Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Substack Notes Launched

on.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

651–660 of 789 posts

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#651

Post by Incipient »

lapcat wrote: post #524
m_ke wrote: 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.

> This notes thing looks like an attempt to pivot to an advertising based business model It's not. Substack is very clear about that. https://on.substack.com/p/notes-faq "The ultimate goal on Substack is to convert casual readers into paying subscribers. Because the Substack network runs on paid subscriptions, writers are rewarded for respecting the trust and attention of their audiences, not exploiting it like with…

Because no company would ever lie about their intentions, or at the very least pivot to the exact opposite of their original point without a second thought.

Would they?

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#652

Post by gordian-mind »

wpietri wrote: post #421
sundaeofshock wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are ignoring the whole Verification process. It was the only platform where users could have interactions with prominent people in a variety of fields and know the interaction was legitimate. That mattered! Killing the verification system chased away many blue checks, who happened to generate a huge amount of traffic for the site. Musks politics on their own didn’t create problems. However, Musk’s tolerance for h…

As somebody who used to do anti-abuse engineering for Twitter, maybe I'm biased here. But I don't think his politics are separable from his tolerance for hate speech. I think they're closely related. The tricky part here is, as you point to, not wanting to see people abused is turning out to be good business. That's why Twitter came around on hate speech, harassment, and the like. Claiming to be the "free speech wing…

> You have to pick between the Nazis or the people they like to harass.

Nice rhetoric, but no you still do not get to censor people.

> The US consumer economy is diverse enough that businesses can no longer focus exclusively on the (shrinking) white audience

On your "woke", "humane", "inclusive spaces", I hope that celebrating the "shrinking" of the black population of any country on Earth would put you in the category of the terrible people... Double standards etc.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#653

Post by mlindner »

aniforprez wrote: post #649
mlindner wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the data shows that racist content is down significantly following the purchase.

That's very much not the case https://www.euronews.com/2023/03/20/antisemitism-higher-than...

Look at the details of that report. They're measuring by _number_ of tweets rather than impressions. Hate speech impressions are down. i.e. if you want hate speech you have to go out of your way to find it using bots. Normal users are seeing them less after the purchase.

It's really tiring to counter so much misinformation about this that flies about.

It's not just a one-time drop either, the impressions continues to go down. https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1613335965996810241

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#654

Post by jeroenhd »

bmikaili wrote: post #635
jeroenhd wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 peop…

I mean texts.com does what matrix does without the overhead

So do Beeper and Pidgin. The exact mechanism isn't relevant of course.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#655

Post by jeroenhd »

Ecstatify wrote: post #633
jeroenhd wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 peop…

Federation is someone doing a cool card trick at a cocktail party. Does it look cool? Yes. Is anyone going to go out and buy a deck of cards the next morning and learn how to do it? No.

Federation is the core of the internet and that has taken off, so sure they do. Email and phone numbers took off, isolated ISPs all died out.

We're getting some form of federation of messengers and other technology companies deemed "gatekeepers" by the EU. Companies serving large user bases won't have a choice, so there's no need to go out am buy anything.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#656

Post by blitzar »

te_chris wrote: post #62
m_ke wrote: 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.

ZIRP picking off its victims one by one

You are not a victim in any real sense if they cut you a fat cheque first then take away the toys.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#657

Post by ymolodtsov »

pornel wrote: post #73
m_ke wrote: 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.

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

They haven't lost it. They paid advanced to writers but they will gather their share in a few years.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#658

Post by ymolodtsov »

gimme_treefiddy wrote: post #109
m_ke wrote: 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.

> 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. Sorry to get off-topic, but is there a read/book to understand funding, VCs, etc., from a holistic POV. I totally didn't expect that consequence of having to raise a crowd sourced round due to initial high valuation.

Venture Deals by Bred Feld is the best book on the matter

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#659

Post by cactusplant7374 »

mlindner wrote: post #634
yangikan wrote: post #594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be done without being an asshole (for example without insulting a handicapped person) https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/elon-musk-gets-involved-...

Note: he did not insult a handicapped person. At no point did he attack his disability. That was a cruel twisting of facts by the media. Further he was misled by someone feeding him incorrect information and promptly apologized for the confusion. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1633253950198624257

He found out Twitter would need to pay him 100M. That is a big incentive to backpedal.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#660

Post by Omatic810 »

mlindner wrote: post #653
aniforprez wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's very much not the case https://www.euronews.com/2023/03/20/antisemitism-higher-than...

Look at the details of that report. They're measuring by _number_ of tweets rather than impressions. Hate speech impressions are down. i.e. if you want hate speech you have to go out of your way to find it using bots. Normal users are seeing them less after the purchase. It's really tiring to counter so much misinformation about this that flies about. It's not just a one-time drop either, the impressions continues to…

Here's the report, the claim had no misinformation. https://beamdisinfo.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Antisemit...

Hate speech IS up. The claim was "hate speech is up". Impressions being down matters to the impact of the speech, but the claim stands - hate speech is up. You can claim it doesn't matter (and I might agree with you, since impressions are down, people know what to expect now, and the increase is significant but not huge at this point), but you can't honestly say the claim "hate speech is up" is misinformation.

Edit: Actually, I had the claim backwards - YOU said it was DOWN, and you were wrong (according to the report). So to correct myself - the person refuting your claim was right, and spread no misinformation.

Post reply on HN