>> Oh well, and I suspect that my ~ 2,000 subscribers is the point where I am becoming a serious drain on their operating capital.
Is it, though?
Most of the infrastructure you’re free riding on is a sunk cost. If they’re spending a prohibitive majority of their revenue on maintaining that infrastructure, then they’re ALREADY doing something wrong here besides enshittifying. They SHOULD be spending that money on developing new features!
I think the main angle is that your refusal to adopt their marketing and monetization features ends up being a lost revenue opportunity. It may actually be counterintuitively true that going along with their monetization helps delay the enshittification — if they’re getting higher adoption, they’ll be less eager/desperate to do new shitty things.
It might be interesting to see Substack original business plan and five-year projection. I wonder if this was the plan all along, just waiting for critical mass. Makes sense for modern capitalism venture capitalists, I.e. it was always about the money.
>> Oh well, and I suspect that my ~ 2,000 subscribers is the point where I am becoming a serious drain on their operating capital.
Is it, though?
Most of the infrastructure you’re free riding on is a sunk cost. If they’re spending a prohibitive majority of their revenue on maintaining that infrastructure, then they’re ALREADY doing something wrong here besides enshittifying. They SHOULD be spending that money on developing new features!
I think the main angle is that your refusal to adopt their marketing and monetization features ends up being a lost revenue opportunity. It may actually be counterintuitively true that going along with their monetization helps delay the enshittification — if they’re getting higher adoption, they’ll be less eager/desperate to do new shitty things.
It might be interesting to see Substack original business plan and five-year projection. I wonder if this was the plan all along, just waiting for critical mass. Makes sense for modern capitalism venture capitalists, I.e. it was always about the money.
And this is some interesting data: https://backlinko.com/substack-users
I found this research report: https://research.contrary.com/company/substack
Some interesting nuggets.
I knew HCR was the biggest 'stack, but holes-sheeit it is a monster.