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Hamish McKenzie's avatar

More power to you wherever you build. But with Substack, you own what matters: your mailing list and your content. That gives you a rock-solid guarantee that—even if a meteor were to strike the platform—you have total ownership of the assets that matter to your publication and business. You lose nothing. By building on Substack, you only gain. You get access to a network that helps you grow your audience, tools that help you maximize your reach and revenue, and a system that keeps evolving to give you the best publishing power on the internet.

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Miles David Romney's avatar

YouTube, Threads, even TikTok content creators also own their own content.

Yeah, on Substack you own your mailing list. But ya' know why? Because YOU HAVE TO BRING IT! The point of those other platforms is that they BRING you an audience you had no access to previously.

You are reaching so hard here to take advantage of a situation that is orthogonal to your offering.

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The Word Herder's avatar

Yeah, maybe, but there's no censorship here.

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Jamie Ward's avatar

1) Platforms can't "censor" you, they're not official governing bodies. They can choose not to host your material—it's an agreement to use their product.

2) You really believe there's "censorship" on those platforms?!?

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The Word Herder's avatar

Uh, yeah. 🤔

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Jezz Lundkvist's avatar

So much talking about ”owning”, why add followers in the first place? I have lost many ”owning subs” because of it.

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David Stack's avatar

Except that if you get hit by meteor, all your servers will be destroyed and I'd be left with nothing. No thanks.

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The Word Herder's avatar

You'd be left with REAL LIFE, lol. It's not so bad!

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Jack Nagy's avatar

So where are you hosting your online content that's completely immune to meteor strike?

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David Stack's avatar

The "cloud" 🙃

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Jack Nagy's avatar

Okay, I'm assuming this is probably a joke I'm not getting, but just in case...

You're aware that cloud data also exists on servers somewhere, right..? And that Substack's hosting will certainly be spread across servers in multiple locations just like yours?

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David Stack's avatar

Haha yeah. The meteor strike is a silly reason to say people should use Substack (the author's argument), which was kinda my original point.

What's more likely than a meteor strike is Substack shuts down, changes owners, cancels my account, or whatever. With my own cloud servers I don't need to worry about that nearly as much. While I think the author's points are good and more creators should have more sovereignty in general, I do not think Substack is the solution. It's the pot calling the kettle black.

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Mishtu's avatar

At you in the cloud with regional redundancy? Asking for a friend …

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Jake's avatar

That's only true if you never make your own backups. It would be true of anything stored on your computer, without offsite backups, if you had a house fire (or meteor strike, etc.). I think Hamish's larger point is that you retain intellectual/copyright ownership of your own content.

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David Stack's avatar

Fair regarding the backups. How often do Substack writers backup their content I wonder?

You also retain intellectual ownership on your own blog and social media so I don't really get Hamish's point (see https://boagip.com/social-media-and-intellectual-property-rights-protect-your-digital-creations/). On social media or Substack you don't own your account, which is my point.

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Mishtu's avatar

I haven’t backed up. I likely should.

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Mishtu's avatar

Assume distributed, redundant cloud. But if Substack infrastructure got hit by a physical meteor, we earthlings have other problems.

Information meteors, however … you are right; particularly if info lost before we can back up or corrupted in ways we can’t detect.

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Mishtu's avatar

Consider the mailing list directed arrows pointing into your publication and account. We own it and it matters. But our experience is also what we subscribe/follow. Arrows pointing out from our account. Do we own that?

Which analogy?

Ownership as in homesteading?

Ownership as in Condo? (Is there a Substack condo board?)

Do we own our privacy within the platform?

Do we have a say in shared infrastructure. Would that be included in what matters from your perspective?

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heather pinchen's avatar

But if a meteor were to strike 'it would be an Ele and coms would be fried..

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The Word Herder's avatar

And if your town gets hit by a meteor, whoever survives is going to want to make physical contact with each other, because that's the essential Human experience.

We mustn't LOSE that, and that's what the Nasties want... for us to lose our connections to each other in REAL LIFE.

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The Word Herder's avatar

Oh, and they also want us to LOSE our backups. ;)

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