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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

#131

Post by LordAtlas »

ubac wrote: post #128

You continued taking your cut from my subscriptions after I'd left your platform (I think because you didn't really understand how Stripe Connect works) and just refused to pay the money back for over a year. What was the deal with that? It struck me as both deeply dishonourable and not even sensible as a business move. Why did you do that, and what does it say about Substack as a company that you did it?

I might attribute this to Hanlon's Razor. On the other hand, that's not very flattering to them either.

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

#132

Post by demosthenes714 »

george0812 wrote: post #64

What were some of the surprising technical challenges you faced developing the app?

John from the app team here, thanks for the question! I'd say most of the unexpected challenges came from building an app on top of a system that was primarily designed for emails and web. There's lots of tools in the publish email pipeline (queues, delays, retries, etc) that we don't really need to worry about with an app where we're directly querying for the posts for a user. Conversely there are functions like push notifications that apply to the app but not email. This led to plenty of refactors and some parallel backend code, although for the most part we were able to take advantage of the rest of the company's work.

Separately there's been some interesting challenges on the client side around caching posts, serving post content offline, and purging spam/copyright infringing content.

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

#133

Post by jjulius »

Meekro wrote: post #109
NationalPark wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're only saying that censorship isn't a problem for content that you personally judge to be unimportant. Many don't see it that way - they see policies like this as evidence of Substack appeasing Christian moralist values that have "cancelled" the expression of sexuality and sexual identity outside of a set of norms acceptable to them. Worse, these "blanket" policies often only end up enforced against LGBTQ people…

I guess you're right that I'm less upset about pornography because I'm not a consumer of it. But let me give you my best attempt at a principled answer, too.. I'd say that porn producers have lots of places to go that will cater to them, and that will connect them to porn consumers. As I recall, reddit's r/gonewild is huge, and lots of producers are using it to pull people to their OnlyFans accounts. Someone who is "…

Your original comment said:

>Censorship happens when a writer is de-platformed, and has nowhere to turn to re-platform themselves. People on HN then give snarky, insincere advice about creating your own web hosting company or whatever.

Substack would be a place for profiling what's happening in the sex worker community, providing news and insight and addressing issues important to individuals within the community. r/GoneWild and OnlyFans don't cater to that; they only want you to post your nude content.

So in your follow up example, there is no other platform that would offer the same kind of service and target audience for sex workers that Substack does.

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

#134

Post by KerrAvon »

hihihihi1234 wrote: post #85
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…

I have a follow-up question to #3. Like the parent post I commend your stance on free speech, but recognise you host some controversial figures that other platforms have been happy to ban. The range of opinion that Big Tech deems permissible seems to be getting narrower and narrower, and as Substack gets bigger it's naturally going to attract more attention, both from those who call for increased censorship, and from…

> The range of opinion that Big Tech deems permissible seems to be getting narrower and narrower

I'm not affiliated with Substack, but I'm having difficulty with your premise here. There's literally a Trump app on the App Store right now dedicated to spreading falsehoods about the 2020 presidential election. What opinions is "Big Tech" "censoring" and why should one think there's any validity to your slippery slope argument?

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

#135

Post by wpietri »

cjbest wrote: post #76
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…

2: We do have a strong philosophical stance on this. We think taking a strong stance in favor of freedom of the press is both the right thing to do, and critical to the success of our broader mission. We've written about this a few times, e.g. https://on.substack.com/p/substacks-view-of-content-moderati... and https://on.substack.com/p/society-has-a-trust-problem-more That is incidentally a big part of the answer for…

That philosophical stance is very common at the beginnings of a platform. E.g., Twitter being the "free-speech wing of the free-speech party". Or Christopher "moot" Poole, who created 4-chan. But over time, tensions develop between the theory and the practice.

So what sorts of things do you folks find personally odious but see it as important to support?

From your terms of service, obviously porn isn't in that category. What about, say, open antisemitism? Will you host and help fund the American Nazi Party or the KKK? How about more borderline actors, like people who promote racist conspiracy theories and ethnic cleansing, but stop short of direct calls for violence?

