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Substack writers, you need a website

elizabethtai.com

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Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#251

Post by noosphr »

incompatible wrote: post #211
willy_k wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, tolerate Nazis, give them a place to share their words, let them be part of the mainstream, let them take part in elections, play their dirty tricks and form paramilitaries and win control of government. It's a shame that that leads to certain groups, like Jews, LGBTQ, non-whites, or immigrants getting exterminated, but that's just the price you have to pay for free speech.

Let's see what the man who coined the term paradox of tolerance had to say about this:

>In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.

Oh no, Karl Popper is a Nazi. Quick punch him.

>non-whites

This meme needs to die. Nazis wanted to kill half of all whites, viz. everyone who lived East of the Oder and wasn't a German.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#252

Post by kenanfyi »

I kind of agree with the author, but having such places is very convenient for most people considering most people do not know how to make websites. Yes, it is easy nowadays, but it is still a hurdle for many.

Specifically on Substack though: I immediately close if a link I clicked is Substack. Many reasons for that. I find it very unpleasant to read stuff there, because of that banners and general design of the website. It all look generic and I hate generic. Second reason and even more important for me is that Substack platforms Nazis and white supremacists and they have apparently no problem about it.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/feb/07/revealed-how-s...

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#253

Post by mastermage »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #217
sixtyj wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for this. I can hear Substack marketing saying that “We don’t have any intention to put you into a vendor-lock.” I had a lot of discussions with companies about their marketing. Why do you upload your events’ photos to FB instead of your site? Why do you have news on LI feed and don’t make it a post on your site as well? Do you think they can hear it? :) Substack is going to become a similar service as FB, LI…

Not sure about LinkedIn, but Facebook does let you export all your data as a bit monolithic zip file.

because they have to due to EU Laws every business operating in the EU has to allow this.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#254

Post by IshKebab »

drnick1 wrote: post #200
IshKebab wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Did you miss Myspace and Friendster? MySpace was a) awful, b) only used by a tiny tiny fraction of people (1% maybe), and c) rarely had people's real names & photos on it. Not remotely comparable to Facebook. Even fewer people used Friendster and Orkut, at least in the UK. > I have no idea what you think is or was so great about WhatsApp. It was successful largely because it had no overhead and infinite throughput…

> 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…

> This is a feature, not a bug.

Uhm no. I wanted to know who real people were. At the time it was the much more secure and private than anything else because you needed to be at the same university to see anyone's accounts, and the idea of selling user data for profit didn't even exist.

> There is also so much that's truly awful about it, such as Meta vacuuming up your contact list, photos, and recording extensive telemetry

Sure. That doesn't invalidate any of the good stuff, and is minor in comparison (contact lists are not as valuable as you seem to think). If Signal had existed at the time I'm sure it would have been extremely popular too. Also photos are E2E encrypted.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#255

Post by throwaway219450 »

firasd wrote: post #34

I think just the $5/mo or so for hosting a WordPress blog and then the $20/yr for a domain name is prohibitive for many people—-not necessarily financially but like ‘oh great now I gotta deal with this’. So that’s why Medium in the past and now Substack etc end up as fallbacks

A custom domain and GitHub hosting has been fine for me. You pay the time cost of setting up a static site, but I’d take that over Wordpress. Writing articles is a markdown file and a push. If you need to draft in private, keep it offline. It gives me a place where I can keep a resume and a portfolio, I control the design and I don’t pay for traffic. You don’t even need a custom domain name.

A different kingdom to be sure, but you can always pack your bags and push the repository elsewhere. There’s something quite pleasing about having everything handled in git too.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#256

Post by InsideOutSanta »

peteforde wrote: post #213
pessimizer wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Same, every time I end up on a substack post, it's from an external source. I think the parent was talking about having a substack, not reading things on Substack. But I also think the direct network effects don't come from casuals (other than that they repost to social networks.) People who are paying for a substack will look at others because it doesn't involve another signup or separate bill, they can just add t…

Maybe I'm an outlier, but I find that my main reason for discontinuing Ground News/Nebula/whatever is that I subscribe aspirationally and never actually make time to consume the content. One year I got my partner and I subscriptions to Masterclass and at the end of the year neither one of us had watched a single video. Basically, I don't know anyone who is ever bored. Who the hell has time to click on and read random…

I think curation is worth paying for, but only if the quality is extremely high (e.g. for a good newspaper).

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#258

Post by tome »

simonsarris wrote: post #107

I just have website.com and my Substack is subdomain.website.com. If I ever wanted to move off (I definitely don't!) I could keep all the urls exactly the same with self-hosting. But substack solved distribution (and community, and bookkeeping, un-distribution etc) and it solved getting paid for my writing, which is not enough to live on but its definitely significant and well appreciated. It is worth much more than…

What is "un-distribution"?

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#259

Post by zahlman »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #88
zahlman wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your source is Taylor Lorenz, on her own Substack (with a custom domain). She apparently wasn't bothered enough to disassociate with the service. This is someone who makes claims like "Substack is primarily funded by Andreessen Horowitz, a firm whose founders have pushed extreme far right rhetoric." (Something which Wikipedia editors would be tripping over each other to evidence if it were true, but their article say…

> Your source is Taylor Lorenz, One of the first newsy types to report this particular issue, but certainly not the only one. See https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/07/substacks-nazi-p... , which quotes a press release from Substack. Arguably, my source is therefore Substack themselves, via Ars Technica. > Something which Wikipedia editors would be tripping over each other to evidence if it were true, but their…

> There's one NYT link on the Andreessen Horowitz article

I see no mention of the far right in the article; the only NYT source with "right" in the title that I can find is "The Tech Right Gets Its Own Phyllis Schlafly", but this is only being used to cite Boyle investing in some aerospace/miltech companies.

As for Marc, we're at multiple layers of guilt by association now, but even so I don't see what's extreme about anything attributed to him in his own article. In fact, it all looks to me like stuff that I'd expect a very large percentage of Americans to find agreeable.

> But they do continue to host it.

FWIW, I consider that the actual literal Nazis were a step beyond typical contemporary American white supremacists. Regardless, this is still a goalpost shift. Note that the headline of your own source explicitly describes Substack as having offered an apology, which is the opposite of how you respond when you're proud of what you're accused of.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#260

Post by cookingoils »

Another reason for having a designed website instead of just a Substack is marketing. When I visit a site and see that it’s a Substack I don’t want to stay and explore. It feels generic and that hurts the writing. Making a custom site isn’t much trouble, especially these days so defaulting to Substack feels a little unconsidered
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