Thanks to the many readers and commenters. In fairness, here is a recent post from one of the founders, Hamish. It is full of all the kinds of principles we want to hear about re: Substack. H/T to Susan Niemann for sending me this. It seems only fair to pin a link to it. My apologies to those I don't reply to!
Well, shit. This is wildly valuable, Charles. I've built a lovely group of friends and readers here. Why cant these right-wing nut jobs leave us alone! WAIT. I know. Money. 😭😭
The, too much money, leaves a hole that creates the need for the control, once they've reached the conclusion that more money doesn't fill the it. Ironically, giving that money away, and putting it toward the betterment of humanity as a whole would fill it much more effectively, but sadly, the obscene wealth appears to also create a sort of narcissistic sociopathy, which makes them conclude that the "betterment of humanity" can only be defined by them, and can only be achieved by inflicting THEIR "vision" upon everyone else, long before they ever reach the conclusion that simply giving it away would fill the hole.
Greed is an addiction. It becomes a driving force, and in my opinion, the money becomes a consolidation of power that induces a paranoid protectionism.
That's an excellent way to put it, cause "omg, what if it gets taxed, I better hoard more, and fix it so they can't". That is precisely what's going on here.
Ecosia is a non-profit search engine & browser based in Germany. The profits go to plant trees and other environmental projects. It would be amazing to see social media platforms sprout from that ethos.
I think we should crowd fund a people’s platform, pay decent wages for infrastructure staff, and form an oversight committee (with term limits) that acts as a board of directors and ethics watchdog. I think we should do the same with the FCC so propaganda by omission and outright lying is ILLEGAL.
What, the EU that is currently okaying and funding genocide in Palestine? You can't be serious. The point is to have an independent media site, not more government interference.
Let me rephrase. Obviously we are all interdependent autonomous beings. My preference is for a site without government control. You may be happy with the current EU governance but I am not, so absolutely nothing would persuade me to sign up to anything linked to the EU and I most certainly wouldn't give it my money. You do you, however. Hope that makes things clear.
Do you actually live in the EU? I'm curious, because I don't recognise this bastion of truth, democracy, science and environmental care you describe. Also, I don't actually see what democracy has to do with a platform to share news and ideas etc.
Worried about the platform? We're not married to an app. We're married to the mission. Our Hub is where the intelligence is, regardless of the URL. They can deplatform us; we'll just build a new outpost. Don't follow the platform, follow the truth. It’s all on our Hub.
A great read--packed with facts that seem important to me. I will say, I have tried Ghost, and I like it, but to me, if you need some of their add-ons (and you will) Ghost becomes obscenely expensive pretty fast. I just can't swing it. Looking at Beehiv right now--I might dip a toe in there just for safety's sake. Thanks Charles.
Thanks Maryan. I started out with Substack. Then I saw the kerfuffle over right wingers so I switched to Ghost, but got zero traction. I imported about 300 existing subscribers I had gained through MailChimp into Ghost, and remained stuck there. I think I was paying $30 a month for that. So I switched back to Substack, and now I have about 1600, mostly because the networking infrastructure is much better.
In a perfect world, though, we content creators would own the platform. Ghost provides the infrastructure for that. If I had a little more energy, which I do not yet have after my recent illness, I'd maybe try to leverage my software skills to get something started. But there are plenty of folks capable of doing that. I figure that if there's truly a demand for it, something will emerge.
Part of the problem is that so many people want to be the next content creator to buy a Beverly Hills mansion. Not many people are sitting around their desk thinking, "Hey, I want to start a co-op."
Exactly. Last year, I got together with some skilled people to look into the idea of a writer-owned platform. But the energy ran out on all fronts. Maybe a young genius will come up with a not-for-profit version or something. Anyone who wants to get rich will not likely share generously with the content creators.
I have recently noticed a significant increase in the number of pro-Trump posts, anti-vax “experts” and climate change deniers in my feed on Substack. I try to block them, but they won’t stay blocked. Could Substack be going the so-called equal time route where “all opinions are of equal value and have equal opportunity?”
I block and mute these nuisance people every time I’m on here, but it feels very whack-a-mole. There are always new ones popping up. If the platform had a MAGA filter, it would improve things dramatically, but I’m not sure how well that would work. It would probably get a lot of false positives.
I recommend not making any rash decisions. Explore your options, be prepared and all that. And mostly, export your content and subscriber list on the regular so you have backups. But I don't want to steer you into a hasty decision you might regret.
Excellent reporting Charles. It is concerning but I guess at the end of the day that is the way the world works. Money talks, the powerful dominate the weak.
