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Substack Notes Launched

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Re: Substack Notes Launched

#621

Post by jeroenhd »

sanderjd wrote: post #553
jacquesm wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope it doesn't. Because it essentially sets us up for a repeat. If Mastodon was 'just not the thing people were looking for' then at least it solves the problems that both Twitter and Substack have, which is that they are not federated. Better to fix Mastodon than to waste another decade on something that will ultimately blow up and with the way Substack has - in my head at least - been associated negatively with…

Unfortunately, this perspective seems very head-in-a-bubble to me. It's a tiny tiny number of people who think the problem with Twitter and Substack is that they aren't federated. Federation isn't a feature people broadly care about. If it makes the platform work better, great! But I don't think that's the case for Mastodon or any other federated platform I've come across. It's the opposite, they make concessions on…

I disagree. Federation is a feature people want, but they don't know about the concept.

When I show people that I can talk to Signal, WhatsApp, and Signal through a single app, they're pretty impressed. I wouldn't expect most people to set up a Matrix bridging system like I did, same with most Mastodon servers, but it's a feature people do generally want.

With Mastodon, most people first ask "but how do I follow people on Twitter", which often leads to pointing at bridges that may stop working at any point and have no official status, and often get blocked on small servers because of the overwhelming wave of moderation spam they cause.

Phone manufacturers back in the day used to have quite commonly used "social hub" apps that would combine various social media sources into a single UI, but they were all tied to their own brand that either got too difficult to maintain or lost the phone wars (HTC and Blackberry had quite well-received integrations if I recall).

The past years we've been stuck with a locked in ecosystem for so long that the mere idea of two different apps interoperating has become inconceivable to the mainstream.

I hope the DMA, which will force messenger apps to interoperate, will bring back the knowledge that it's possible to do so at the very least.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#622

Post by jeroenhd »

davidw wrote: post #377
jacquesm wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope it doesn't. Because it essentially sets us up for a repeat. If Mastodon was 'just not the thing people were looking for' then at least it solves the problems that both Twitter and Substack have, which is that they are not federated. Better to fix Mastodon than to waste another decade on something that will ultimately blow up and with the way Substack has - in my head at least - been associated negatively with…

> Better to fix Mastodon Is that possible? Seems kind of difficult due to its nature, but I admit I'm just a very casual user of it and don't know much. Signed up for the Substack thing. Seems worth a look - it's very similar to Twitter.

What do you consider difficult about it?

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#623

Post by jeroenhd »

IshKebab wrote: post #450
Andrex wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact Mastodon sites don't even load without JS is absurd, a huge not-talked-about barrier to entry (globally), and a betrayal of its "protocol-first" talking points. Until that changes Mastodon isn't trying to be a serious player.

Does Twitter load without JavaScript? I do not think the tiny number of uber-nerds who disable JavaScript have any effect on Mastadon.

I disable Javascript on occasion to save power.

Twitter definitely does not load without loading several megabytes of Javascript. Nitter.net is a quick and easy substitute that loads instantly without it, though some video playback still requires Javascript (HLS video).

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#624

Post by astrange »

alfor wrote: post #287
waboremo wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk is the least of my concerns, I can ignore his account if I cared that much. I can't really ignore that a lot of higher quality accounts have been interacting less because Twitter has become a technical mess, fucking up their timelines and notifications. This sort of loss is quiet, and slow. You only really notice it when it's too late, when your feed is nothing but mindless ads and random accounts you never foll…

Haven't see any meaninfull problems. A bit less spam and crap.

Pretty easy to attract spambots, just mention "metamask instagram account hijack unban sugar daddy glock". There's a lot of other-language spam too, some of it from state actors trying to hide news in the search results.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#625

Post by snordgren »

2h wrote: post #496
obblekk wrote: post #201

This is a case where an algorithmic feed would make this into a truly amazing product. I don't want email spam from every follower, but do want to see the best snippets on substack. Super easy to create a for you page, given text content: Step 1: embed every article I ever read, or note I liked/comment/share and stuff it in a DB. Step 2: every time a new note is posted (by anyone anywhere), embed it, search the db fo…

> This is a case where an algorithmic feed would make this into a truly amazing product. how many platforms need to be ruined by an algorithmic feed before people understand that its a terrible idea?

Algorithmic feeds generate more user engagement, that is what they are for. That's why platforms built around following updates from people that you like can't help themselves but implement them.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#626

Post by astrange »

crysin wrote: post #395
ModernMech wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Musk is the least of my concerns, I can ignore his account if I cared that much. You really can't tho. Even if you block him, he'll still routinely show up in your timeline when people tweet a jpg of his tweets. Even if you somehow ignore all that, he'll still do random shit like change the Twitter logo to a dog to make sure you don't forget it's his playground, and you're just an NPC in his main character existenc…

That wasn't just any dog, that was doge the now mascot and namesake of the cryptocurrency dogecoin of which Musk has been known to pump with memes.

He's being sued for pumping it too, which makes 4/3 a weird time to run a late April Fool's joke about it.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#627

Post by astrange »

brigandish wrote: post #534
dysoco wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 ISN'T? Ever since Musk stepped in it's riddled with bugs and changes for the worse. As an example very recently and as of now Twitter Circles are broken and tweets that should be private only for a select few are visible to anyone in the "For You" tab. This is MASSIVE and probab…

It was always riddled with bugs, I'm not sure why people are blaming that on Musk as that is surely the least applicable of any of the criticisms that get thrown his way. Are people's memories that short that they thought it was a bug free experience up till a few months ago?

It had a lot of performance and loading bugs, but it never showed me private tweets.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#628

Post by BulgarianIdiot »

yifanl wrote: post #162
pornel wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Losing only 24 million sounds like a bargain. Imagine spending 40 billion to pay 1 billion more in interest each year.

I mean consider also: Imagine being in a position where you can spend 40 billion and it doesn't wipe you out.

It’s wiping him out in slow motion.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#629

Post by onion2k »

nicenewtemp84 wrote: post #280
yifanl wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean consider also: Imagine being in a position where you can spend 40 billion and it doesn't wipe you out.

Imagine spending only 30% of your net worth and getting to experiment with buying and growing one of the most used and talked about sites on the internet. If I spent 30% of my net worth I could buy a condo in the bay, possibly. Although odds are it would be worth close to that if I needed to sell it. But many people spend 30% of their net worth trying to start businesses with almost no traction. Musk spent 30% to buy…

Imagine spending only 30% of your net worth and getting to experiment with buying and growing one of the most used and talked about sites on the internet.

That sounds like one of the least interesting things I could do with $44bn.

With that sort of money I could fund 1000 Twitter rivals, and after a couple of years combine the successful and interesting ones into a single rival that would actually do something better than Twitter.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#630

Post by neural_thing »

m_ke wrote: post #58
ghiculescu wrote: post #48

I love Substack. But apart from to mess with Twitter I really don’t understand the point of this. https://substack.com/profile/241262-casey-newton/note/c-1446... I’d a good summary. I don’t want to subscribe to hundreds of newsletters to see tweet (sorry, notes). But if you change that setup, it really is a Twitter clone with no upside to writers.

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.

Their 2021 revenue is $12M. We don't know their 2022 revenue. Your numbers are just wrong.

Source:

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1783191/000167025423...

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