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Writers are fleeing the Substack Tax

theverge.com

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Re: Writers are fleeing the Substack Tax

#11

Post by anilgulecha »

wolvoleo wrote: post #5
articsputnik wrote: post #2

None paywal link: https://archive.ph/bmX1d I loved the open web quote: "The more important thing is that we have a home on the open web that we control, and whatever anti-creator changes Substack is forced to make in the future to live up to its valuation we won't be affected by." To me, I always said to have your own website and domain. Because platforms come and go. I have experienced it myself with Medium, WordPre…

The problem with that is discoverability. I'd love to do a blog without making money off it but if nobody ever reads it there's no point.

IMO, not too many people are being discovered by substack. Twitter and other social media is where you have to have conversations to slowly build up your subscriber base.

Re: Writers are fleeing the Substack Tax

#12

Post by altairprime »

wolvoleo wrote: post #5
articsputnik wrote: post #2

None paywal link: https://archive.ph/bmX1d I loved the open web quote: "The more important thing is that we have a home on the open web that we control, and whatever anti-creator changes Substack is forced to make in the future to live up to its valuation we won't be affected by." To me, I always said to have your own website and domain. Because platforms come and go. I have experienced it myself with Medium, WordPre…

The problem with that is discoverability. I'd love to do a blog without making money off it but if nobody ever reads it there's no point.

Webrings were so valuable they were used to train the PageRank AI decades ago. No time like the present to bring back what works!

Re: Writers are fleeing the Substack Tax

#13

Post by bad_username »

michalu wrote: post #3

Writers are not "fleeing Substack" that's just legacy media trying to insinuate ways to hurt Substack's revenue by creating a false perception of "hm maybe I should consider switching" in classic divide and conquer. A quick google search "substack site:theverge.com" will reveal that theverge hasn't written a single positive article about substack. Most posts are implying you should avoid substack. The whole article i…

This is correct. Substack was one of the first "mainstreamish" platforms to go "against the grain" and try to be neutral with respect to the topics and ideas it platformed. Notably, it allowed deviations from the "party line" on the issues of the pandemic. As became evident with the SPLC story, there are powerful organizations whose goal is not to forget such things and organize persistent media punishment campaigns against the dissenters. This can well be a manifestation of that.

Re: Writers are fleeing the Substack Tax

#14

Post by articsputnik »

wolvoleo wrote: post #5
articsputnik wrote: post #2

None paywal link: https://archive.ph/bmX1d I loved the open web quote: "The more important thing is that we have a home on the open web that we control, and whatever anti-creator changes Substack is forced to make in the future to live up to its valuation we won't be affected by." To me, I always said to have your own website and domain. Because platforms come and go. I have experienced it myself with Medium, WordPre…

The problem with that is discoverability. I'd love to do a blog without making money off it but if nobody ever reads it there's no point.

This is what they want you to believe, sure, it will help in the short-term. But when switching, losing most of them, and losing your content (if not moved with you), but all the domain ranking, is much bigger. And the real discovery happens on social media or through writing high-quality content that will always be shared or discovered. But all of this applies to blogging, newsletters only, like sending your thoughts via email, is OK, but a real blog, I'd want on my own domain/website.

Re: Writers are fleeing the Substack Tax

#15

Post by xnx »

michalu wrote: post #3

Writers are not "fleeing Substack" that's just legacy media trying to insinuate ways to hurt Substack's revenue by creating a false perception of "hm maybe I should consider switching" in classic divide and conquer. A quick google search "substack site:theverge.com" will reveal that theverge hasn't written a single positive article about substack. Most posts are implying you should avoid substack. The whole article i…

You can look back through the past 100 theverge.com posts on HN and you won't find anything insightful or even actual reporting (i.e. adding new facts that aren't reported by other sources): https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=theverge.com

Re: Writers are fleeing the Substack Tax

#16

Post by wolvoleo »

watwut wrote: post #7
wolvoleo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with that is discoverability. I'd love to do a blog without making money off it but if nobody ever reads it there's no point.

I used to be able to find personal and small blogs on google. Blogosphere died when google changed algorithms and it ceased to be possible. They stopped coming out in searches even when I was able to quote the title and parts of the content. Blame google enshittification for this one.

Yes I like kagi's "small web" search source a lot for this reason.

However 99% of people don't use it (probably higher than that) so it doesn't really help with discoverability.

Re: Writers are fleeing the Substack Tax

#17

Post by wolvoleo »

altairprime wrote: post #12
wolvoleo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with that is discoverability. I'd love to do a blog without making money off it but if nobody ever reads it there's no point.

Webrings were so valuable they were used to train the PageRank AI decades ago. No time like the present to bring back what works!

They might have been good for pagerank but not for users. I never used them. I really hated them.

Re: Writers are fleeing the Substack Tax

#18

Post by wolvoleo »

articsputnik wrote: post #14
wolvoleo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with that is discoverability. I'd love to do a blog without making money off it but if nobody ever reads it there's no point.

This is what they want you to believe, sure, it will help in the short-term. But when switching, losing most of them, and losing your content (if not moved with you), but all the domain ranking, is much bigger. And the real discovery happens on social media or through writing high-quality content that will always be shared or discovered. But all of this applies to blogging, newsletters only, like sending your thought…

Yeah it's also, for the first time in my life I'm really pivoting my personal interests away from IT and tech. This was more of a plan when I was still fully into it.

I'm more interested in streaming now for my new hobbies but that is even harder to self host.

Re: Writers are fleeing the Substack Tax

#19

Post by angoragoats »

bad_username wrote: post #13
michalu wrote: post #3

Writers are not "fleeing Substack" that's just legacy media trying to insinuate ways to hurt Substack's revenue by creating a false perception of "hm maybe I should consider switching" in classic divide and conquer. A quick google search "substack site:theverge.com" will reveal that theverge hasn't written a single positive article about substack. Most posts are implying you should avoid substack. The whole article i…

This is correct. Substack was one of the first "mainstreamish" platforms to go "against the grain" and try to be neutral with respect to the topics and ideas it platformed. Notably, it allowed deviations from the "party line" on the issues of the pandemic. As became evident with the SPLC story, there are powerful organizations whose goal is not to forget such things and organize persistent media punishment campaigns…

[flagged]

Re: Writers are fleeing the Substack Tax

#20

Post by holbrad »

angoragoats wrote: post #19
bad_username wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is correct. Substack was one of the first "mainstreamish" platforms to go "against the grain" and try to be neutral with respect to the topics and ideas it platformed. Notably, it allowed deviations from the "party line" on the issues of the pandemic. As became evident with the SPLC story, there are powerful organizations whose goal is not to forget such things and organize persistent media punishment campaigns…

[flagged]

[flagged]
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