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We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA

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Re: We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA

#331
post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, for a "quick win", have you considered adding the ability for authors to generate unique URLs for sharing posts? Ideally with separated analytics. That's a cool idea! Is your intended use case being able to easily spin up different URLs so that you could share them in different places and see which ones drive the most traffic / subscriptions?

That's right, the current origin system just isn't as granular as I'd like it to be. IE: it tells me I got X views from reddit, but if shared it in 3 subreddits, I don't know which ones were more effective. Being able to share it with a single person and know if they actually opened it or not would be another use case.

Also, seeing the stats for the last 7 days and the last 24 hours (source, subscriptions, etc.) would allow writers to get a sense of what they recently did in terms of marketing that may be working best. 30 days is too long to be able to see if a particular action had any impact.

Re: We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA

#332
post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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> So the idea that society doesn't have a problem with communist extremism is unfortunately not quite accurate. It's still out there. It doesn't seem like communist extremism is the problem we are dealing with today. Unless you'd like to argue Putin's GRU lackeys are communists (which they're not, but either were and are nationalists). What you are doing here is essentially a whataboutism. What about the COMMUNIST ex…

(The alt-right is also irrelevant in the current playing field.)

Re: We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA

#333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've been told by well more than a dozen former co-workers that they're afraid to say anything or let anyone at work find out about their political opinions because they're afraid of getting fired In fairness, there are multiple explanations that don’t involve this being objectively true, while also being how these people perceive their situation.

Yes, they're not persecuted. They're delluded. As Stalin would say.

The appearance of persecution has always been a tool of censorship. Chilling effects etc.

It's a lot easier to create the appearance of a threat than to actually persecute lots of people, especially in the current social media landscape.

Re: We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA

#334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parler got booted from everywhere based on alleged connections to Jan 6th that, in my estimation, were very tenuous, no worse than what had been seen on more established platforms, and seemed to me to be little more than a convenient pretext to shut down an upstart competitor. Whatever your take on Parler, the episode was a sobering lesson in just how difficult the big players in this industry can make it to do busin…

A scenario much like what you describe has sometimes been discussed by someone who did wind up moving their writing efforts to Substack later on: > HL Mencken once said that “the trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at…

Also elaborated in the latter Neutral vs Conservative: The Eternal Struggle https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-conservativ...

Re: We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA

#335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This isn't the right thread to have this argument and I imagine dang will remove your post, but I just want to note: Trump and his supporters aren't merely alleging that there were some irregularities in the election (which may be true), or that the media was overwhelmingly biased towards Biden (which is definitely true.) They allege that there was enormous, widespread fraud that stole millions of votes and handed th…

There's always this effect of "X says there are lots of foo, incredible amounts. But we are good people, which is why we believe that there is practically no foo."

"What, you disagree that we should kick off people who claim that we're wrong to say that there's practically no foo? Let me round you to the X's, who claim there's lots of foo, which is crazy."

(Of course, this caricature is immediately picked up by the people who actually do believe there's lots of foo, and who very much appreciate either them passing as moderates, or the moderates being counted as them.)

And, of course, the reverse. In an outrage-based social media landscape, it is impossible to be a moderate: you will be rounded off to the extremists regardless of what you actually say.

Re: We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA

#336
post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Substack already tends to specialize on hyper-conservative and anti-woke ramblings; I'm curious to see how this will play out in the long term. Probably very well, for the same reason that Joe Rogan's podcast is the most listened to podcast in the US: those views are widely accepted by about 50% of the population. Despite your pejorative labelling you aren't actually finding extreme minority viewpoints on substack,…

Well, to mention just one example, "The Abbey of Misrule" ( https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com ) pushes antivaxx rhetoric. I don't know if that represents "50% of the population" (let's hope not) but it's abhorrent in any case.

"Antivaxx rethoric" is just more labeling to dismiss people for not complying with whatever the new authoritarian push is. Hell, all the labels get put together and people who opposed Lockdowns and hurtful covid policies got called racist far right anti vaxxers because it's easier than using actual data.

Much of the "anti lockdown/mask/covid vaccine mandates" was and is slowly vindicated day by day no matter how much money or power you throw into the mix to convince people otherwise.

The Pfizer publications https://youtu.be/7YOD9drZasM are definitely being ignored by most media but are just one more nugget that those you called anti vaxxers that wanted the right to make their own risk analysis were right and those who sold you a lie did it knowingly.

Abhorrent is your intolerance and the happiness with which much of the population pushed segregation and deshumanization.

Re: We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA

#337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The range of opinion that Big Tech deems permissible seems to be getting narrower and narrower I'm not affiliated with Substack, but I'm having difficulty with your premise here. There's literally a Trump app on the App Store right now dedicated to spreading falsehoods about the 2020 presidential election. What opinions is "Big Tech" "censoring" and why should one think there's any validity to your slippery slope a…

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Re: We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA

#338
post #76

Firstly - love love love Substack. It's so simple but it's so rapidly become a place where I do so much reading. I have a few questions (mostly not about the app though, I'll have to wait for Android support to try that). 1. How did you guys manage to attract writers? I know you have been signing fronting agreements. Superficially, Substack is a (fairly basic?) blogging platform + email + payment processing system. T…

2: We do have a strong philosophical stance on this. We think taking a strong stance in favor of freedom of the press is both the right thing to do, and critical to the success of our broader mission. We've written about this a few times, e.g. https://on.substack.com/p/substacks-view-of-content-moderati... and https://on.substack.com/p/society-has-a-trust-problem-more That is incidentally a big part of the answer for…

I just want to say thank you for allowing other views contrary to the mainstream narrative to flourish.

Re: We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That philosophical stance is very common at the beginnings of a platform. E.g., Twitter being the "free-speech wing of the free-speech party". Or Christopher "moot" Poole, who created 4-chan. But over time, tensions develop between the theory and the practice. So what sorts of things do you folks find personally odious but see it as important to support? From your terms of service, obviously porn isn't in that catego…

[flagged]

I haven't heard of any communists being deplatformed for like 20 years. So although I hope Substack will treat them in the same principled way as anyone else, it's kind of irrelevant.

Re: We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA

#340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That philosophical stance is very common at the beginnings of a platform. E.g., Twitter being the "free-speech wing of the free-speech party". Or Christopher "moot" Poole, who created 4-chan. But over time, tensions develop between the theory and the practice. So what sorts of things do you folks find personally odious but see it as important to support? From your terms of service, obviously porn isn't in that catego…

[flagged]

You forgot to mention Antifa.
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