Live data from Hacker News

Substack Notes Launched

on.substack.com

321–330 of 789 posts

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I follow mostly techies, very few went to mastodon, and among them were none of the ones I cared about. Seems like the people doing the most things in my field have no time for drama and are busy doing stuff, while the ones that actually accomplish little have the time and energy for this.

Counterpoint: most of the Cloud Native crowd I follow moved to Hachyderm. > Seems like the people doing the most things in my field have no time for drama and are busy doing stuff, Standing up for ethics isn't performative drama. I made my exit very quietly because I didn't have time for the drama of a petulant tyrant. I care that the tech I consume is open source or at the very least is guided by some principal of a…

Same thing with iOS devs, everyone I followed on Twitter is now on Mastodon.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You should look up global search volumes and Google share of it. There’s no dent. "You should look up global search volumes and Yahoo's share of it. There’s no dent" was once a valid statement. Same for Altavista, MySpace, etc. You can go from on top to the bottom very fast in this realm.

Same could be said when iPhone came out. Now look where Android is. The fact that something happened to others means nothing. Could go either way. edit: typo

[deleted]

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since when did "ignoring-shit-I-didn't-subscribe-to" become a "formula for creating mini echo-chambers" Is my email inbox an echo chamber because I don't get random newsletters from political activists?

Your email inbox isn't an echo chamber because it's not a social platform. According to this research study, these are the two main ingredients: 1) Homophily in the interaction networks 2) Bias in the information diffusion toward like-minded peers https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2023301118 Substack Notes is their way to venture into the social platform realm, which differs from the personal email inbox model, w…

> because it's not a social platform.

Is that what people actually want? To be algorithmiclly fed content from strangers? Why is this the imputed ideal?

> but ideally an algorithm based feed will promote discourse and dialogue about ideas.

Is there any evidence that this is true or should be an expectation? Is that really why billions of dollars are spent on this space?

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#324
post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, he is definitely upsetting some (many) people. But, at the same time, he is getting the new set of people as users. In the last few years, I would not touch Twitter with a ten-foot pole. Mostly because, I could no longer assess the provenance of the posts and the authenticity of their rankings. Is this post popular/important or is this post was put into my stream by Twitter/other entities in order to influence…

Wait, what? This made no sense.

I was trying to formulate a response, but I can’t top “wait what?”

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The great shake up has started. Google pissing their pants with AIs abrupt arrival, Twitter dying a death by a million cuts, Facebook in mid-air making their VR play, the tech skyline will look very different in 5 years.

You should look up global search volumes and Google share of it. There’s no dent

[deleted]

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There’s no dent By the time there is a dent, it's too late.

Sounds great but you’ll have to provide some logic because I don’t automatically follow your extremely confident opinion…

People here are praying very hard for Twitter to fail. Nearly any social media post nowadays has 50-100 comments predicting Twitter's failure and ranting about Musk. He is living rent-free in many heads now.

Its utterly ludicrous how so many intelligent and rational people are becoming un-hinged whenever Twitter/Musk is mentioned.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#327
post #278
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter's barrier wasn't that it was technically hard - it was that it was free and had critical mass. There still isn't much of a reason to move away from it, except for those who want to signal their disdain for Musk's political views

There still isn't much of a reason to move away from it, except for those who want to signal their disdain for Musk's political views This says so much more about you than about anyone leaving Twitter. I'm a person of colour. Do I have not have a reason to leave a web site that platforms people who espouse the belief that my children are a disease that needs to be eradicated with fire?[1] Of course I do, and you know…

You are arguing that people should share your disdain for Musk's political views. You are not arguing against the claim that this is the only really strong reason why people would want to leave.

Second, libertarian ideals around free speech say that fairly engaging people whose views you disagree with is a better way to change minds than deplatforming them. That is because deplatforming them just encourages them to migrate to cesspools like Truth Social, which then become echo chambers for extremist views. Therefore there are reasons to allow offensive people to remain on a platform other than agreement with their offensive views.

Speaking personally, I am firmly of the belief that the obvious political censorship applied to social networks, including by the previous management of Twitter, is one of the CAUSES of the extremism that lead to the Jan 6 insurrection. You might dislike that there are people who think your children are a disease. But surely you'd dislike it rather more if we slid into an authoritarian dictatorship where people like that are the ones in charge. Therefore it is worth looking past your good reasons for taking offense, and asking seriously what is most likely to keep violent extremist networks forming that are in a position to do just that.

Note that multiple countries in Latin America copied the US Constitution's idea of separation of powers. A common pattern is that they wound up as authoritarian regimes after a powerful executive solved gridlock through declaring a state of emergency. It could happen here. In fact, it nearly did.

And finally, I find the comment that you're responding to far more in the best traditions of Hacker News than your reply. Hacker News has a tradition of polite and reasoned discussion of controversial positions between people of diverse points of view. I would rather keep that tradition alive, rather than implying that people who disagree with you are horrible people who might not mind your children being eradicated with fire.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#328

Substack really competes with creators leaving and setting up their own newsletter + payment gateway software. That’s like a $20,000 or so project from a web dev firm and for a creator who gets $200,000 a year from their newsletter it pays for itself in a year. The trouble is that substack makes almost all of its money from two handfuls of users who make more than that so if substack loses those creators it is left w…

This is similar to the "Amazon problem," where manufacturers can earn a higher margin by selling direct.

>The question about any feature they add is “what does it do about that situation?”

The answer is the same in the cases of Amazon & Substack: generating sales isn't free, and in all likelihood the platform can do it cheaper than you can. Take the $200k writer who pays $20k to Substack annually. Either Substack can generate 166 subscriptions ($10/mo) annually so it's worth the money, or you move. (That's almost correct: if you are a writer, it may be worth it to you to let Substack continue to own this piece so that you don't have to run a business. There's a lot of value in being able to focus on thinking and writing and not SEO and ad placement.)

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#329
post #99
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They raised a ton of money on a high valuation, spent 25mil to make 1 mil last year and are now scrambling to raise a new crowd sourced round because they don't want to get wiped out in a down round. This notes thing looks like an attempt to pivot to an advertising based business model and I'm guessing they think they have "influencers" on their platform to bring in a decent audience.

Next on the product roadmap: - Infinite scrolling feed w/ ads - Video Substacks - Infinite scrolling video Substacks w/ ads

But teh videoz need be shoorts

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#330
post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried Edge and bing, God awful. You just feel their desire to take control of your experience of the web. On the flip site, made me see how much Google own us all.

I use ddg everyday and I hate it. I resort to Google shortly after. Not personalised so I guess I am missing out on decent returns.

Have you tried kagi? I‘m finding it better than ddg and often on paar with G.
Post reply on HN