Ana Marie Cox on the Shaky Foundation of Substack as a Business

Post by cnst » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 4:37 PM UTC

scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #10

rwmj wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There must be an opportunity here for someone who can stand up a medium-sized website and integrate it with a payment provider to take Substack's lunch money?

I've always struggled to understand this part: what is it that Substack came up with that we did not have earlier? Aren't there a hundred examples out there of medium-sized websites providing a similar infrastructure mix?

Post by hiddencost » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 4:43 PM UTC

barrrrald wrote: post #16

This post didn't age well – 3 weeks later Substack announced a $100m fundraise at $1.1b valuation. [1] Ana's contention that Substack is "rickety" seems motivated by her conviction that they should adopt a more assertive, aggressive censorship regime, and that "we need a world where a social safety net protects risky writing". There are certainly many interesting questions about the future of media and Substack's bus…

Post by add-sub-mul-div » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 4:46 PM UTC

barrrrald wrote: post #16

This post didn't age well – 3 weeks later Substack announced a $100m fundraise at $1.1b valuation. [1] Ana's contention that Substack is "rickety" seems motivated by her conviction that they should adopt a more assertive, aggressive censorship regime, and that "we need a world where a social safety net protects risky writing". There are certainly many interesting questions about the future of media and Substack's bus…

Post by KerrAvon » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 4:52 PM UTC

randallsquared wrote: post #15

jeswin wrote: post #3

> It’s as unstable as a SpaceX launch Hate makes people blind. Starship is failing by design - that's just how they're choosing to develop it. The chopsticks video that we saw earlier was very nearly science fiction. And as far as regular launches go, SpaceX has done more successful launches than any company or nation ever. But more generally, this idea of abandoning an app (or product) the moment you encounter peopl…

Abandoning a community the moment you encounter people who disagree with you is how one builds a bubble strong enough to say things like the bit you quoted.

Post by nova22033 » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 4:55 PM UTC

barrrrald wrote: post #16

This post didn't age well – 3 weeks later Substack announced a $100m fundraise at $1.1b valuation. [1] Ana's contention that Substack is "rickety" seems motivated by her conviction that they should adopt a more assertive, aggressive censorship regime, and that "we need a world where a social safety net protects risky writing". There are certainly many interesting questions about the future of media and Substack's bus…