This is such a weird take. There are countless platforms that do try to lock content creators in. Substack doesn't - you can literally export the list of all email addresses of your subscribers at any time, with a single click of a button. Your content is easy to export too. There's literally nothing forcing you to keep using Substack if it's no longer providing any value to you as a writer.
The article doesn't really refute this, it just casts random aspersions, brings up political extremism, and whatnot. OK, you can dislike Substack for their speech policy, but that's tangential to the claim the article opens with.
>Imagine the author of a book telling people to "read my Amazon". A great director trying to promote their film by saying "click on my Max".
Apples to oranges. People sure do refer to their micro-blog as their "Twitter", or their recurring-donation-facilitator as their "Patreon". Valuable information is being exchanged, as the listener now knows what to expect, especially concerning those devilish proprietary extras those sites dare to offer.
Don't get me wrong, building too big of a reliance on third parties is a huge problem, people do get their accounts unfairly frozen, etc, but "big corporation bad" and "kick out political extremists(from my opponent side) with extreme prejudice or you're bad" are like, the stalest takes ever.
I'm not a huge fan of Substack, but this seems like the most cynical interpretation of what Substack is. And the whole point is just to police the words people use to refer to their blog?
He's not "policing", rather giving good advice. Substack is only one provider for newsletter producers. Calling your newsletter "a Substack" is akin to calling your blog "a Wordpress", and a number of successful writers there have transitioned to the competition and done better.
If you call what you have a Substack and then you move it, what do you have, and will people think you disappeared when you just are self-hosting or moving to Ghost, Buttondown, Beehiiv or someone else?
Years and years ago there were a lot of people on HN who were very vocal about the word "podcast," and how every time it was uttered it gave Apple a free ad for its music player to the exclusion of other options.
We have a similar problem now where people are sure the word "podcast" refers to some kind of specialized thing that has to be accessed with dedicated software, as opposed to referring to an audio file that you download from the internet.
The existence of the special term has caused a good amount of harm by enabling this confusion.
I disagree, most podcast episodes and ads mention a few popular options plus “or wherever you get your podcasts” and the proprietary gated stuff hasn’t been doing that well!
The most important part of "podcast" is that phrase you hear so often, "wherever you get your podcasts". It's an open standard, you can pick your app, they can be hosted anywhere. If an audio program is exclusively available on, say, Spotify, it isn't a podcast.
I'm confused -- While there's much to be said about walled gardens, the thing he seems to be most critical of seems to be a policy which aligns Substack to the open web he's so fond off i.e. no global platform moderation, and allowing people to curate for themselves?
> Substack is, just as a reminder, a political project made by extremists with a goal of normalizing a radical, hateful agenda by co-opting well-intentioned creators' work in service of cross-promoting attacks on the vulnerable. You don't have to take my word for it; Substack's CEO explicitly said they won't ban someone who is explicitly spouting hate, and when confronted with the rampant white supremacist propaganda that they are profiting from on their site, they took down... four of the Nazis. Four.
I understand that content moderation online is a nuanced topic, but… my impression of the Substack stance was that it boiled down to "one of our main values is free speech, and while we understand the desire for content moderation, we're going to lean towards letting people use our platform even if we disagree with what they're writing". Characterizing this as a "radical, hateful agenda" seems like… a stretch? Maybe I'm missing something here.
At first I thought that substack was part of the Thiel/Musk enterprise or some other messed up billionaire club of political engineering, but not much was offered. Say "Substak is . . . a political project made by extremists . . ." Can't see any evidence of it here.
The other angle I could see is Substack is algo'ing neo-nazi content to folks. But I can't go to cancel mode just for hosting. I can see that getting reductive - who's the hypersaler, who provided the electrons, who's sold them the servers . . . there is no end. It really needs to end with reader.
There's this continued idea to deplatform far-right bigots trying to make money online. Some will woefully let them speak their bile, but stop them at trying to make money. For example, you can't, if you're a nazi, start a Patreon.
You sure we absolutely need a newsletter website that is in a business arrangement with people who want to kill people based on the colour of their skin?
Not just letting them on the platform, allowing them to make money off off their bigotry.
> my impression of the Substack stance was that it boiled down to "one of our main values is free speech, and while we understand the desire for content moderation, we're going to lean towards letting people use our platform even if we disagree with what they're writing".
You have a bar, and you let anyone come in and say whatever they want, because you like free speech. At first it's just a normal bar. Then the local Nazi gang finds out about it, they show up and start saying Nazi shit to everyone. Everyone else stops coming because they don't want to hear Nazi shit, so, it's a Nazi bar now. The only people there are Nazis or people who don't mind drinking with Nazis. You say you aren't a Nazi, but you own the Nazi bar.
> Everyone else stops coming because they don't want to hear Nazi shit, so, it's a Nazi bar now.
There's plenty of non-Nazi writers enjoying a good amount of success on Substack, though? Or at least, as a casual Substack user, I'm not sure I've been exposed to any Nazi content…? So I'm not sure if this analogy holds up that well in this case.
This is such a weird take. There are countless platforms that do try to lock content creators in. Substack doesn't - you can literally export the list of all email addresses of your subscribers at any time, with a single click of a button. Your content is easy to export too. There's literally nothing forcing you to keep using Substack if it's no longer providing any value to you as a writer.