I like the idea of a writer-owned platform though it would require a considerable amount of support, financial and otherwise. There are already too many different platforms, so it would need careful thought to agree on the best approach.
This was a useful, if slightly depressing, whilst utterly predictable, read. Thanks. I think the open source community led model sounds great and we ought to crack on with getting it started rather than waiting for the inevitable. A subscription fee for the platform and smaller fees than on here for your favourite writers would be a lot more doable for many of us.
I saw this information the other day from someone else and it scares me to death. They’re trying to silence everyone including independent media. We have to resist. I left Facebook because of the ugliness that has become, I left Twitter when the muskrat bought it to begin with, I’ve pulled out of Instagram, threads, and a couple other “social media“ groups I like sub stack because it has a sense of community where we all have each other’s backs. To have millionaires invest in it, just seems to be the next step in trying to curtailindependent media’s actions. As Charles mentions, we all need to be careful and we all need to back up whatever we’re speaking about.
Spot on. I already moved my professional stack to Ghost about the Nazi shenanigans, and I am planning my exodus.
My current stack is free only, and about 4 months ago. I noticed that my traffic had dried up, and my subscribers were being trimmed. Too much to be a coincidence.
Alas, the beginning of the end seems to be the roll out of Notes, and that "social" aspect that drove almost all my subscriber growth (about 70% of my subscribers come from the app). But the temptation to algorithmically fiddle has been too tempting.
I read that it took almost 2 years to close the series C funding, and it is a sure thing that the new investors are gonna want to crank the revenue knob.
I would be shocked if they weren't already prototyping an ad service.
(TBH the original model sorta made sense, but it was hard to see how they generated enough revenue to keep the servers running. I know that my 2.1K subs and 20 or so posts a month are costing them about $20 to deliver via Mailgun)
"My current stack is free only, and about 4 months ago. I noticed that my traffic had dried up, and my subscribers were being trimmed. Too much to be a coincidence."
You seem to be suggesting here a shadow ban. That's not a great sign. I have noticed that my "Notes" views have fallen to almost nothing. They started out strong. I'd be curious to know the algorithm used for a shadow ban. I do know of Substacks quite opposed to the Trump regime that have Notes with high views, so I'm having trouble making that connection, but there could be additional parameters they use.
From my two and a half years on the platform, and the clumsiness of their back end, and lack of precision in their metrics (and their seemingly incompetent filtering of bounced emails from people who block them) I doubt if it is conscious.
That said, it started in the second week of April, throttling the number of views from the app and Notes, and there has been a noticeable trimming of my subscribers (about 6%) the *could* have been caused by them finally culling inactive email subscribers (their Mailgun bill must be murder, and if they keep sending to black holes, that costs them real money).
Still, I have ~ 2,100 subscribers, and when I was more active (work is killing me lately) I was sending 25 newsletters a month, that is probably about $20 in just mail transport fees.
Yet, with the prime sugar daddy being Marc Andreesen, and him upping his investment in this Series C round, and him being a charter member of the Billionaire Victims Club, his red-pilled views are probably something Best and MacKenzie are optimizing for.
It would be interesting to see if their promotion and closer embrace of Bari Weiss' The Free Press is making it close the gap with the #1 newsletter, Letters from an American. If that is happening, it is likely an underlying shift in their promotion algorithm.
The evolution of Substack from a publishing platform to a full blown Social Media site is well underway, just without any subtlety
“The Free Press” is 100% all in on the billionaire ass-kissing brigade. Weiss is the billionaire bros best buddy now and TFP is a mouthpiece for them. They own her and she is happy as a clam to be owned. This is not speculation. It’s a fact.
Platform decay (enshittification) is inevitable (and this discussion has been going on for at least a year or two now and I used to collect them under my Notes every time I made a long argument 😊). And Bari Weiss’ The Free Press is an astute observation. A lot of people, including myself, often get them confused with Free Press which, btw, yay signed on to the People’s AI Action plan released yesterday, ahead of today’s AI action plan from the administration.
Agreed. Alas, the original mission of Substack had a *hope* of avoiding the enshittification, but as their mission crept (notes, the app, podcasts, video, live streaming) their infrastructure costs were growing, and the trickle of monetization (< 2% of free subs go paid more or less) is not sufficient.
They claim 5% of their publishers generate more than 90% of their revenue, and that means that the bottom half of their publishers are just a drain on capital. Expect that cohort to either be significantly buried, or overburdened with ads.
