Substack’s Ideology

For example, here’s Ben Thompson from yesterday:“What is interesting is that Apple may give Substack cover to change course. [...] Substack can (justifiably) say to its publishers that it is going to offer an all-up Substack bundle for in-app purchase because that is the only way it can offer in-app purchase, and that publishers should agree to be ... See more

Engagement algorithms. All the algorithms see are engagement metrics, they don’t care what they put in front of our faces. But what we read matters, and the most viral content is not the most valuable. Virality favors emotions like outrage, so it manufactures it from nothing if necessary, and we become addicted.Correspondingly, each evil has an ant... See more

Inboxes. Instead of endless feed-scrolling, Substack only puts content in your inbox that you specifically opted-in to receive. Whether in your email inbox or in a separate Substack inbox in their reader app, you only see things you decided to see. You are in control.

There are two central evils within the Substack ideology:

What happens when readers subscribe to too many Substacks? What happens when the Substacks they subscribe to feel stale? The pressure is there and inevitable to create systems that sort, filter, and promote content...  In reality, I don’t think people actually want “full control” over what they read, because that’s too much work. What people a... See more

Right now when people read a Substack post, it’s usually because they first decided to check their email. Email is good for maintaining a direct relationship between readers and writers, but it kinda sucks as a place to read. When I’m checking my inbox I’m in a mode where I want to bat away everything as quickly as possible in order to get to inbox... See more

This to me is the key to understanding Substack: a delicate balance between growth-driven pragmatism and ideology-driven constraint. Both motivations are present, and they’re doing their best to harmonize them, even though there is some degree of inherent, inescapable conflict.

Email is good for maintaining a direct relationship between readers and writers, but it kinda sucks as a place to read. When I’m checking my inbox I’m in a mode where I want to bat away everything as quickly as possible in order to get to inbox zero. I’m psychologically in a state where everything feels like a chore. Putting great writing there fro... See more

This might seem pretty small and trivial of a thing to base a network effect on, but it might work. Substack has said readers are 2.5x more likely to become a paying subscriber to one Substack newsletter if they’re already a paying subscriber to another.