The article doesn't really refute this, it just casts random aspersions, brings up political extremism, and whatnot. OK, you can dislike Substack for their speech policy, but that's tangential to the claim the article opens with.
>Imagine the author of a book telling people to "read my Amazon". A great director trying to promote their film by saying "click on my Max".
Apples to oranges. People sure do refer to their micro-blog as their "Twitter", or their recurring-donation-facilitator as their "Patreon". Valuable information is being exchanged, as the listener now knows what to expect, especially concerning those devilish proprietary extras those sites dare to offer.
Don't get me wrong, building too big of a reliance on third parties is a huge problem, people do get their accounts unfairly frozen, etc, but "big corporation bad" and "kick out political extremists(from my opponent side) with extreme prejudice or you're bad" are like, the stalest takes ever.
I'm not a huge fan of Substack, but this seems like the most cynical interpretation of what Substack is. And the whole point is just to police the words people use to refer to their blog?
He's not "policing", rather giving good advice. Substack is only one provider for newsletter producers. Calling your newsletter "a Substack" is akin to calling your blog "a Wordpress", and a number of successful writers there have transitioned to the competition and done better.
If you call what you have a Substack and then you move it, what do you have, and will people think you disappeared when you just are self-hosting or moving to Ghost, Buttondown, Beehiiv or someone else?
Years and years ago there were a lot of people on HN who were very vocal about the word "podcast," and how every time it was uttered it gave Apple a free ad for its music player to the exclusion of other options.
I guess we got over it.
We have a similar problem now where people are sure the word "podcast" refers to some kind of specialized thing that has to be accessed with dedicated software, as opposed to referring to an audio file that you download from the internet.
The existence of the special term has caused a good amount of harm by enabling this confusion.
I disagree, most podcast episodes and ads mention a few popular options plus “or wherever you get your podcasts” and the proprietary gated stuff hasn’t been doing that well!
The most important part of "podcast" is that phrase you hear so often, "wherever you get your podcasts". It's an open standard, you can pick your app, they can be hosted anywhere. If an audio program is exclusively available on, say, Spotify, it isn't a podcast.
I'm confused -- While there's much to be said about walled gardens, the thing he seems to be most critical of seems to be a policy which aligns Substack to the open web he's so fond off i.e. no global platform moderation, and allowing people to curate for themselves?
What is wrong with these people? Can this seriously be anything other than a mind virus?
> Substack is, just as a reminder, a political project made by extremists with a goal of normalizing a radical, hateful agenda by co-opting well-intentioned creators' work in service of cross-promoting attacks on the vulnerable. You don't have to take my word for it; Substack's CEO explicitly said they won't ban someone who is explicitly spouting hate, and when confronted with the rampant white supremacist propaganda that they are profiting from on their site, they took down... four of the Nazis. Four.
I understand that content moderation online is a nuanced topic, but… my impression of the Substack stance was that it boiled down to "one of our main values is free speech, and while we understand the desire for content moderation, we're going to lean towards letting people use our platform even if we disagree with what they're writing". Characterizing this as a "radical, hateful agenda" seems like… a stretch? Maybe I'm missing something here.
At first I thought that substack was part of the Thiel/Musk enterprise or some other messed up billionaire club of political engineering, but not much was offered. Say "Substak is . . . a political project made by extremists . . ." Can't see any evidence of it here.
The other angle I could see is Substack is algo'ing neo-nazi content to folks. But I can't go to cancel mode just for hosting. I can see that getting reductive - who's the hypersaler, who provided the electrons, who's sold them the servers . . . there is no end. It really needs to end with reader.
There's this continued idea to deplatform far-right bigots trying to make money online. Some will woefully let them speak their bile, but stop them at trying to make money. For example, you can't, if you're a nazi, start a Patreon.
Substack lets nazis make money.
Why? We need to know they exist and to explain what is wrong with their view.
Some will eventually think it better if you dont talk either. Lots of stuff you are not suppose to know.
You sure we absolutely need a newsletter website that is in a business arrangement with people who want to kill people based on the colour of their skin?
Not just letting them on the platform, allowing them to make money off off their bigotry.
nazis need to eat too…
They can do a job that is not directly correlated to their stupid views. You're not entitled to make money with your speech.
Yeah, I'd be curious what Fastly's content moderation policy is
https://www.fastly.com/acceptable-use
> my impression of the Substack stance was that it boiled down to "one of our main values is free speech, and while we understand the desire for content moderation, we're going to lean towards letting people use our platform even if we disagree with what they're writing".
You have a bar, and you let anyone come in and say whatever they want, because you like free speech. At first it's just a normal bar. Then the local Nazi gang finds out about it, they show up and start saying Nazi shit to everyone. Everyone else stops coming because they don't want to hear Nazi shit, so, it's a Nazi bar now. The only people there are Nazis or people who don't mind drinking with Nazis. You say you aren't a Nazi, but you own the Nazi bar.
Substack is the Nazi bar.
> Everyone else stops coming because they don't want to hear Nazi shit, so, it's a Nazi bar now.
There's plenty of non-Nazi writers enjoying a good amount of success on Substack, though? Or at least, as a casual Substack user, I'm not sure I've been exposed to any Nazi content…? So I'm not sure if this analogy holds up that well in this case.
Give it time. I mean look at Twitter. In two years, it will be just another Truth Social where everyone on there has the same political views.