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

#136

Post by rsingel »

cjbest wrote: post #112
shortformblog wrote: post #102

I’m sure that you probably know my opinion on all this already (given my general loudness about newsletter things in general, as the editor of Tedium), but I’d love to see you offer options to create ecosystem options that don’t rely on having to publish on Substack proper. It seems like creators could use the support of something like Substack without being tied to the publishing platform itself. That seems like a r…

Thank you this is an interesting perspective. Substack today is definitely targeted at people who want a full stack thing and don't want to worry about coding one's own template etc. As someone who does want to self host, which Substack services would be valuable to you? What do you feel like we could offer you?

Google Reader, which y'all claim to love, supported reading any blog, not just Google's owned Blogger.

You could have done the same thing and built a generalized newsletter app.

But instead you built a reader just for Substack, which is clearly built to lock in an open ecosystem, just as medium tried with blogging and Spotify is trying with podcasts.

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

#137

Post by kodah »

NationalPark wrote: post #114
kodah wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... but they are absolutely censoring content for political reasons when they ban the arbitrarily defined category of "pornography". Have they said in plaintext that this is politically motivated or motivated by their "values"? A lot of platforms that censor sexual content don't do so out of their own wants or desires. I mean, what user generated content platform wants less users ? Instead, they're pressured by VC'…

Sure, but that equally applies to companies following the money when they de-platform somebody over public or internal outrage at being associated with or enriching them. The point is that Substack's market position as "place where you can tell your truth after you get cancelled" is inconsistent with the purported motivation of a higher, abstract ideal or value of free speech. It's consistent with wanting to make mon…

I think it's beneficial to be specific about what you're advocating for and what the problem is. What you expressed is that they are actively censoring sex workers for just being sex workers. If they've taken a moral position on that, but not other things then you're right - they're guilty of selective morality and their statement is moot. If on the other hand, they're censoring images and videos but not stories or identities then that's a different ballgame. In that case, the problem doesn't lie with Substack it lies with other institutions that likely have a lot of influence over Substack and may take time and strategy to overcome. As a long time champion of privacy and anti-censorship, advocacy is not some zero-sum game rife with pots of reductions to strong arm people and institutions into what you want. It's about understanding the root of the problem, which likely was formulated in good faith at some time, and trying to course adjust it to fit our world today.

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

#138

Post by kndjckt »

love love love substack. I'm fully hooked and spend over 1 hour a day reading on it. The app looks good, I've been waiting for something like this!

A few comments;

- The font looks quite small (on iPad). Have you considered adding the ability to change font and size?

- Now that all my subs are in here, I don't really need to bombard my inbox. Is there a way so that I can mute sending to my email inbox?

- I love to read when flying. Will my inbox be downloaded for offline reading?

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

#139

Post by 1123581321 »

ubac wrote: post #128

You continued taking your cut from my subscriptions after I'd left your platform (I think because you didn't really understand how Stripe Connect works) and just refused to pay the money back for over a year. What was the deal with that? It struck me as both deeply dishonourable and not even sensible as a business move. Why did you do that, and what does it say about Substack as a company that you did it?

It’s obviously undesirable, but it makes sense to me that a busy company that doesn’t understand Stripe Connect would struggle to research and rectify this. That’s assuming you identified the technical issue correctly, of course.

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

#140

Post by Meekro »

jjulius wrote: post #133
Meekro wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you're right that I'm less upset about pornography because I'm not a consumer of it. But let me give you my best attempt at a principled answer, too.. I'd say that porn producers have lots of places to go that will cater to them, and that will connect them to porn consumers. As I recall, reddit's r/gonewild is huge, and lots of producers are using it to pull people to their OnlyFans accounts. Someone who is "…

Your original comment said: >Censorship happens when a writer is de-platformed, and has nowhere to turn to re-platform themselves. People on HN then give snarky, insincere advice about creating your own web hosting company or whatever. Substack would be a place for profiling what's happening in the sex worker community, providing news and insight and addressing issues important to individuals within the community. r/…

I agree, and my reading of Substack's content guidelines is that this would be allowed. A sex worker could write on Substack about issues important to their community, and then link to their Onlyfans for the porn. That means people who want to avoid the porn could easily do so, and those who want to see it know exactly where to go.
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