This is the future of content! At least the future that I’m interested in. One where we have control again over what we see, and one that values the creators doing the work. Looking forward to all that is to come
Note that some of use don't use apps at all, only accessing things through a browser. :-) And it's a shame that things don't get fixed in that interface, or treated with equality.
(Note: I hate mobile phones, and won't use anything by Google, Apple, Amazon or Microsoft.)
Those of us who have a lot of 'senior' paid subscribers who are less tech savvy also need the browser features to work seamlessly as many of my subscribers do not use phone apps. Not to mention that via the app, none of my paid subscriber benefits are accessible as my site directory and navigation menu and homepage links do not show when you click on 'View Publication'. That's a real problem and I've lost paid subscribers because of it.
That's an important consideration. Plus many people like a bigger screen plus the ability to have multiple tabs and windows readily viewable. Frankly, I have dry fingertips from digging in the mud, which really makes touch screens more difficult to use, so I'm wanting full strength browser access. :-D
Understood completely. Look for “Bag Balm” (square dark green metal container) in the pharmacy section at Walmart or your farm supply store for cracked and bleeding hands. My I-pad with the app lets me read reasonably comfortably, but typing is often a pain, and scrolling can be erratic
We're on a farm so we know about that bag balm. We make our own soap, so my hands are in overall good shape, other than lower ability to activate the touch screens. Guess I should put that app on an i-Pad like you, though. 👍🏼
Agree! I had the app on my phone but deleted it because it pushed more rubbish at me and I couldn't get my favourite subscriptions to show. Plus reading on the browser is so much easier.
A friend showed me their app feed for Substack - It was so full of posts he had not subscribed to due to this 'Recommendations' feature that he could not find posts he subscribed to and he had no idea why he was getting all of these posts. Apparently there is a setting you can toggle off to stop getting all of those posts clogging up the subscription feed.
I literally can't use it for this purpose. I track all my subbed reads through my inbox as it's the only way I can actually keep track and not be overwhelmed (and even then I'm overwhelmed)!
Agreed. If I had to use a mobile phone I would be substantially less productive. I have a laptop for reason.
And Notes seems to be worse than all other social media. It is the only platform I have never, even once, received engagement from my subscribers. Nobody sees them.
Apps can be okay in a pinch, but for me, I really want that large screen on my computer.
Recently LinkedIn started something where you can get verified which (according to them) will allow your posts to get more traction. The first step for verification is to install the app. So basically, if you don't want to wander in the wasteland, you need to install the app.
I think many owners/developers think their users are young, tech savvy, and whose eyes work without glasses. Those of us whose age starts with a ‘7’, and who are relatively good with devices, but not as good as, say, my 8-year-old granddaughter, and whose eyesight really needs new glasses because the ones on my nose now are scratched and blurry, are not in the demographic, though we spend our money more and more easily than, say, the aforementioned granddaughter or her mother.
And last night I saw how unfriendly Substack is to non-app users in another way.
A spammy email with the subject "Here's $8". But it wasn't $8 it was access to a newsletter for a month. And the email said: "Tap the button above to redeem your free paid subscription in the Substack app." No mention of being able to do it without the app, no way to reply (they send it from fire-and-forget "noreply" addresses). Really poor customer experience, the kind of thing that puts people off. No support. And shortly after they sent a nag email about this thing I never asked for, didn't want, and couldn't use. Is this the kind of shit our subscribers get?
I just checked, luckily I already had Boost disabled - I think because I'd seen how tacky it was, and that I had no idea what was being sent to my subscribers. In fact, I have unsubbed from many because of those types of emails.
It would be helpful if you shared data on paid growth from all the various sources and in different categories. How many free subscribers a product drive is not meaningful if you aren't transparent about conversion rates.
I own the business but I don't even know what the conversion rate on my landing page is. I don't even know the click rate of my newsletter. Isn't this data that might be useful for me to run my business? You need to get so much better at data transparency.
Certainly, safer than Facebook. Facebook has banned me with claims that I have violated Community Standards. What were they? They never tell you why. They pull the plug, treat you like a criminal. Here, I was promoting poets at my poetry readings and publication news. I give shout-outs to other poets when I get published in journals and anthologies. I here several poets are being treated this way.
Same here. FB suspended my account before I even finished signing up! There’s no way to contact human support.
By contrast, Substack has real people you can talk to (after side stepping the bot), and the CEO actually seems to care about the users’ experience with the platform.
I actually got to the point of contacting my congressional representative to propose a “human support requirement” for all businesses of a certain size.
