132 Comments
Feb 16Liked by Bailey Richardson

Please please please create a writer dashboard on the app.

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Yes, agreed. Full access features on mobile is a must and the biggest gripe with Substack at the moment.

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The chatbot sounds ominous. I prefer you guys have jobs.

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Looking forward to exploring the closed captioning on video, guys. Thanks for this!

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Same. I’ve been actually paying to get this done.

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The captions work pretty well and can pick up the different speaker voices, too, which is awesome for live call replays. And you can edit the generated transcript. I’m stoked on it!

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Captions is gonna be 👌

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Thank you the Substack team! You are creating jobs and making dreams a reality! 💓

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Feb 16Liked by Substack Writers

Love the surveys! I hated using Google sheets and other external sites to conduct research and gather data. I will have to experiment with these to see if they can work as guest intake forms on my podcast!

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Yeah I'm going to pop one in my Welcome Email I think. I'm always curious where/how people have found me. There's *some* info in the subscriber notification email and on Stats, but it's rarely that informative.

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I asked the chatbot if I was talking to a real person and it said, "Yes." Now I'm as confused as I think I'm supposed to be.

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author

I saw that and reported it immediately... creepy AI. Shouldn't happen again!

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Feb 17Liked by Bailey Richardson

I worked with the chatbot to answer specific questions and it felt like I was talking to an actual human! Only MUCH faster! I loved it.

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Excited to explore the increasing video features. Maybe one day I can move my community on YouTube over to Substack. Or at least, make Substack more enticing to them. 🧡

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Great! What other Substack video features are you looking for?

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Hi Jasmine! Accurate auto-generated closed captions are an enormous step. I’d love to see a separate section under a publication for just video (at the top bar where you can see posts, notes, chat, etc) Having a stand-alone video format, separate from written posts, would be neat. It would allow video-first subscribers to access the content they like without having to sift through traditional newsletter posts. And it would allow folks who are primarily readers to be able to continue to engage with just written content if they prefer. That would be my personal wish, but I’m sure others will heartily disagree with me. ☺️

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Thanks for the details!

1) The video section is a great idea. It is possible today to create a new tag or section, add all your video posts to it, and add that to your navigation bar. But there are definitely improvements we can make to have video sections show up in a more visual way.

2) There is a "video format" that highlights the video more prominently in a post; you can click "Video" from the dropdown next to "New post" in the dashboard. That'll make it show up in a more fullscreen player like this: https://whattocook.substack.com/p/you-went-to-boarding-school-with

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Closed captions without phonetic misspellings would be a generous upgrade and “on brand” for Substack 😂

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Feb 17Liked by Bailey Richardson

Bloody hell I love substack

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This is helpful. I am just starting my substack page. I can see the chatbot being a useful tool. That seems like a fascinating business strategy. Since your platform is for writers to post blogs and essays, by focusing on the writers, the writers can focus on the readers, and that is how the readers will increase.

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Feb 16Liked by Substack Writers

LFG!!!! 😍😍😍 Excited for what’s to come!!

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Feb 16Liked by Bailey Richardson

thanks, all useful. fyi the chatbot breaks the stats views in safari ios browser...you can no longer scroll to the right to see all the columns.

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author

Uh oh. Will report this to the team right now! Thanks bill

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That’s why that happened … It was bugging me. I couldn’t figure it out.

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Feb 17Liked by Bailey Richardson

Thank you, Bailey and the Substack Team!

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Feb 16Liked by Bailey Richardson

Also, looking forward to all the new features!

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Most of this post looks like positive, helpful changes. But I'm pessimistic that the new reporting tools will turn Substack into Reddit. Reddit has public and private communities of users whose sole focus is to review the comments of other communities (predominantly political ones) and 1) report comments directly to admin for breaking TOS, 2) antagonize community members into breaking TOS so they can report them, and, if that fails, 3) flooding communities with TOS breaking content and reporting it to get the whole community muted or banned. Between giving users that power and allowing a small number of people to moderate the entire website, Reddit became garbage.

These new tools will make it easier to pressure substack publicly by overrunning the system with reports, then saying "Substack refuses to act on X or Y content! They tacitly endorse it!" So I suppose I have two questions. 1) Do you feel that the paywall to engage in each Substack is sufficient to prevent that from happening? 2) How much of the responsibility to moderate will be given to the author of the Substack, and what does a minimum level of moderation look like?

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I wouldn't hold my breath on getting a reply to any of this...........

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That's okay. I'm so detached from the things I comment online that by tomorrow I won't even remember asking. It's just some food for thought I guess. I used reddit for a solid 10 years and watched it go from a useful, fun community to a human-resources version of 4chan. I am pretty burned out on the internet lol

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The censorship has begun on this platform and it will only get worse. They have begun flagging all of my posts, retroactively back to June when I started here, as

"EXPLICIT" when all my readers attempt to restack them. This comes with a blacked out thumbnail saying the readers settings are responsible. This is an attempt to make the people seeing this think the content is sexual. IT IS NOT. These are the kinds of tactics now underway here to try and silence writers who have cut too close to the bone.

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I believe I agree with your ascessment. I'm new to this whole public display. So my knowledge and abilities are limited. Saying that, I appreciate your insight. I started this adventure on substack, because of the idea of not being shut down, because my thoughts don't align with the powers that be.

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Thanks for this!

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