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It's not even a good user experience (at least the Android app) if you want to just read specific writers. I had an easier time finding Paul Krugman at the NYTimes (and I subscribe to him)!

This reminds me of the "civil discourse" folks who always talk about how we need to just engage the nazis in polite debate. Whenever I ask them about why they 1. haven't done that and 2. succeeded in converting anyone... well, things tend to become unproductive.

Right: substack.com/@bigworker92...

Their app with the notes feature drives growth for a lot of people. I know several who’ve left other social platforms for Substack exclusively because they’re able to grow there like pre-2020 IG or Twitter. I remain a hater though. That app loves to recommend rightwing accounts.

I have found new follows there, most recently The Pugilist

The author mention point is underrated. Every newsletter that broke through did it because someone with an audience said "read this person." The platform facilitated delivery. The relationship drove the growth.

The growth was always in the network, not the platform. Cross-mentions from other authors is word of mouth at scale. The platform just makes it easier to collect the subscriber when they click.

The platform provides infrastructure and takes credit for network effects it didn't create. That's the extraction pattern: insert yourself as a toll booth on a naturally occurring coordination, then claim the coordination depends on you. What if the infrastructure was a commons?

I have a thread of people migrating off substack to various alternatives that I add to as I find more examples; it goes back many months and covers costs along the way bsky.app/profile/mary...

I remember thinking this months ago when one *ahem* EXTREMELY ONLINE creator was weighing a move to Substack vs Patreon, meanwhile Beehiiv and Ghost were sitting right there. No one follows you because you post on Substack, people. You’re giving the platform more credit than it deserves.

substack defenders love talking about “discoverability” like there are actual lunatics clicking around the front page looking for newsletters from people they haven’t heard of. stacks of five dollar bills just burning a hole in their pocket

WordPress can do that, Medium can do that, Patreon can;. I would bet there are probably more on the way. The bigger thing is just... how long do folks thing there's gonna be a free lunch from Andreeseen Horowitz? I despair over the object permanence folks have about this stuff.

“Free” is such an important factor, and honestly I had forgotten how important the newsletter subscription aspect is (as opposed to just hosting a blog). I’ve never even considered doing such a thing, but what sort of barriers are there to self-hosting mailing lists? Do ISPs limit outgoing mail?

I would love to have a free option to point people to. We went to buttondown, asked for donations, and had the $250 or whatever in a day. but we already had readership.

I ditched the app because it was annoying, but they’ll recommend interesting authors on their site to me (as well as whatever fashion misogynist garbage garbage they are pushing)