Legislating that businesses provide a certain level of service expands the bureaucracy which chokes the free market economy to death. Instead just choose to patronize businesses which provide you the level of service you want. Instead of trying to force your desire on everyone, as if everyone has the same opinion as you and wants to incur the same regulatory morass as you. This is why I can not live in the same Idiocracy with the rest of you. Be gone.
Reality and truth are annoying I guess for some people. The looming adjustment might be difficult for you. If you think what I wrote was mean-spirited then you why not just go mate with 75 IQ pygmies if meritocracy has no benefits and your creativity can overcome Idiocracy.
“What the hell else did you expect to happen? Where were you idiots when the environmentalists and the unions were corrupting the process and the entire concept of ‘free trade’?
…
The thing about creating political machinery to fuck with free markets is this: you never get to be the last person to control it. No matter how worthy you think your cause is, part of the cost of your behavior is what will be done with it by the next pressure group. And the one after that. And after that.
The equilibrium is that political regulatory capability is hijacked by for the use of the pressure group with the strongest incentives to exploit it. Which generally means, in Theodore Roosevelt’s timeless phrase, ‘malefactors of great wealth’.”
As a Serious Literary Author (SLA), I will admit that I was initially suspicious of Notes. The last thing I needed, or so I thought, was another social media platform vying for my Precious Writerly Attention (PWA), distracting me from the noble and profound task of writing my Serious Literary Newsletter (SLD). Whilst I am far too literary to spend to concern myself with such trifling matters as ‘metrics’ (I am allergic to mathematics – the mere sight of a number causes me to break out in hives), I recently stumbled, entirely by accident, onto the ‘Stats’ tab of my Publisher Dashboard, whereupon I discovered that over ninety percent of my littérateurs originate from the Substack app. For this, I extend to you, Mr. McKenzie, my Serious Literary Thanks (SLT).
Many of us never use our phones for content. Too small, too unwieldy, generally unpleasant experience unless forced. We all came to Substack because it optimized using a real computer to do real reading and to have real conversations in the comments.
I see us all getting left behind with this "let's do everything on a phone app" move. I am sure it is fine for those who are enamored with their phones...more power to them. But in the same way that many of us will NEVER listen to a podcast (we want written content), many of us will NEVER use the cumbersome-to-us app.
Any thoughts about this group? Or do we look for the next startup that caters to the people that made Substack work to begin with?
With you on this - I don't enjoy writing on my phone. As I type this, hoping my large thumbs don't hit the spacebar on my screen, I have to hold my phone close to my face. Its easy to start to doom scroll through Notes, just like other social feeds. I write on the browser version of Substack and prefer to read there as well.
💯 Mobile app should emphasize what a person would need to use the mobile app for to interact with Substack.
For example, my experience with Telegram (which I use daily unlike Substack because most of my activity is in a private discussion group at this time) is I only use the TG mobile app when I am unable to be at my desk.
There might be certain tasks one could do efficiently in a mobile app, but reading and writing long-form is not one of them. I loath writing even a short message on a mobile keypad (probably need to find a way to install some customized screen keypad with larger keys but not sure that would fit and still be able to read the text typed).
I did test out Twitter on a mobile before I was banned. The feeds were a highly addictive, time wasting tarpit. I was relieved when they banned me. I ponder if the bump in usage Substack thinks they are seeing from mobile isn’t a zombie-addiction bouffant.
Recommendations don't serve the reader as well as they could.
The way it works now is that when you sign up for a newsletter, you're presented with a list of recommendations that only show the title of the publication, and a bunch of people to follow.
Neither gives the user an informed choice. And since many folks just hit the Large Prominent Button to Accept All, it pumps up the overall Substack metrics, but gives the reader subscriptions to something they may know nothing about. May not care about.
So yeah, the numbers go up. But actual interested readers? Not the same thing.
You could give more information on recommended pubs during the signup flow, such as descriptions, and why they're being recommended (if present.)
That would help readers make better decisions. It would be nice if Substack if didn't use the so-called dark patterns that are designed to manipulate people who don't stop to read carefully. Real nice, but of course whether you'd consider it or not it depends on your actual priorities.
I never accept any recommendations in the signup flow. After signup, I go check out the other pubs one by one to see if maybe I'd like to read them. But on the signup flow, it's sight unseen...
Their paid subscriptions are ostensibly only ~2 million thus ~$2 million in monthly site net revenue. Are they under some insolvency pressure? Did they borrow a lot of money?
