How Substack's follow feature betrays its original mission

Many (if not most) successful Substacks are built on the back of pithy tweets. Substack offers minimal to no demand aggregation so creators with large Twitter followings funnel their followers to their email newsletter. Similarly, TikTok stars also point their viewers to their Youtube page because Youtube offers more robust monetization options.

The second thing Substack is doing to build power within the constraints of their ideology is to create content discovery loops that are driven by people, rather than algorithms. This is why Substack lets writers feature other writers on their sites, and gives readers profiles where they can display which Substacks they are subscribed to.

What Substack is doing is taking the power away from readers and themselves, and giving it to authors. What does that mean? They are betting that in the market of long-form articles, the player with the most power is the author, not the reader. It’s the supply that matters, not the demand.

How will Substack get around their stated promise to never develop algorithmic content recommendation engines, while still helping their writers reach new audiences? Well, if you open the Substack app, you are greeted by a “Discover” tab which recommends publications rather than posts. (Nice one!) It is unclear what algorith-ahem, method—is used to... See more

The follower model

The traditional follower model—popularized by Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter/X—allows people to grow their distribution channels and retain them for future distribution. We’re all familiar with these. They come with five problems:

• Follower-based distribution: It is easier for people with large followings to distribute new cont

... See more

Substack was built on the foundation that people don’t subscribe to content, they subscribe to voices they trust. In contrast, at Medium, it almost doesn’t matter who the writer is as long as the post is good.

like substack, hypersub gives followers more control over their experience: users choose exactly which creators they want to support and therefore what content they want to consume.

unlike substack, the user-centric feed experience that hypersub offers can be implemented well beyond one app.

 Substack needs some network effects to keep authors tied to the platform, even if they can leave at any moment.  The best way to achieve that is through cross-promotion tools that allow authors to constantly gain new readers that they wouldn’t gain otherwise. That makes their presence on Substack truly valuable.