I also anticipate that any ad revenue share will be with the publishers who have a lot of paid subscribers (thousands?) and the rest will get no split. (my prediction)
Platform decay was inevitable, but this is going to supercharge it.
Well done Charles. Andreessen's investment/influence on Substack has been a worry of mine as well. He is a dangerous AI accelerationist as well - regardless of the possible nightmare scenarios. I had a back and forth with him years ago on Twitter and he spoke of his parents being naive Socialist/Communist immigrants that raised him in public housing in Queens NYC. So his whole western materialist insecure vibe is reactionary based on his humble upbringing going against his ambitious to a fault personality. Also that he is not that attractive on the outside as well, which definitely influences every person's outlook on the world based on how they are treated by a superficial visual society. He is bad news and could spell the end of Substack as one of the last bastions of speaking truth to power. Time will tell.
When I read the news about the funding, my first thought was FUUUUUUUCK!! I deleted my accounts on not-twitter, Facebook, and Amazon to get away from fascists, racists, and oligarchs. I hope I don't have to leave Substack too. Dirty money gets us non-oligarchs nowhere! It was sad news. THANK YOU FOR YOUR SOUND ADVICE🩷!!!
Thanks to the many readers and commenters. In fairness, here is a recent post from one of the founders, Hamish. It is full of all the kinds of principles we want to hear about re: Substack. H/T to Susan Niemann for sending me this. It seems only fair to pin a link to it. My apologies to those I don't reply to!
https://hamish.substack.com/p/civilization-on-the-electronic-frontier
There is no left or right. Only power.
Yup! 👌🏾 only power & the have & have-nots
Well, shit. This is wildly valuable, Charles. I've built a lovely group of friends and readers here. Why cant these right-wing nut jobs leave us alone! WAIT. I know. Money. 😭😭
Me, too, Susan. The best thing would be for us to find a way to keep out the enemies of democracy and social justice.
The real question is: why the hell do these platforms always end up selling their souls?
I am wondering the same thing. If Substack is against these kinds of donors, WHY be a hypocrite and accept it?
Because unfortunately, there always seems to be a price…sad
And control.
The, too much money, leaves a hole that creates the need for the control, once they've reached the conclusion that more money doesn't fill the it. Ironically, giving that money away, and putting it toward the betterment of humanity as a whole would fill it much more effectively, but sadly, the obscene wealth appears to also create a sort of narcissistic sociopathy, which makes them conclude that the "betterment of humanity" can only be defined by them, and can only be achieved by inflicting THEIR "vision" upon everyone else, long before they ever reach the conclusion that simply giving it away would fill the hole.
Greed is an addiction. It becomes a driving force, and in my opinion, the money becomes a consolidation of power that induces a paranoid protectionism.
That's an excellent way to put it, cause "omg, what if it gets taxed, I better hoard more, and fix it so they can't". That is precisely what's going on here.
I, too, said “Well shit!” Now what do we do?!!
Someone suggested ghost.org, as it is fully user-funded. Hmmm...
Try ghost.org as an option if you want to get off Substack.
I think there should be a publicly owned service that is owned by an institution like the EU to be honest
Same problem, though. What if the government entity involved becomes Trump-like?
Unsolvable problem for anything humans make or do. We can only make things work contingently.
Ecosia is a non-profit search engine & browser based in Germany. The profits go to plant trees and other environmental projects. It would be amazing to see social media platforms sprout from that ethos.
I think we should crowd fund a people’s platform, pay decent wages for infrastructure staff, and form an oversight committee (with term limits) that acts as a board of directors and ethics watchdog. I think we should do the same with the FCC so propaganda by omission and outright lying is ILLEGAL.
What, the EU that is currently okaying and funding genocide in Palestine? You can't be serious. The point is to have an independent media site, not more government interference.
Im serious. There is no such thing as independence unless you’re dead.
Let me rephrase. Obviously we are all interdependent autonomous beings. My preference is for a site without government control. You may be happy with the current EU governance but I am not, so absolutely nothing would persuade me to sign up to anything linked to the EU and I most certainly wouldn't give it my money. You do you, however. Hope that makes things clear.
OK, my preference isnt. Because we currently have that, and it sucks and is destroying democracy, truth, science and the environment.
Do you actually live in the EU? I'm curious, because I don't recognise this bastion of truth, democracy, science and environmental care you describe. Also, I don't actually see what democracy has to do with a platform to share news and ideas etc.
Worried about the platform? We're not married to an app. We're married to the mission. Our Hub is where the intelligence is, regardless of the URL. They can deplatform us; we'll just build a new outpost. Don't follow the platform, follow the truth. It’s all on our Hub.
