The popup is a bad default, but the blog owner can (and should) turn it off in settings. More generally, though, Substack is email-oriented. They have RSS feeds, but it’s designed for creating and...
I absolutely despise that a Substack publication’s home page is, typically, nothing more than a sign-up field for your email address to get the publication by email, and a small “No thanks” link to actually read the damn thing.
The popup is a bad default, but the blog owner can (and should) turn it off in settings.
More generally, though, Substack is email-oriented. They have RSS feeds, but it’s designed for creating and promoting paid email newsletters. If you’re not comfortable with a bunch of subscribers getting email whenever you post something, it might not be the kind of blogging tool you want? If email subscriptions are important, though, it seems like a solid implementation that helps you write articles that look good when rendered as HTML email.
There are lots of good blogs that use Substack and it seems like a reasonable choice for professional writers who are hoping to make money from subscriptions.
I would also like to add that it's also a reasonable choice for writers who are just starting out. Having used Substack before and also many email platforms, I see it as a good option for writers...
I would also like to add that it's also a reasonable choice for writers who are just starting out. Having used Substack before and also many email platforms, I see it as a good option for writers who just want to write and not deal with the technical side of putting out a newsletter and everything that can involve. Even as someone who can do the technical side, the appeal of Substack was that I could pick a logo, colors, font, and start writing in less than half an hour. They've added on more features over the years, but the core functionality of being a newsletter delivery system with an online archive still exists and while they may want you to stay on Substack app/website, which is why the company keeps pushing its chat, podcast, and whatever else they may have introduced, but they're all optional and you can grow your audience through other channels and simply use it as a place to host it and keep talking to your audience in their email inbox. As a creator, you also control your subscriber list, unlike platforms like YouTube or social media, and you can migrate to other email/newsletter platforms.
I don't think it's suitable for blogging, although checking it again more recently made it feel like it was trying to be a mashup of Tumblr and Medium and I find it entirely too cluttered for what I would want out of it, but there is an audience for an endless scrolling platform so of course they would try it with a large enough user base.
What an appallingly self-centered point of view. My god, he just said it out loud: it doesn’t matter to him what happens to anyone else, only himself and his comfort. If other people are...
I’ve never once seen a whiff of anything even vaguely right-wing, let alone hateful. Not a whiff. If it’s there, I never see it. If I never see it, I don’t care.
I feel the same way about social media platforms. Are there people I find objectionable on Mastodon, Bluesky, Instagram, and Threads? Definitely. On YouTube? Even more definitely. Do I care? No, because I tend never to see their posts, and when one pops up, I can block or mute them, and I never see them again. That’s in contrast with X, the former Twitter, where the top replies to many posts are from first class shitbird trolls. More and more I simply find X an unpleasant place to devote any of my attention, and so I go there less and less. I don’t eat at restaurants whose food I dislike, and the food at X tastes bad and is only getting worse.
What an appallingly self-centered point of view. My god, he just said it out loud: it doesn’t matter to him what happens to anyone else, only himself and his comfort. If other people are suffering, well, his burger is fine, so what does he care?
Often, on the corners of the Fediverse I’m on, there are discussions of the various failings of mastodon, the usual complaints about the responsibilities of moderation, and the burden this places primarily and disproportionately on moderators of POC or trans-centered servers. The discussion invariably breaks containment and white/cis people start chiming in with bewilderment: they don’t see racism/sexist/etc so it can’t be that bad or prevalent. So it goes.
“If I don’t see it, I don’t care.” For christsakes, man, take a look outside your own navel for a half a second.
Substack/email newsletters are like RSS in that the reader explicitly signs up to receive updates from a source. So who is suffering that didn't choose to see that content to begin with? I don't...
Substack/email newsletters are like RSS in that the reader explicitly signs up to receive updates from a source. So who is suffering that didn't choose to see that content to begin with? I don't use Substack so maybe there's a landing page that Substack users go to that's infested with right-wing content; I don't know. But I assume that if someone is seeing right-wing content pop up in their email inbox, they signed up for it.
EDIT: changed "your" to "their" so it doesn't come across as accusing paris.
I understand his frustration with substack. The story behind it sounds great, but with the amount of funding they collected and the kind of investors they have, I don’t see how they will avoid the...
I understand his frustration with substack. The story behind it sounds great, but with the amount of funding they collected and the kind of investors they have, I don’t see how they will avoid the enshittification route.
It's already steering into enshittification with constant nagging subscription pop-ups and app-exclusive content (videos). There's no reason why the popup needs to block scrolling and stop me from...
