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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

#371

Post by deadpannini »

bambax wrote: post #344
isaacremuant wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

Okay! ;-) There you go. > the right to make their own risk analysis I really wonder where this comes from though. Do those people analyze the airworthiness of an airplane before boarding it? And the credentials of the pilot? Or do they just trust the airline, and their country's regulator?

> Do those people analyze the airworthiness of an airplane before boarding it? And the credentials of the pilot? Or do they just trust the airline, and their country's regulator?

To push that analogy a little farther, consider how people would have reacted if, in 1905, months after the Wright Brother's successful flight tests, the United States had made air travel mandatory and suppressed discussion of its attendant risks.

I think the mRNA vaccines are a tremendous marvel and our best tool for defending ourselves from COVID. But they are not a panacea, and we cannot build trust in them by demanding it.

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

#372

Post by ubac »

uncertainquark wrote: post #293

If any of you guys at Substack can answer this, it would be great: I'm a huge fan and proponent of Substack as a professional space writer and "blogger" from the days of the old. But if there's one thing I think Substack does wrong it's the "Welcome page". Can we please get an option to disable showing the Welcome page" to people who haven't subscribed? I don't want to shove the email form in people's faces before th…

I think there's a way to skip that with a URL parameter, I just unfortunately can't remember what it is -- something like /about?welcome=false or whatever. (I realise that's a hacky workaround and only solves part of the problem, but at least you can save some readers from the welcome screen)

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

#373

Post by mst »

ellegriffin wrote: post #204
alisonatwork wrote: post #198

Are there any plans to allow readers/subscribers to decouple identities between different newsletters? Or, asked a different way, will the app allow you to "subscribe" to newsletters anonymously? I find myself very reluctant to sign up for new newsletters on Substack now because my identity is shared across all newsletters, so I feel I can no longer keep my interests separated. To be clear: after commenting on one ne…

Honestly, I hope this doesn't change. As an author, I think the reason why the comments section of my newsletter is such a positive place is because all of the commenters are doxed and have a profile. In addition, that's how I find other writers to follow—you can see who follows what and follow that thread which is nice.

I would suggest that, as an example, letting people be able to have separate 'technical subscriptions' and 'political subscriptions' identities might still have the positive effects you describe and if anything more so.

Also consider somebody who wants to engage honestly and openly with mental health related content without risking that being dragged in to conversations elsewhere via somebody reading a unified profile.

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

#374

Post by Lascaille »

bambax wrote: post #330
Lascaille wrote: post #323

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.

I read all of the articles that are available for free by that author and didn't see anything out of the ordinary. Well within the overton window.

Y'all really think that moderate conservative writing - it didn't stray in terms of emotion into what I would consider rhetoric - is abhorrent? Wow. That's some thick-walled bubble you're in.

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

#375

Post by deadpannini »

bishplsok wrote: post #311
throwaway_4ever wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

astralcodexten.substack.com isn’t a journalist (he’s a psychiatrist) but covers current events quite well, probably has as little bias as you can as a person, and is popular on HN.

[dead]

Ironically, a brief passage by Scott Alexander (from the hit piece targeting him linked above) describes a very good reason to read content you disagree with, almost making the parent comment germane to the overall discussion.

> Compare RationalWiki and the neoreactionaries. RationalWiki provides a steady stream of mediocrity. Almost nothing they say is outrageously wrong, but almost nothing they say is especially educational to someone who is smart enough to have already figured out that homeopathy doesn’t work. Even things of theirs I didn’t know – let’s say some particular study proving homeopathy doesn’t work that I had never read before – doesn’t provide me with real value, since they fit exactly into my existing worldview without teaching me anything new ...

> The Neoreactionaries provide a vast stream of garbage with occasional nuggets of absolute gold in them ... The garbage doesn’t matter because I can tune it out.

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

#376

Post by lobochrome »

Substack is a player in the increasing tendency of our fracturing media landscape - for the better or the worse. I believe, by enabling more and more unedited and unlimited speech increasingly diverse voices can become more prominent.

The hope is of course, that we have an unskewed distribution of voices, however, our increasing challenges with misinformation or maybe rather information warfare show that this _might_ not be the case.

In the old media world, this was to a degree ameliorated by a powerful elite of editors and publishers who controlled and cut off the extremes (bad for business if you have no targeting).

What does Substack think about missing editorial oversight?

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

#377

Post by Lascaille »

stef25 wrote: post #357
isaacremuant wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

> 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. Nobody doesn't have the right to make their own risk analysis. That's assuming they're capable of it and we both know that's not the case. It real…

>Nobody doesn't have the right to make their own risk analysis. That's assuming they're capable of it and we both know that's not the case.

You start out by saying that people have the right to make their own risk analysis, suddenly add on a condition (if they're capable of it), determine (by yourself?) that they're not capable of it, invalidate your initial conclusion and end up saying (without saying) that people actually don't have the right to make their own risk analysis.

Now that's abhorrent.

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

#378

Post by bambax »

Lascaille wrote: post #374
bambax wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I read all of the articles that are available for free by that author and didn't see anything out of the ordinary. Well within the overton window. Y'all really think that moderate conservative writing - it didn't stray in terms of emotion into what I would consider rhetoric - is abhorrent? Wow. That's some thick-walled bubble you're in.

We have different ordinaries.

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

#379

Post by bambax »

bambax wrote: post #316
native_samples wrote: post #19

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…

Well, the problem with your second point ("free speech") is that it tends to attract and retain a specific kind of writers: those who aren't accepted anywhere else. 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. And I also think that the very model of Substack (subscribe to a specific writer, instead of a newspaper that t…

I can't edit the above comment anymore, but I would like to add this: my point isn't really about Substack specifically; it's about the fact that it's difficult (impossible?) to be "content neutral", and pretending otherwise is a fallacy.

(And how is porn not speech? If you ban porn then you're not defending free speech in any meaningful manner.)

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

#380

Post by mizzao »

yakireev wrote: post #271

Inevitably, the day will come when Apple will demand that you censor some content on your platform, or your app is banned from app store. This happened before [1], and will happen again. What will you do when this happens? [1] https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/09/18/telegram-messenger...

Related to Apple: is there a different haircut if someone subscribes to a newsletter from the app vs. from the website?
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