I think the only way to create something pure is to do it as an unselfish s/w dev who cares not for financial returns. I do not know if someone such as myself (a 37 year career s/w dev) could take on such a huge project all by myself. Especially at age 59, my production is much lower than in my 30s.
Given that app stores like to take a 30% cut of all purchases made through apps, won't this cut into creator earnings compared to anyone that purchases a paid subscription through their browser? This is something that's really affecting Patreon right now where Apple is now enforcing this and now it's up to Patreon creators to tell their followers to purchase paid subscription in a web browser and not the app. I'd hate to see this be an issue on Substack as well.
Substack has become what the world needed: a thoughtful and diverse free speech app. But it needs to decouple from Stripe, which is debanking people left and right, as it were. I just got thrown off Stripe after using it for 15 years, presumably because I am too strongly opposed to genocide.
The debanking will be accelerating (probably especially after the election).
I will not paid subscribe anything until they take crypto. I was already debanked.
But moreover putting blogs behind paywalls is lame and attritive. There are other (excluding the undesirable advertising business model) ways to generate revenue for creators.
Also free speech is never guaranteed on any CENTRALIZED web site/app (which Substack is). This too, likely to accelerate in 2025. Btw, the Fediverse (and its variants such as ActivityPub, Bluesky, etc) is (are) a discombobulated mess (lacking the consistency of a decentralized single-point-of-truth ledger) and no wonder decentralization has such a bad rap. And there are no decentralized blockchains either. I digress.
You ostensibly put a lot of faith in the founders perhaps, but normally founders eventually sell and the corporation is run as … a corporation.
“While other social media platforms penalize external links, discovery in the Substack app is now generating about the same number of subscriptions as all social media sources combined”
If Substack were a large social network, they as a profit driven company would have to do the same to protect from cannibalization. IOW, the for-profit, *CENTRALIZED* social network is the problem (but for as long as Substack remains small and scrappy they might not be).
Appreciate the feedback! However, I wasn't referring to Substack but rather broader platforms and OS at our disposal. In general, as humanity, thanks to open source and others, tools have become available that truly are "free" empowering coders with unlimited digital potential.
I agree. But it really hasn’t been achieved yet. I am one of those coders.
Btw, the Fediverse (and its variants such as ActivityPub, Bluesky, Nostr, etc) is (are) a discombobulated mess (lacking the consistency of a decentralized single-point-of-truth ledger) and no wonder decentralization has such a bad rap. And there are no decentralized blockchains either. I digress.
This is the future of content! At least the future that I’m interested in. One where we have control again over what we see, and one that values the creators doing the work. Looking forward to all that is to come
It does NOT support Linux. Therefore, a non-starter.
That's a shame, I agree !
Hi dear 💌
How are you doing today?
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/yqaTdWbBHNHyWAK3/
Note that some of use don't use apps at all, only accessing things through a browser. :-) And it's a shame that things don't get fixed in that interface, or treated with equality.
(Note: I hate mobile phones, and won't use anything by Google, Apple, Amazon or Microsoft.)
Those of us who have a lot of 'senior' paid subscribers who are less tech savvy also need the browser features to work seamlessly as many of my subscribers do not use phone apps. Not to mention that via the app, none of my paid subscriber benefits are accessible as my site directory and navigation menu and homepage links do not show when you click on 'View Publication'. That's a real problem and I've lost paid subscribers because of it.
That's an important consideration. Plus many people like a bigger screen plus the ability to have multiple tabs and windows readily viewable. Frankly, I have dry fingertips from digging in the mud, which really makes touch screens more difficult to use, so I'm wanting full strength browser access. :-D
Understood completely. Look for “Bag Balm” (square dark green metal container) in the pharmacy section at Walmart or your farm supply store for cracked and bleeding hands. My I-pad with the app lets me read reasonably comfortably, but typing is often a pain, and scrolling can be erratic
We're on a farm so we know about that bag balm. We make our own soap, so my hands are in overall good shape, other than lower ability to activate the touch screens. Guess I should put that app on an i-Pad like you, though. 👍🏼
Agree! I had the app on my phone but deleted it because it pushed more rubbish at me and I couldn't get my favourite subscriptions to show. Plus reading on the browser is so much easier.
A friend showed me their app feed for Substack - It was so full of posts he had not subscribed to due to this 'Recommendations' feature that he could not find posts he subscribed to and he had no idea why he was getting all of these posts. Apparently there is a setting you can toggle off to stop getting all of those posts clogging up the subscription feed.
