I have been developing a bit of a pavlovian response to seeing the Substack domain on a post, and I was wondering if it was at all warranted. My intuition was that is was becoming a new home for...
I have been developing a bit of a pavlovian response to seeing the Substack domain on a post, and I was wondering if it was at all warranted. My intuition was that is was becoming a new home for the more "intellectual" brand of reactionary, and it looks like my gut was probably right.
I hope they're able to reverse course and clean their platform up, but it looks like they've made a business model out of paying these folks good money to bring their audiences to the platform, so I'm guessing they won't.
I'm glad I haven't, because I'm glad that I read this post, but if it keeps going the direction it's going I may. Although I'd gotten some perverse enjoyment from seeing Scott Alexander get...
I'm glad I haven't, because I'm glad that I read this post, but if it keeps going the direction it's going I may. Although I'd gotten some perverse enjoyment from seeing Scott Alexander get shredded from time to time even before I knew about some of his more unsavory associations and positions, mostly because I can't stand how much that corner of the internet seems to have taken up permanent residence deep inside their own asses.
Followup here: https://doyles.substack.com/p/necessary-losses Between those two, you get a good idea of what's going on in the Substack Pro debacle, at least from Jude's perspective. I have...
Between those two, you get a good idea of what's going on in the Substack Pro debacle, at least from Jude's perspective. I have reservations about posting this to discuss since the last time I posted something "ra, ra, culture war," it caught on a little too well, but I still feel that this is something to bring to the table, since building a platform on the minority and marginalized to build funds to sign sweetheart deals for bigger names that have controversial thoughts on said persons rights to expression is both a well tuned business platform and relevant to who Substack is intended to service.
Is Substack profitable or is the Pro policy (bringing certain writers on as paid) significantly propped up by (presumably VC) capital? Technologically speaking Substack doesn't seem to be...
Is Substack profitable or is the Pro policy (bringing certain writers on as paid) significantly propped up by (presumably VC) capital? Technologically speaking Substack doesn't seem to be particularly complicated. This seems like an area that would be ripe for a platform cooperative: writers (and perhaps readers) jointly and equally owning the company as shareholders with voting rights (or involvement in some other system of governance), I imagine the only real constraint there is funding.
There's huge amounts of money swilling around UK Gender Critical / Trans Exclusionary movement. Most of it gets spent on crowd-funding legal[1] cases, and while some of them are getting a bit...
There's huge amounts of money swilling around UK Gender Critical / Trans Exclusionary movement. Most of it gets spent on crowd-funding legal[1] cases, and while some of them are getting a bit tired of Linehan there's plenty of financial support for most of the rest of the gender critical group.
[1] for example, the £100,000 raised to take the office for national statistics to court to get them to change their census guidance around the sex question from "If you are considering how to answer, use the sex recorded on one of your legal documents such as a birth certificate, Gender Recognition Certificate, or passport." to "If you are considering how to answer, use the sex recorded on one of your legal documents such as a birth certificate, or Gender Recognition Certificate."
I'm pretty sure it's VC based. But it does have an unfair advantage: it's first. In creator economy companies, from Twitch and others we can see that the momentum from having all the big creators...
I'm pretty sure it's VC based. But it does have an unfair advantage: it's first. In creator economy companies, from Twitch and others we can see that the momentum from having all the big creators on your platform is a real competitive advantage.
Of course, providing text and subscriptions is not that hard, and I can see disruptions coming from Twitter primarily as they index more into the creator economy, since most if not all creators already use and engage with their audience on Twitter.
Best bet would probably be a Ghost instance or Wordpress, or literal any mail list from the dawn of time, so it may be advantageous to hook it up to a Patreon and roll your own.
Best bet would probably be a Ghost instance or Wordpress, or literal any mail list from the dawn of time, so it may be advantageous to hook it up to a Patreon and roll your own.
Although somewhat lower in barrier to entry, those still aren't actual alternatives; many writers just want a platform to handle the hosting, and the monetization, and have them write. There's...
Although somewhat lower in barrier to entry, those still aren't actual alternatives; many writers just want a platform to handle the hosting, and the monetization, and have them write. There's also the network effect, with many of the big name independent writers already on the platform.
Twitter is the exception, though, since everyone already shares and builds audiences on Twitter. I think that's the biggest existential threat to substack.
I have been developing a bit of a pavlovian response to seeing the Substack domain on a post, and I was wondering if it was at all warranted. My intuition was that is was becoming a new home for the more "intellectual" brand of reactionary, and it looks like my gut was probably right.
I hope they're able to reverse course and clean their platform up, but it looks like they've made a business model out of paying these folks good money to bring their audiences to the platform, so I'm guessing they won't.
Agreed. I'm about this >< close to adding it to my tag filters.
I'm glad I haven't, because I'm glad that I read this post, but if it keeps going the direction it's going I may. Although I'd gotten some perverse enjoyment from seeing Scott Alexander get shredded from time to time even before I knew about some of his more unsavory associations and positions, mostly because I can't stand how much that corner of the internet seems to have taken up permanent residence deep inside their own asses.
Followup here: https://doyles.substack.com/p/necessary-losses
Between those two, you get a good idea of what's going on in the Substack Pro debacle, at least from Jude's perspective. I have reservations about posting this to discuss since the last time I posted something "ra, ra, culture war," it caught on a little too well, but I still feel that this is something to bring to the table, since building a platform on the minority and marginalized to build funds to sign sweetheart deals for bigger names that have controversial thoughts on said persons rights to expression is both a well tuned business platform and relevant to who Substack is intended to service.
Is Substack profitable or is the Pro policy (bringing certain writers on as paid) significantly propped up by (presumably VC) capital? Technologically speaking Substack doesn't seem to be particularly complicated. This seems like an area that would be ripe for a platform cooperative: writers (and perhaps readers) jointly and equally owning the company as shareholders with voting rights (or involvement in some other system of governance), I imagine the only real constraint there is funding.
There's huge amounts of money swilling around UK Gender Critical / Trans Exclusionary movement. Most of it gets spent on crowd-funding legal[1] cases, and while some of them are getting a bit tired of Linehan there's plenty of financial support for most of the rest of the gender critical group.
[1] for example, the £100,000 raised to take the office for national statistics to court to get them to change their census guidance around the sex question from "If you are considering how to answer, use the sex recorded on one of your legal documents such as a birth certificate, Gender Recognition Certificate, or passport." to "If you are considering how to answer, use the sex recorded on one of your legal documents such as a birth certificate, or Gender Recognition Certificate."
I'm pretty sure it's VC based. But it does have an unfair advantage: it's first. In creator economy companies, from Twitch and others we can see that the momentum from having all the big creators on your platform is a real competitive advantage.
Of course, providing text and subscriptions is not that hard, and I can see disruptions coming from Twitter primarily as they index more into the creator economy, since most if not all creators already use and engage with their audience on Twitter.
Best bet would probably be a Ghost instance or Wordpress, or literal any mail list from the dawn of time, so it may be advantageous to hook it up to a Patreon and roll your own.
Although somewhat lower in barrier to entry, those still aren't actual alternatives; many writers just want a platform to handle the hosting, and the monetization, and have them write. There's also the network effect, with many of the big name independent writers already on the platform.
Twitter is the exception, though, since everyone already shares and builds audiences on Twitter. I think that's the biggest existential threat to substack.
I believe Twitter recently required newsletter service Revue, so this may very well be part of their plan: https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2021/making-twitter-a-better-home-for-writers.html