The Hub. Banner for 2025
A great read--packed with facts that seem important to me. I will say, I have tried Ghost, and I like it, but to me, if you need some of their add-ons (and you will) Ghost becomes obscenely expensive pretty fast. I just can't swing it. Looking at Beehiv right now--I might dip a toe in there just for safety's sake. Thanks Charles.
Thanks Maryan. I started out with Substack. Then I saw the kerfuffle over right wingers so I switched to Ghost, but got zero traction. I imported about 300 existing subscribers I had gained through MailChimp into Ghost, and remained stuck there. I think I was paying $30 a month for that. So I switched back to Substack, and now I have about 1600, mostly because the networking infrastructure is much better.
In a perfect world, though, we content creators would own the platform. Ghost provides the infrastructure for that. If I had a little more energy, which I do not yet have after my recent illness, I'd maybe try to leverage my software skills to get something started. But there are plenty of folks capable of doing that. I figure that if there's truly a demand for it, something will emerge.
Part of the problem is that so many people want to be the next content creator to buy a Beverly Hills mansion. Not many people are sitting around their desk thinking, "Hey, I want to start a co-op."
Exactly. Last year, I got together with some skilled people to look into the idea of a writer-owned platform. But the energy ran out on all fronts. Maybe a young genius will come up with a not-for-profit version or something. Anyone who wants to get rich will not likely share generously with the content creators.
So sorry to hear of your recent illness… I hope it resolves soon.
Thank you for that. I'm getting there!
What adding are you talking about? I use ghost and I have no idea what you're referring to
https://ghost.org/integrations/
plus anything Zapier offers. To make Ghost do what Substack does requires, for me, about $190 a month in add-ons. Your mileage may vary.
I have recently noticed a significant increase in the number of pro-Trump posts, anti-vax “experts” and climate change deniers in my feed on Substack. I try to block them, but they won’t stay blocked. Could Substack be going the so-called equal time route where “all opinions are of equal value and have equal opportunity?”
You don't need to pick up and examine every piece of garbage you pass on the sidewalk.
Sure hope not! 👎🏼
I block and mute these nuisance people every time I’m on here, but it feels very whack-a-mole. There are always new ones popping up. If the platform had a MAGA filter, it would improve things dramatically, but I’m not sure how well that would work. It would probably get a lot of false positives.
I just lol at them and they seem to go away on their own.
I hope not! I am still determined to report and then block every instance egregious nonsense.
The Washingtons post story about Andreessen and the secret chat shows that no he isn't a nice person will at least for people who aren't white men.
Have you seen the Netflix film MOUNTAINHEAD? Shows the depths of what you speak.
Yeah it was kind of a horror movie🤯 it felt like a documentary
Exactly.
It’s very scary seeing all the media being bought up by the right wing. This is how Germany got Hitler in power.
I thought I discovered a safe place. It's something to think about. I might just ghost.
I recommend not making any rash decisions. Explore your options, be prepared and all that. And mostly, export your content and subscriber list on the regular so you have backups. But I don't want to steer you into a hasty decision you might regret.
Excellent reporting Charles. It is concerning but I guess at the end of the day that is the way the world works. Money talks, the powerful dominate the weak.
I like the idea of a writer-owned platform though it would require a considerable amount of support, financial and otherwise. There are already too many different platforms, so it would need careful thought to agree on the best approach.
This was a useful, if slightly depressing, whilst utterly predictable, read. Thanks. I think the open source community led model sounds great and we ought to crack on with getting it started rather than waiting for the inevitable. A subscription fee for the platform and smaller fees than on here for your favourite writers would be a lot more doable for many of us.
I saw this information the other day from someone else and it scares me to death. They’re trying to silence everyone including independent media. We have to resist. I left Facebook because of the ugliness that has become, I left Twitter when the muskrat bought it to begin with, I’ve pulled out of Instagram, threads, and a couple other “social media“ groups I like sub stack because it has a sense of community where we all have each other’s backs. To have millionaires invest in it, just seems to be the next step in trying to curtailindependent media’s actions. As Charles mentions, we all need to be careful and we all need to back up whatever we’re speaking about.
Hell! Nobody and nothing is safe from greed.
Spot on. I already moved my professional stack to Ghost about the Nazi shenanigans, and I am planning my exodus.
My current stack is free only, and about 4 months ago. I noticed that my traffic had dried up, and my subscribers were being trimmed. Too much to be a coincidence.
Alas, the beginning of the end seems to be the roll out of Notes, and that "social" aspect that drove almost all my subscriber growth (about 70% of my subscribers come from the app). But the temptation to algorithmically fiddle has been too tempting.