I literally can't use it for this purpose. I track all my subbed reads through my inbox as it's the only way I can actually keep track and not be overwhelmed (and even then I'm overwhelmed)!
That should be an opt-in feature, not opt-out! Oh wait, they want to make money on Substack ... well that feature lost mine!
Recommendations aren't all they're cracked up to be. :(
My 2 cents which I won't repeat, but drop a link to another comment.
https://open.substack.com/pub/on/p/the-substack-app-is-now-the-most?r=1qxgys&utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=74947894
You also demonstrate the numerous ways Substack mangles links and has numerous ways to link the same content. You could have shortened that to:
https://on.substack.com/p/the-substack-app-is-now-the-most/comment/74947894
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/yqaTdWbBHNHyWAK3/
Agreed!
Agreed. I use my phone as little as possible and I especially avoid it for social media or anything where I'd have to read a lot.
same
Agreed. Phones are a curse!
Agreed. If I had to use a mobile phone I would be substantially less productive. I have a laptop for reason.
And Notes seems to be worse than all other social media. It is the only platform I have never, even once, received engagement from my subscribers. Nobody sees them.
1.4k subscribers? That's a new definition for "global following" 😁
Agreed!
Apps can be okay in a pinch, but for me, I really want that large screen on my computer.
Recently LinkedIn started something where you can get verified which (according to them) will allow your posts to get more traction. The first step for verification is to install the app. So basically, if you don't want to wander in the wasteland, you need to install the app.
Bah...
That would stop me ever using LinkedIn!
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/yqaTdWbBHNHyWAK3/
I think many owners/developers think their users are young, tech savvy, and whose eyes work without glasses. Those of us whose age starts with a ‘7’, and who are relatively good with devices, but not as good as, say, my 8-year-old granddaughter, and whose eyesight really needs new glasses because the ones on my nose now are scratched and blurry, are not in the demographic, though we spend our money more and more easily than, say, the aforementioned granddaughter or her mother.
And last night I saw how unfriendly Substack is to non-app users in another way.
A spammy email with the subject "Here's $8". But it wasn't $8 it was access to a newsletter for a month. And the email said: "Tap the button above to redeem your free paid subscription in the Substack app." No mention of being able to do it without the app, no way to reply (they send it from fire-and-forget "noreply" addresses). Really poor customer experience, the kind of thing that puts people off. No support. And shortly after they sent a nag email about this thing I never asked for, didn't want, and couldn't use. Is this the kind of shit our subscribers get?
Yeah, I just found out that's happening to me, too. Coming from my pub to my subscribers. It's part of what's called "Boost" in your settings.
I like the part of boost where it targets your most engaged readers because YOU get to write the email that goes out.
But to get rid of the spammy "Here's $" you mentioned, looks like you have to turn off boost all together.
I just checked, luckily I already had Boost disabled - I think because I'd seen how tacky it was, and that I had no idea what was being sent to my subscribers. In fact, I have unsubbed from many because of those types of emails.
It would be helpful if you shared data on paid growth from all the various sources and in different categories. How many free subscribers a product drive is not meaningful if you aren't transparent about conversion rates.
I own the business but I don't even know what the conversion rate on my landing page is. I don't even know the click rate of my newsletter. Isn't this data that might be useful for me to run my business? You need to get so much better at data transparency.
Also, income forecasting. It would be nice to know estimates for how much you might earn in Nov 2024, Dec 24, Jan 25, and so on.
Certainly, safer than Facebook. Facebook has banned me with claims that I have violated Community Standards. What were they? They never tell you why. They pull the plug, treat you like a criminal. Here, I was promoting poets at my poetry readings and publication news. I give shout-outs to other poets when I get published in journals and anthologies. I here several poets are being treated this way.
Same here. FB suspended my account before I even finished signing up! There’s no way to contact human support.
By contrast, Substack has real people you can talk to (after side stepping the bot), and the CEO actually seems to care about the users’ experience with the platform.
Facebook is violating our Bill of Rights. But it’s ok for MAGA to vilify humanity
I actually got to the point of contacting my congressional representative to propose a “human support requirement” for all businesses of a certain size.
Legislating that businesses provide a certain level of service expands the bureaucracy which chokes the free market economy to death. Instead just choose to patronize businesses which provide you the level of service you want. Instead of trying to force your desire on everyone, as if everyone has the same opinion as you and wants to incur the same regulatory morass as you. This is why I can not live in the same Idiocracy with the rest of you. Be gone.
Oh, seems as if your are Anonymint for a reason...
