winning comic book writer James Tynion IV."
Is describing who's popular on it today.
Those two paragraphs don't have to be consistent for the story to be accurate..
> The platform portrayed itself as a haven for independent writers with fewer resources while offering six-figure advances to several prominent white men.
Is just describing how it was formed and indeed the list of 'recruits' was largely male and white (Greenwald, Yglesias, Singal, Deboer, Sullivan, etc). This is perhaps an unfair framing because there were indeed Women and PoC in their list of Substack Pros as well, but they had smaller audiences and their advances were substantially smaller.
> "The most successful is the history professor Heather Cox Richardson, who has more than a million paid and unpaid subscribers. Other notable writers include the knighted novelist Salman Rushdie, the punk poet laureate Patti Smith and the Eisner-winning comic book writer James Tynion IV."
Is describing who's popular on it today.
Those two paragraphs don't have to be consistent for the story to be accurate..
is this the article that relies on Grace Lavery's commentary without mentioning that she got a huge advance but left after barely produced any writing? And that she lamented Substack's lack of political content modeation, but doesn't mention that she switched to Ghost has zero political content moderation?
>white men
I don't get why they needed to put this in unless they they are trying to say the platform is racist and sexist. Maybe the NYT is afraid of competition?
I don't get why they needed to put this in unless they they are trying to say the platform is racist and sexist. Maybe the NYT is afraid of competition?
Because the content marketers have not discovered it yet. Kinda like Medium around 2016ish. Let’s see how long this one lasts.
someone posted a twit where they explained how they get a lot more subscribers/followers in their newsletter with substack than wordpress. I guess substack is a lot more aggressive at this kind of marketing. So a lot of writers will prefer to post in it, especially since it looks clean until now.
Substack feels like Medium except instead of blogspam from overexcited junior React developers, you get blogspam from wannabe pseudo-philosophers.
As other have mentioned the lack of Paywall is nice tho. Medium had one of the most frustrating iirc.
As other have mentioned the lack of Paywall is nice tho. Medium had one of the most frustrating iirc.
This is funny and somewhat accurate, certainly for 95% of what's on the sites. For me anyway, medium articles only usually come up when I'm trying to learn about, say, some aspect of data science (and usually read like something someone wrote it so they could put it on their resume). Substack seems to be much more about the authors, and there are a few popular ones that have gone "independent" and write there and have good followings. That, I think, is where substack can be good, if you like editorials from particular people, it's easy to follow them, and they have enough of such people. I wish there was some way to aggregate subscriptions to get a discount though, I feel like I would end up paying them more if I could get an "unlimited" version, though maybe the quality would go down because top folks would get paid less.
Yeah, despite the semi-joking nature of my post I have found good things in both Medium and Substack.
This may be really bad over analysis combined with misremembering, but both sites felt like they reflected the HN users-base (or vice versa).
I remember circa 2015-2016 Medium posts and HN comments felt in sync in regards to the tone, content etc. I feel the same thing with many Substack blogs seem feeling like an HN comment section turned into an article.
This may be really bad over analysis combined with misremembering, but both sites felt like they reflected the HN users-base (or vice versa).
I remember circa 2015-2016 Medium posts and HN comments felt in sync in regards to the tone, content etc. I feel the same thing with many Substack blogs seem feeling like an HN comment section turned into an article.
I will never give Medium a single dollar and big part of that is their lying paywall. It always says "Login to view the rest of the article" or something like that. After you login you have a 50-50 chance that it will say something like "you've reached the end of your free article limit" or some variation on that. Sometimes visiting the same link again will show you the content. It makes zero sense and pisses me off every time I run into it.
I, on the other hand, am happy to see a non advertising based business model and thus pay for medium and find it very good value for money compared to a newspaper.
Do you have specific writers or publications on Medium you frequently read? I’d also like to support a publishing platform that doesn’t rely on advertising but it’s never even occurred to me to pay for Medium because it seems like there would just be so much crap to sift through in order to find the good stuff.
Quite a lot of medium links are on hackernews or on Google searches. I organically encounter it enough I don't need to follow anyone but I do because I also write on it.
You could follow me! https://link.medium.com/w4fPh9dzmpb
But really i don't think I actually consume content by following people . I consume content via social media or aggregators like HN and enough of that contains medium that makes it worth it.
You could follow me! https://link.medium.com/w4fPh9dzmpb
But really i don't think I actually consume content by following people . I consume content via social media or aggregators like HN and enough of that contains medium that makes it worth it.
I wonder if at some point they'll have to go into "growth mode" and look to increase revenue, and there comes in ads and paywalls. I think they are great right now because they are young and aren't beholden to such things. Time will tell.
> I think they are great right now because they are young and aren't beholden to such things.
AKA the 'burning investor capital' stage.
I remember when Uber could ignore the laws of economics and freely undercut taxicab prices. Now they cost the same, if not more.
AKA the 'burning investor capital' stage.
I remember when Uber could ignore the laws of economics and freely undercut taxicab prices. Now they cost the same, if not more.
Medium used to be popular for tech writers because it had nice, minimalist visuals, a ready made audience, and the domain gave posts a lot of credibility. But nothing is free, so they (from my perspective) pivoted to a paywalled publisher. I don't know if they pay fair rates to the authors from those that do pay for a subscription.
Medium used to be good, but nowadays it's mostly filled with low quality content so I tend to avoid Medium links. I would assume Quora evolved in pretty much the same way.
Substack has a more journalistic feel to it. It also seems to have a broader audience than Medium, which I mostly associate with tech content.
Substack has a more journalistic feel to it. It also seems to have a broader audience than Medium, which I mostly associate with tech content.
I'll give the positive side of it. I'm sure there's enough negatives too. I find it to be more transparent in many ways.
It's clearer which writer is getting paid for what. On many news sites, you don't know if the money is going to the company and which writer is getting compensated. The focus is to pay writers you like to write more, and is not centered on the writing that gets enough payment from advertisers. You also don't get much in terms of ads from the writers too.
You know what your paying for, what you're getting, and from whom. You know that what you are reading will stay available to you because it is in your email, which cannot be paywalled or taken off the internet because something happened to the business model or to the website. You own the right to read the content you paid to get, and it will always be available as long as you have your emails saved and accessible.
It's clearer which writer is getting paid for what. On many news sites, you don't know if the money is going to the company and which writer is getting compensated. The focus is to pay writers you like to write more, and is not centered on the writing that gets enough payment from advertisers. You also don't get much in terms of ads from the writers too.
You know what your paying for, what you're getting, and from whom. You know that what you are reading will stay available to you because it is in your email, which cannot be paywalled or taken off the internet because something happened to the business model or to the website. You own the right to read the content you paid to get, and it will always be available as long as you have your emails saved and accessible.
The anti-paywall vs. Medium (limited articles) helps.
The business model is also distinct in which domain experts are incentivized to create quality content due to their income directly tied to specialized niche subscribers.
The business model is also distinct in which domain experts are incentivized to create quality content due to their income directly tied to specialized niche subscribers.
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Good content.
Because they don’t censor people.
People think takes are enriching.
But, I am genuinely curious why is it getting so popular and particularly here on Hacker News. Does it have some kind of a hidden feature that makes it very appealing?
My number one assumption would be that it uses a global userbase, so people who write on Substack can collect subscribers/readers much faster. Is that all there is to it?
I also know that Substack prefetches an email address (once you enter it on any Substack-based site) and then plasters it on all their other customer sites, which I _really_ hate about their platform.
But I can see the appeal in that, I guess.