Substack writers, you need a website • Hacker News Board

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#181

Post by skybrian » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 9:42 PM UTC

autoexec wrote: post #67

carlosjobim wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do we know they won't start limiting your reach in the future? You can never know anything about what anybody will do in the future? You can't. Why do hackers always use this argument against everything?

> You can never know anything about what anybody will do in the future? You absolutely can know something about what someone will do in the future. You gain those insights by looking at their past and present behavior and the behavior of others in similar circumstances. Hackers tend to be pretty good at pattern recognition and can often see where things are heading. Enshittification is a pretty smart bet.

You can do whatever research you like, but when you attempt to apply it to predicting the future, you're still speculating. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#182

Post by klelatti » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 9:43 PM UTC

8organicbits wrote: post #44

The linked article "What I learned from one year of Substack" [1] perfectly sums up my experience. I can't read the article because I only see a coercive demand to subscribe first. Perhaps that's the joke. [1] https://elizabethtai.com/2023/10/22/what-i-learned-from-one-...

It's not a Substack site and virtually no Substack sites do this.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#183

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 9:44 PM UTC

jonahx wrote: post #144

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…

> 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…

[deleted]

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#184

Post by Barbing » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 9:45 PM UTC

jonahx wrote: post #169

simonsarris wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but because "everyone is there." That ubiquity is the only "genuine utilty" they are offering you. Sure. So what? You nonetheless cannot deny the utility. The friends that I have made from social networks are no less real. I am very grateful they (the means to discover these people now in my life) exist.

We are probably coming at this from different angles. I don't deny those things but they're also not a counter-argument to the point I'm intending to make. As an overly dramatic example, a slave might fall in love with the wife he met on a plantation, and the family he has, and even be grateful for them. Nevertheless, you probably don't want to use those facts to be a booster for slave plantations. My argument is tha…

Less dramatic off top of head: proud poverty built your work ethic but no motivation to pull any social safety net ladders.

Or maybe happy punch card programming developed your 1337 skills but glad IDEs are there for the current generation.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#185

Post by ericjmorey » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 9:52 PM UTC

Forgeties79 wrote: post #33

Bratmon wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire pitch of Substack is "You can export the email addresses of your current subscribers at any time" So if they stop doing the "email my subscribers whenever I post" step, another service will fill the gap pretty quick.

Until they make it more difficult to export lol that’s the real canary in the coal mine if you ask me.

The coal mine is already inhospitable

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#186

Post by coldtea » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 9:57 PM UTC

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #161

coldtea wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because you can in fact know some things about what one person, yourself, will do in the future. Nope. At best you merely know what your current self intends to do in the future. Whether you'll do them then, or whether you'll even still want to do them then, or be able to do them then, or have regretted ever wanting to do them, and many other such things, we don't know.

Nope. As per my second paragraph which you may not have gotten to: >because, barring major illness, you can reasonably assume that you will try to do what is best for yourself in the future. Furthermore the phrase "some things" does not actually mean all things. So again, trying to put it another way to clarify anything that may have been unclear: You can be reasonably certain at the time that you need to make a deci…

>because, barring major illness, you can reasonably assume that you will try to do what is best for yourself in the future.

Regardless of major illness or not, people do stupid things, self destructive things, ill-thought things, impulsive things all the time. At best they'll do "what they think is best" not "what is best" for themselves. And frequently not even that, as people still do all kinds of things they know are bad for them but can't stop themselves anyway.

But even if it was correct, "you can reasonably assume that you will try to do what is best for yourself in the future" is not really strong as an argument against the grandparent's:

"You can never know anything about what anybody will do in the future? You can't. Why do hackers always use this argument against everything?"

The grantparent's argument is about not knowing what you'll be doing in concrete terms, not about merely knowing some abstract guiding principle like "you'll still want to do something you feel is best for you then".

>I do not know what you think is best, but I would normally trust future me over future corporation not owned by me but providing me a service, I guess I'm just funny that way.

Even so, that's worth acting only if the pain of future corporation pulling some shit later on is bigger than the convenience you still get before that, or easier than what you'll lack going without its services.

Also if the cost of just dumping their ass then when they DO turn, and moving to another player, is big.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#187

Post by system7rocks » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 9:57 PM UTC

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…

Yes, I think people who move away from Substack already need to have a brand and a number of followers to drive people to their personal websites, even if they use Ghost. And I do get the concerns that Substack has some super bizarre and awful content in the mix. Their feed shows me stuff every once in a while, from uber-conservative right wing Christians to conspiracy theory nonsense. But my dumb soccer blog/podcast putters along and grows slowly, in some cases, not even from social media posts. It's an interesting platform.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#188

Post by coldtea » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 9:59 PM UTC

ImJamal wrote: post #100

coldtea wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is trivial. Even once a month is enough.

How many writers are even thinking about that though? If they shut it off tomorrow, how many would have a list within the last year?

I'm pretty sure all of them. Because they'll never shut it without advance warning, due to the backlash.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#189

Post by ryukoposting » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 10:03 PM UTC

I wrote this for my own self-hosted blog a few years ago:

> My goal is to write good blog posts, and µstack exists for the purpose of making it as easy as possible for me to write good blog posts. As far as I can tell, there’s no meaningful correlation between the quality of work published on a website, and the amount of engagement that website receives. I could track clicks or traffic or RSS feed queries, but that data would only tell me how many people are reading what I write - it wouldn’t tell me if my writing is any good.

I feel like it's relevant here. The OP tacitly assumes that engagement is the goal, that your purpose in writing is to get eyes on what you wrote. I argue that, for most writers, the goal is self-expression. If that drives engagement, cool. If it doesn't, the purpose has still been fulfilled.

If I were to provide an addendum to the OP, it would be this: consider the goals of your blog, artistic and otherwise. The answer to "what platform is right for me?" might be no platform at all.

If you make good art (or blog posts), people will find you, "platform" or not. The internet is cool that way. Eyes do not good art make.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#190

Post by simonsarris » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 10:03 PM UTC

jonahx wrote: post #169

simonsarris wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but because "everyone is there." That ubiquity is the only "genuine utilty" they are offering you. Sure. So what? You nonetheless cannot deny the utility. The friends that I have made from social networks are no less real. I am very grateful they (the means to discover these people now in my life) exist.

We are probably coming at this from different angles. I don't deny those things but they're also not a counter-argument to the point I'm intending to make. As an overly dramatic example, a slave might fall in love with the wife he met on a plantation, and the family he has, and even be grateful for them. Nevertheless, you probably don't want to use those facts to be a booster for slave plantations. My argument is tha…

I think you are missing the point of talking about utility in the first place. I have no interest in lamentations. If you told someone to stay away from social networks because of their flaws, you would be doing them a cultural and professional disservice.

As a more moderate metaphor it's like someone saying they like living in one city, for all its flaws, and someone else comes along and extolls the virtues of several imaginary cities. It's fun to imagine those places, but its silly to mention them when someone is speaking of utility. This rush to examples not beholden to reality seems more common among technical types than any other, and likely prevents you from benefitting from what exists today.