Reality and truth are annoying I guess for some people. The looming adjustment might be difficult for you. If you think what I wrote was mean-spirited then you why not just go mate with 75 IQ pygmies if meritocracy has no benefits and your creativity can overcome Idiocracy.
http://trilema.com/2018/the-common-psychosis/#selection-91.0-99.425
http://trilema.com/2016/to-be-clear-hillary-clinton-lost-the-presidential-election-on-june-16th-2016/#selection-113.0-129.55
http://trilema.com/2015/ok-so-what-is-bitcoin-disrupting/#selection-63.0-79.2
http://trilema.com/2015/lets-address-some-of-the-more-common-pseudo-arguments-raised-by-the-very-stupid-people-that-like-the-gavin-scamcoin-proposal/#selection-107.0-107.452
Even scripture explains this truth:
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Samuel%208%3A9-22&version=NIV
And those who refused the wisdom reaped their just reward of megadeath:
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Samuel%2015%3A1-3&version=NIV
Or liberal min-anarchist Eric S. Raymond’s explanation:
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=7123
“What the hell else did you expect to happen? Where were you idiots when the environmentalists and the unions were corrupting the process and the entire concept of ‘free trade’?
…
The thing about creating political machinery to fuck with free markets is this: you never get to be the last person to control it. No matter how worthy you think your cause is, part of the cost of your behavior is what will be done with it by the next pressure group. And the one after that. And after that.
The equilibrium is that political regulatory capability is hijacked by for the use of the pressure group with the strongest incentives to exploit it. Which generally means, in Theodore Roosevelt’s timeless phrase, ‘malefactors of great wealth’.”
MAGA did what to you? Dates, times please where it occurred? You might want to check in with reality from time-to-time to preserve your sanity.
Exactly the same thing happened to me on Facebook— no explanation or contact.
I couldn't even start an account on Facebook. They said I wasn't a real person!
As a Serious Literary Author (SLA), I will admit that I was initially suspicious of Notes. The last thing I needed, or so I thought, was another social media platform vying for my Precious Writerly Attention (PWA), distracting me from the noble and profound task of writing my Serious Literary Newsletter (SLD). Whilst I am far too literary to spend to concern myself with such trifling matters as ‘metrics’ (I am allergic to mathematics – the mere sight of a number causes me to break out in hives), I recently stumbled, entirely by accident, onto the ‘Stats’ tab of my Publisher Dashboard, whereupon I discovered that over ninety percent of my littérateurs originate from the Substack app. For this, I extend to you, Mr. McKenzie, my Serious Literary Thanks (SLT).
Hoping more readers start using the feed and reading notes (not just writer to writer) -although that’s very nice too!
Many of us never use our phones for content. Too small, too unwieldy, generally unpleasant experience unless forced. We all came to Substack because it optimized using a real computer to do real reading and to have real conversations in the comments.
I see us all getting left behind with this "let's do everything on a phone app" move. I am sure it is fine for those who are enamored with their phones...more power to them. But in the same way that many of us will NEVER listen to a podcast (we want written content), many of us will NEVER use the cumbersome-to-us app.
Any thoughts about this group? Or do we look for the next startup that caters to the people that made Substack work to begin with?
With you on this - I don't enjoy writing on my phone. As I type this, hoping my large thumbs don't hit the spacebar on my screen, I have to hold my phone close to my face. Its easy to start to doom scroll through Notes, just like other social feeds. I write on the browser version of Substack and prefer to read there as well.
💯 Mobile app should emphasize what a person would need to use the mobile app for to interact with Substack.
For example, my experience with Telegram (which I use daily unlike Substack because most of my activity is in a private discussion group at this time) is I only use the TG mobile app when I am unable to be at my desk.
There might be certain tasks one could do efficiently in a mobile app, but reading and writing long-form is not one of them. I loath writing even a short message on a mobile keypad (probably need to find a way to install some customized screen keypad with larger keys but not sure that would fit and still be able to read the text typed).
I did test out Twitter on a mobile before I was banned. The feeds were a highly addictive, time wasting tarpit. I was relieved when they banned me. I ponder if the bump in usage Substack thinks they are seeing from mobile isn’t a zombie-addiction bouffant.
True
The app is not ready for Prime Time. It is so glitchy, I have no choice but to advise my subscribers to view my site through a browser.
Recommendations don't serve the reader as well as they could.
The way it works now is that when you sign up for a newsletter, you're presented with a list of recommendations that only show the title of the publication, and a bunch of people to follow.