It's already steering into enshittification with constant nagging subscription pop-ups and app-exclusive content (videos).
There's no reason why the popup needs to block scrolling and stop me from scrolling content until I hit 'no thanks'. There's no reason their videos couldn't be accessible for paying subscribers through the website. They're trying to force everyone into the app and also picking a fight with Apple over app revenue at the same time. They could simply use their website, but the opportunity to serve up push notifications and harvest user data through the app is just too tempting.
True. The difference is: that’s enshittification mostly aimed at the end users. As a writer, I can imagine it still makes you feel like substack is on your side. Doing the dirty work of capturing...
True. The difference is: that’s enshittification mostly aimed at the end users. As a writer, I can imagine it still makes you feel like substack is on your side. Doing the dirty work of capturing email addresses for you. I don’t believe those tactics will suffice in growing substack towards VC level returns. They’ll have to enshittify the experience for their writers as well.
The popup is a bad default, but the blog owner can (and should) turn it off in settings.
More generally, though, Substack is email-oriented. They have RSS feeds, but it’s designed for creating and promoting paid email newsletters. If you’re not comfortable with a bunch of subscribers getting email whenever you post something, it might not be the kind of blogging tool you want? If email subscriptions are important, though, it seems like a solid implementation that helps you write articles that look good when rendered as HTML email.
There are lots of good blogs that use Substack and it seems like a reasonable choice for professional writers who are hoping to make money from subscriptions.
I would also like to add that it's also a reasonable choice for writers who are just starting out. Having used Substack before and also many email platforms, I see it as a good option for writers who just want to write and not deal with the technical side of putting out a newsletter and everything that can involve. Even as someone who can do the technical side, the appeal of Substack was that I could pick a logo, colors, font, and start writing in less than half an hour. They've added on more features over the years, but the core functionality of being a newsletter delivery system with an online archive still exists and while they may want you to stay on Substack app/website, which is why the company keeps pushing its chat, podcast, and whatever else they may have introduced, but they're all optional and you can grow your audience through other channels and simply use it as a place to host it and keep talking to your audience in their email inbox. As a creator, you also control your subscriber list, unlike platforms like YouTube or social media, and you can migrate to other email/newsletter platforms.
I don't think it's suitable for blogging, although checking it again more recently made it feel like it was trying to be a mashup of Tumblr and Medium and I find it entirely too cluttered for what I would want out of it, but there is an audience for an endless scrolling platform so of course they would try it with a large enough user base.
Plus, it's for free* as long as you don't start charging your readers.
* Or until VC money dry run.
What an appallingly self-centered point of view. My god, he just said it out loud: it doesn’t matter to him what happens to anyone else, only himself and his comfort. If other people are suffering, well, his burger is fine, so what does he care?
Often, on the corners of the Fediverse I’m on, there are discussions of the various failings of mastodon, the usual complaints about the responsibilities of moderation, and the burden this places primarily and disproportionately on moderators of POC or trans-centered servers. The discussion invariably breaks containment and white/cis people start chiming in with bewilderment: they don’t see racism/sexist/etc so it can’t be that bad or prevalent. So it goes.
“If I don’t see it, I don’t care.” For christsakes, man, take a look outside your own navel for a half a second.
Substack/email newsletters are like RSS in that the reader explicitly signs up to receive updates from a source. So who is suffering that didn't choose to see that content to begin with? I don't use Substack so maybe there's a landing page that Substack users go to that's infested with right-wing content; I don't know. But I assume that if someone is seeing right-wing content pop up in their email inbox, they signed up for it.
EDIT: changed "your" to "their" so it doesn't come across as accusing paris.
Dash had me at "Nazis".
I'll be avoiding substack.
I understand his frustration with substack. The story behind it sounds great, but with the amount of funding they collected and the kind of investors they have, I don’t see how they will avoid the enshittification route.
It's already steering into enshittification with constant nagging subscription pop-ups and app-exclusive content (videos).
There's no reason why the popup needs to block scrolling and stop me from scrolling content until I hit 'no thanks'. There's no reason their videos couldn't be accessible for paying subscribers through the website. They're trying to force everyone into the app and also picking a fight with Apple over app revenue at the same time. They could simply use their website, but the opportunity to serve up push notifications and harvest user data through the app is just too tempting.
True. The difference is: that’s enshittification mostly aimed at the end users. As a writer, I can imagine it still makes you feel like substack is on your side. Doing the dirty work of capturing email addresses for you. I don’t believe those tactics will suffice in growing substack towards VC level returns. They’ll have to enshittify the experience for their writers as well.