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Substack writers, you need a website

elizabethtai.com

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Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#241

Post by eviks »

skippyfish wrote: post #6

Counterpoint from someone who's been publishing on the internet for decades: no one will visit your website. It's as simple as that. You need a push mechanism to reach readers. RSS could be it, but it's too niche. Social media is kinda it, but algorithmic feeds reward political clickbait and just because someone clicks "follow" or "subscribe" is not a guarantee that they will ever see your posts. Substack gives you a…

> so that you can move somewhere else down the line

And potentiality lose all your precious posts and reader discussions in the process? That's part of the special value of having a website.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#243

Post by rsingel »

simonw wrote: post #56
rsingel wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could do the same thing through Ghost, which has an API, and not be using a service that proudly platforms the Tates and nazis.

Ghost would cost $288/month (or $241/month paid yearly).

I'll put my money where my mouth is. We at Outpost will host your site on Ghost for a year for free and migrate all your substack subscribers, with the only caveats that 1) you put a tip jar link (either to Ghost's or Outpost's) at the end of every email with some text like support us being on an indie platform and 2) at the end of the year or earlier report how it went.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#246

Post by freehorse »

UqWBcuFx6NV4r wrote: post #206
drnick1 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> rarely had people's real names & photos on it This is a feature, not a bug. There is nothing worse for a society's collective privacy than a surveillance machine where people willingly post every detail of their lives. Stalin would have dreamed of today's anti-social media as a surveillance tool. > There's so much that's great about it. There is also so much that's truly awful about it, such as Meta vacuuming up yo…

okay? good for you? you being worked up about privacy doesn’t magically invalidate the experience of others. you not liking something doesn’t mean that it’s objectively bad. you not seeing utility in something doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have utility. you not seeing value in something doesn’t mean that a great many people saw value in it, which is exactly what you’re arguing against. It does not surprise me that som…

And a lot of people also didn’t see the utility and the invasion of the privacy. It is not only OP or needs or 4chan, if that’s your only argument.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#247

Post by mastermage »

akoboldfrying wrote: post #208
eloisant wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also because they closed all the gates of interoperability once they got big enough. If they didn't have the incentive to get a monopoly we would have kept a more decentralized web.

> If they didn't have the incentive to get a monopoly we would have kept a more decentralized web. And we would have kept a more inconvenient web, since without that incentive, Facebook etc. would never have had reason to pay for an army of software developers to implement and improve the site and servers to host it.

what improvements? The algorithm that radicalises people and keeps them seperated in bubbles? The Mass Data Harvesting?

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#248

Post by noosphr »

IshKebab wrote: post #149
jonahx wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The social networks are big because they have genuine utility. I think this is mostly wrong, and that the social networks are big primarily because they spent money at the right time to create entrenched network effects that allow them to rent-seek ever after. The quality and innovation of the services themselves (especially simple sites like twitter/X) is not the moat. At a technical level, most are easily clone-a…

It is wrong, but so are you. The truth is that social networks are big because they HAD genuine utility. The Facebook was amazing... at least until about 2010. I was at uni when it started and I vividly remember thinking "I wish there was a website or something that would help me know who everyone is" (we didn't have physical face books in the UK) and then a year later thefacebook turned up. Amazing for everyone's so…

>at least until about 2010

A child born when facebook started going to shit is now able to drive.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#249

Post by uhoh-itsmaciek »

cma wrote: post #237
theturtletalks wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you can take advantage of their network effects by implementing a POSSE system. Publish on your own site, syndicate elsewhere. That way, your website is the source of truth and the other places are like museums you curate to. Why should you go thru the trouble? Because these social networks own your content and your audience and won't hesitate a second to drop you if they deem fit.

x.com heavily penalizes off-site links.

Fair enough, but that move should make you think twice before tying your fate to theirs.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#250

Post by rsingel »

willy_k wrote: post #84
rsingel wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could do the same thing through Ghost, which has an API, and not be using a service that proudly platforms the Tates and nazis.

I don’t know anything about the specific situation you’re referencing. That being said, getting mad at an organization, one that is built to be a “platform” for people to share their words, for not going out of its way to police which people share which words, seems to me to be unproductive at best, if not actively close minded and tribalistic.

Substack has gone out of its way to platform the right and has been very proud to work with folks like Andrew Tate, Graham Linehan, and anti-vaxxers whose disinfo helped kill tens of thousands of Americans.

https://counterhate.com/blog/substack-generates-at-least-2-5...

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