Neither gives the user an informed choice. And since many folks just hit the Large Prominent Button to Accept All, it pumps up the overall Substack metrics, but gives the reader subscriptions to something they may know nothing about. May not care about.
So yeah, the numbers go up. But actual interested readers? Not the same thing.
You could give more information on recommended pubs during the signup flow, such as descriptions, and why they're being recommended (if present.)
That would help readers make better decisions. It would be nice if Substack if didn't use the so-called dark patterns that are designed to manipulate people who don't stop to read carefully. Real nice, but of course whether you'd consider it or not it depends on your actual priorities.
Oh, I sure hope someone on Substack's internal platform reads this! You've made the most sense yet...
Yes, I've never understood the logic of putting the recommendation button there - how can you recomend something you haven't yet read. Crazy.
Totally agree... I've hit "skip" so many times I have a brain bruise!
I never accept any recommendations in the signup flow. After signup, I go check out the other pubs one by one to see if maybe I'd like to read them. But on the signup flow, it's sight unseen...
Their paid subscriptions are ostensibly only ~2 million thus ~$2 million in monthly site net revenue. Are they under some insolvency pressure? Did they borrow a lot of money?
Venture Capital. Why they're so focused on growth.
I think the only way to create something pure is to do it as an unselfish s/w dev who cares not for financial returns. I do not know if someone such as myself (a 37 year career s/w dev) could take on such a huge project all by myself. Especially at age 59, my production is much lower than in my 30s.
It’s still too clumsy to manage subscriptions. Why can’t I manage my subscriptions from the app on my iPhone?
Given that app stores like to take a 30% cut of all purchases made through apps, won't this cut into creator earnings compared to anyone that purchases a paid subscription through their browser? This is something that's really affecting Patreon right now where Apple is now enforcing this and now it's up to Patreon creators to tell their followers to purchase paid subscription in a web browser and not the app. I'd hate to see this be an issue on Substack as well.
Substack has become what the world needed: a thoughtful and diverse free speech app. But it needs to decouple from Stripe, which is debanking people left and right, as it were. I just got thrown off Stripe after using it for 15 years, presumably because I am too strongly opposed to genocide.
The debanking will be accelerating (probably especially after the election).
I will not paid subscribe anything until they take crypto. I was already debanked.
But moreover putting blogs behind paywalls is lame and attritive. There are other (excluding the undesirable advertising business model) ways to generate revenue for creators.
Also free speech is never guaranteed on any CENTRALIZED web site/app (which Substack is). This too, likely to accelerate in 2025. Btw, the Fediverse (and its variants such as ActivityPub, Bluesky, etc) is (are) a discombobulated mess (lacking the consistency of a decentralized single-point-of-truth ledger) and no wonder decentralization has such a bad rap. And there are no decentralized blockchains either. I digress.
More payment options would really help creators from countries where Stripe isn't available.
Agree
Thank you, Substack, for continuing to make the platform better and make it a place writers want to be on.
I swear every time I scroll past your name in a comment feed I think I'm seeing myself 🤣🤣 And then I'm like, wait..I didn't even comment yet!!?
Same!
Hooray 👏🎉 Happy Halloween 👻🎃 Substack is the New New's scorce for the American people 🇺🇸
Thank You,McArthur, I haven't been on Facebook since?! I'm here on Substack and just got onboard over at Blue sky 😃👍
We have all the power in our hands to free ourselves from tyrannical corporations. So thankful for the platform.
Substack is a for-profit corporation.
You ostensibly put a lot of faith in the founders perhaps, but normally founders eventually sell and the corporation is run as … a corporation.
“While other social media platforms penalize external links, discovery in the Substack app is now generating about the same number of subscriptions as all social media sources combined”
If Substack were a large social network, they as a profit driven company would have to do the same to protect from cannibalization. IOW, the for-profit, *CENTRALIZED* social network is the problem (but for as long as Substack remains small and scrappy they might not be).
Appreciate the feedback! However, I wasn't referring to Substack but rather broader platforms and OS at our disposal. In general, as humanity, thanks to open source and others, tools have become available that truly are "free" empowering coders with unlimited digital potential.
I agree. But it really hasn’t been achieved yet. I am one of those coders.
Btw, the Fediverse (and its variants such as ActivityPub, Bluesky, Nostr, etc) is (are) a discombobulated mess (lacking the consistency of a decentralized single-point-of-truth ledger) and no wonder decentralization has such a bad rap. And there are no decentralized blockchains either. I digress.
Rock on.