On Substack...
Their evolution puts their states mission in question, and confirmation that once they added "notes" the slide into the morass of Social Media shitbird-dom was inevitable.
Look, I struggle with my conscience staying here. The trolls are growing, and my ban finger has been getting a workout. I moved my “professional” presence to Ghost, and I should write about that, but in general with their embrace of “aktshually, Nazi’s are fine” stance has caused a lot of writers I respect to pack up and leave, and those who stay are acknowledging that they are getting paid subscribers un-subbing and listing the Nazis.
But, I also know that a lot of people are not as able to move and not fuck up their audience. Reading about the gyrations that Molly White experienced to take her audience with her was sobering.
I did indeed move The Product Bistro to the hosted Ghost, and it wasn’t difficult (mainly because I don’t charge money).
But two big pages moved, one “Platformer,” got the deluxe migration to Ghost Pro (they are big enough that I am sure they got the white glove treatment). The other, Garbage Day by Ryan Broderick went to Beehiiv.
Yesterday, Ryan’s post “Hollywood vs. The Attention Economy” had a section about his experience. In short, when you move to a really good service, the platform automatically removes dead emails, and others that Substack doesn’t. I can concur, once I sent a new post the first time I used my shiny new Ghost Pro instance, my 79 subscribers was reduced to 64. A lot of people were dead letters (mostly they were work emails, and a lot of people like me hop jobs). So, it was really good to clean out the cruft.
But Ryan’s comments really rings true:
My biggest takeaway is that Substack is a social network. Full stop. Many of its community features are really nice! Especially when you’re just starting out. But those community features paper over the fact that the growth you experience on Substack does not really mean much. It’s not you or your publication that is building an audience on Substack, you’re just maintaining Substack’s. Much like in the 2010s, when publishers raced to build Facebook pages with “millions” of “followers,” only to turn around and realize those people weren’t “readers” or an “audience,” but just numbers on a chart, so too are Substack signups plentiful, but ultimately not worth much. And I learned this first hand last month.
Here’s the thing. Substack has become a social media network, and all their pontification about being a neutral actor is, as I expected, complete and utter bullshit.
Look, I love my audience. And I will say that it is really difficult to expand that audience. I got to those near 80 subscribers with a lot of flogging my posts on Twitter back before the Muskrats took over. There is really no easy way to get the message out.
So, yeah, Substack isn’t great. But I am a net drag on their bottom line, and frankly, all of you reading this are freakin’ awesome!