I read that it took almost 2 years to close the series C funding, and it is a sure thing that the new investors are gonna want to crank the revenue knob.
I would be shocked if they weren't already prototyping an ad service.
(TBH the original model sorta made sense, but it was hard to see how they generated enough revenue to keep the servers running. I know that my 2.1K subs and 20 or so posts a month are costing them about $20 to deliver via Mailgun)
Thanks for all that, Geoff.
"My current stack is free only, and about 4 months ago. I noticed that my traffic had dried up, and my subscribers were being trimmed. Too much to be a coincidence."
You seem to be suggesting here a shadow ban. That's not a great sign. I have noticed that my "Notes" views have fallen to almost nothing. They started out strong. I'd be curious to know the algorithm used for a shadow ban. I do know of Substacks quite opposed to the Trump regime that have Notes with high views, so I'm having trouble making that connection, but there could be additional parameters they use.
From my two and a half years on the platform, and the clumsiness of their back end, and lack of precision in their metrics (and their seemingly incompetent filtering of bounced emails from people who block them) I doubt if it is conscious.
That said, it started in the second week of April, throttling the number of views from the app and Notes, and there has been a noticeable trimming of my subscribers (about 6%) the *could* have been caused by them finally culling inactive email subscribers (their Mailgun bill must be murder, and if they keep sending to black holes, that costs them real money).
Still, I have ~ 2,100 subscribers, and when I was more active (work is killing me lately) I was sending 25 newsletters a month, that is probably about $20 in just mail transport fees.
Yet, with the prime sugar daddy being Marc Andreesen, and him upping his investment in this Series C round, and him being a charter member of the Billionaire Victims Club, his red-pilled views are probably something Best and MacKenzie are optimizing for.
It would be interesting to see if their promotion and closer embrace of Bari Weiss' The Free Press is making it close the gap with the #1 newsletter, Letters from an American. If that is happening, it is likely an underlying shift in their promotion algorithm.
The evolution of Substack from a publishing platform to a full blown Social Media site is well underway, just without any subtlety
Great comments, and that last part is troublesome.
“The Free Press” is 100% all in on the billionaire ass-kissing brigade. Weiss is the billionaire bros best buddy now and TFP is a mouthpiece for them. They own her and she is happy as a clam to be owned. This is not speculation. It’s a fact.
It’s all about the grift
Yup.
Platform decay (enshittification) is inevitable (and this discussion has been going on for at least a year or two now and I used to collect them under my Notes every time I made a long argument 😊). And Bari Weiss’ The Free Press is an astute observation. A lot of people, including myself, often get them confused with Free Press which, btw, yay signed on to the People’s AI Action plan released yesterday, ahead of today’s AI action plan from the administration.
Agreed. Alas, the original mission of Substack had a *hope* of avoiding the enshittification, but as their mission crept (notes, the app, podcasts, video, live streaming) their infrastructure costs were growing, and the trickle of monetization (< 2% of free subs go paid more or less) is not sufficient.
They claim 5% of their publishers generate more than 90% of their revenue, and that means that the bottom half of their publishers are just a drain on capital. Expect that cohort to either be significantly buried, or overburdened with ads.
I also anticipate that any ad revenue share will be with the publishers who have a lot of paid subscribers (thousands?) and the rest will get no split. (my prediction)
Platform decay was inevitable, but this is going to supercharge it.
I read on here a couple days ago that they did just sign a deal to promote products/ads.
I didn't look into the sources to see if it was true, I'm under the assumption it is because...$$....
Well done Charles. Andreessen's investment/influence on Substack has been a worry of mine as well. He is a dangerous AI accelerationist as well - regardless of the possible nightmare scenarios. I had a back and forth with him years ago on Twitter and he spoke of his parents being naive Socialist/Communist immigrants that raised him in public housing in Queens NYC. So his whole western materialist insecure vibe is reactionary based on his humble upbringing going against his ambitious to a fault personality. Also that he is not that attractive on the outside as well, which definitely influences every person's outlook on the world based on how they are treated by a superficial visual society. He is bad news and could spell the end of Substack as one of the last bastions of speaking truth to power. Time will tell.
When I read the news about the funding, my first thought was FUUUUUUUCK!! I deleted my accounts on not-twitter, Facebook, and Amazon to get away from fascists, racists, and oligarchs. I hope I don't have to leave Substack too. Dirty money gets us non-oligarchs nowhere! It was sad news. THANK YOU FOR YOUR SOUND ADVICE🩷!!!