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Ask HN: Why is Substack so popular?

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Re: Ask HN: Why is Substack so popular?

#51

Post by honkdaddy »

carschno wrote: post #40

Here's a more skeptical article about Substack's (future) popularity in the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/13/business/media/substack-g... The article also touches upon factors of Substack's success: > [...] the platform portrayed itself as a haven for independent writers with fewer resources while offering six-figure advances to several prominent white men. The hands-off content moderation policy [...]

I figured that the NYT would go for the identity politics angle when building a takedown for one of their budding competitors.

What I found most amusing about that article was the lack of mention of Bari Weiss, the extremely popular Jewish journalist who wrote for the NYT for years before joining Substack and quickly becoming one of their most popular paid newsletters. It seems like a pretty relevant detail in the Substack story, but because it doesn't aid the narrative of the platform being a haven for right-wing white males, NYT naturally left it out. Pretty poor reporting, IMO.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Substack so popular?

#52

Post by zthrowaway »

the_only_law wrote: post #6

Substack feels like Medium except instead of blogspam from overexcited junior React developers, you get blogspam from wannabe pseudo-philosophers. As other have mentioned the lack of Paywall is nice tho. Medium had one of the most frustrating iirc.

I wonder if at some point they'll have to go into "growth mode" and look to increase revenue, and there comes in ads and paywalls. I think they are great right now because they are young and aren't beholden to such things. Time will tell.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Substack so popular?

#53

Post by dragonwriter »

alexashka wrote: post #50

Because it makes it easy to do journalism and get paid to do journalism. The get paid part is important. You like one writer on substack, you give em 5 bucks a month. You like someone else, it's exactly the same process to give 5 bucks . It's the same as Twitch (for gamers) - where people give 5$/month to people who just stream themselves playing computer games. It's because it's a single click and it's the same clic…

> Because it makes it easy to do journalism and get paid to do journalism.

It makes it easy to write and get paid for writing; the incentives are very much against doing journalism, and even the former journalists on substack that I’ve seen mostly aren't doing journalism, and some are quite open that escaping journalistic standards and norms and was a big part of their motivation.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Substack so popular?

#54

Post by Inu »

hall0ween wrote: post #28
tharne wrote: post #4

They are very pro free speech, so you tend to get more interesting (and potentially more heretical) writers compared to other platforms.

Could you provide a link or two of content that might be censored elsewhere? I am curious to read “banned literature”.

I'd say one example would be Curtis Yarvin:

https://graymirror.substack.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin

Also Nick Land:

https://zerophilosophy.substack.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Land

Re: Ask HN: Why is Substack so popular?

#55

Post by rchaud »

It's popular on HN because it's VC-backed, and VCs regularly "pump" their investments by writing articles and posting them to HN. Here's one from A16z about the idea of monetizing passion projects:

https://future.a16z.com/passion-economy/

I'd wager it's also popular on HN because of the current debate about free speech online and 'cancel culture'. Substack is the upstart here against the stodgy big media status quo, so that will always pull in some level of ideological support.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Substack so popular?

#56

Post by michaelt »

hall0ween wrote: post #28
tharne wrote: post #4

They are very pro free speech, so you tend to get more interesting (and potentially more heretical) writers compared to other platforms.

Could you provide a link or two of content that might be censored elsewhere? I am curious to read “banned literature”.

According to [1] anti-vaxxers "have flocked to Substack, podcasting platforms and a growing number of right-wing social media networks over the past year after getting kicked off or restricted on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube."

If you're interested in censored material more broadly, you might be interested in the ALA's most challenged books lists [2] which include such classics as "Of Mice and Men" and "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" along with books as widely loved as "Harry Potter" and "James and the Giant Peach"

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/01/27/substac... [2] https://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbook... https://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbook...

Re: Ask HN: Why is Substack so popular?

#58

Post by matthewmacleod »

The UI and experience is generally pretty good, and it feels quite a lot like what Medium could have been but failed hard at. It's simple and does what it sets out to do well, which is pretty rare considering how bad most content-driven platforms have become. If you want to subscribe to the content of a specific writer, it's an easy and direct way to do that.

As a platform it's host to a lot of the kinds of semi-philosophical writing of the sort that the hacker news audience tends to rate highly, which is why you'll see it pop up a lot here. The "pro-freedom-of-speech" or "anti-censorship" stuff you'll probably see in the responses is a little overblown generally – but since it's an individual publishing platform for writers (rather than a distinct media presence in its own right) you're more likely to see views that more mainstream publications don't want to promote. Again, something that the HN crowd is pretty hot on.

(I will say generally that a Hacker News post from a Substack domain at this point has become a bit of a negative signal for me in the same way that Medium has – except instead of suffering through a terrible React tutorial you'll be sitting through a contrarian middlebrow essay. But of course exceptions abound and YMMV).

Re: Ask HN: Why is Substack so popular?

#59

Post by civilized »

I think the appeal of Substack can be seen by comparison to their closest big competitor, Medium:

1. Substack pages load quickly and cleanly. You don't have to watch your browser have a seizure as it brings in a long tail of weird ad/tracking crap.

2. The page is very low-distraction. The writing is given pride of place.

3. I hit paywalls and login walls on Medium much more often than on Substack.

4. I know many interesting writers on Substack. I don't know any interesting writers on Medium.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Substack so popular?

#60

Post by rchaud »

zthrowaway wrote: post #52
the_only_law wrote: post #6

Substack feels like Medium except instead of blogspam from overexcited junior React developers, you get blogspam from wannabe pseudo-philosophers. As other have mentioned the lack of Paywall is nice tho. Medium had one of the most frustrating iirc.

I wonder if at some point they'll have to go into "growth mode" and look to increase revenue, and there comes in ads and paywalls. I think they are great right now because they are young and aren't beholden to such things. Time will tell.

> I think they are great right now because they are young and aren't beholden to such things.

AKA the 'burning investor capital' stage.

I remember when Uber could ignore the laws of economics and freely undercut taxicab prices. Now they cost the same, if not more.

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