Substack Notes Launched • Hacker News Board

I've just checked it out and it's much closer to a Twitter clone than I anticipated. Now it's clear why Elon made the drastic decision to mess with substack links on Twitter. The site is clean and simple.

I'm very disappointed in Musk for essentially ruining one of the world's great information platforms. Mastodon was just not the thing people were looking for. I hope this takes off.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#34

Post by hersko » Tue, Apr 11, 2023, 5:39 PM UTC

capital_guy wrote: post #33

I've just checked it out and it's much closer to a Twitter clone than I anticipated. Now it's clear why Elon made the drastic decision to mess with substack links on Twitter. The site is clean and simple. I'm very disappointed in Musk for essentially ruining one of the world's great information platforms. Mastodon was just not the thing people were looking for. I hope this takes off.

How is twitter ruined? My personal experience on the site has not changed much.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#35

Post by jabradoodle » Tue, Apr 11, 2023, 5:41 PM UTC

skybrian wrote: post #29

It’s a start. Hopefully they’ll improve the reader experience. Having a single general-purpose forum (a “firehose”) doesn’t really work for me since it’s so random, but with so little content, it’s probably necessary for now. Subscribing needs improvement. Subscribing to a hashtag might make sense? It seems like subscribing to someone’s notes and their blog should be independent, because maybe someone has a good blog…

> I think this loses what makes Substack interesting

I have the same concern. Substack creators are paid for highly engaging content as individuals subscribe to individual content creators. I don't see how that mechanism works with short form content; it could easily prove to be another platform where number of minutes of eyes on content is the metric that's optimised, rather than engagement with high quality content.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#36

Post by lpolovets » Tue, Apr 11, 2023, 5:43 PM UTC

I’m a little unclear on what subscribing means in the context of Notes + Newsletters. Does subscribing to someone in the Notes product mean I’m also subscribed to emails from the person? If so, that’s not a great dynamic — I’d like to follow 100s of people in Notes, but that doesn’t mean I want to subscribe to 100s of newsletters.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#37

Post by samstave » Tue, Apr 11, 2023, 5:44 PM UTC

coldpie wrote: post #13

For me, it's just an empty login form, and I'm not going to register an account just to see what's there. I'm sympathetic to the idea of paying for content directly (I spend over $100/mo on Patreon), but I feel like Substack has cultivated a nasty branding issue for themselves. To me, and I know I'm not alone, Substack is where you go when you want to hear some 17-year-old who got high for the first time tell you wha…

Just wait for Reddit screenshot reposts.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#38

Post by 7h3rAm » Tue, Apr 11, 2023, 5:46 PM UTC

Social network must be a protocol, not a platform. That's the only way to gurantee free speech and cencorship resistance. Nostr[1] is proving to be a good first step in this direction.

[1] https://nostr.how/

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#39

Post by jacooper » Tue, Apr 11, 2023, 5:47 PM UTC

claytonjy wrote: post #21

coldpie wrote: post #13

For me, it's just an empty login form, and I'm not going to register an account just to see what's there. I'm sympathetic to the idea of paying for content directly (I spend over $100/mo on Patreon), but I feel like Substack has cultivated a nasty branding issue for themselves. To me, and I know I'm not alone, Substack is where you go when you want to hear some 17-year-old who got high for the first time tell you wha…

On the hand I know exactly what you mean about Greenwald and Taibbi (and so many other neoreactionary media folks), but it's also where I get great content from economists (Noah Smith, Claudia Sahm, Doomberg) and technologists (our own Simon Willison, Gergely Orosz, Molly White). The media folks are clearly escaping scrutiny and playing to their base, but there are many excellent Substackers in other fields!

Simon willison is on substack? Doesn't he have his own blog?

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#40

Post by cholantesh » Tue, Apr 11, 2023, 5:48 PM UTC

claytonjy wrote: post #21

coldpie wrote: post #13

For me, it's just an empty login form, and I'm not going to register an account just to see what's there. I'm sympathetic to the idea of paying for content directly (I spend over $100/mo on Patreon), but I feel like Substack has cultivated a nasty branding issue for themselves. To me, and I know I'm not alone, Substack is where you go when you want to hear some 17-year-old who got high for the first time tell you wha…

On the hand I know exactly what you mean about Greenwald and Taibbi (and so many other neoreactionary media folks), but it's also where I get great content from economists (Noah Smith, Claudia Sahm, Doomberg) and technologists (our own Simon Willison, Gergely Orosz, Molly White). The media folks are clearly escaping scrutiny and playing to their base, but there are many excellent Substackers in other fields!

>Greenwald and Taibbi (and so many other neoreactionary media folks)

I intensely dislike both of them, but are they really considered NRx?