Substack - Data Proles, algorithms and 3rd world bias

A street in Delhi, India

My first run in with Substack came when I found that Substack can de-platform users without any warning, proper notice or valid reason. Then I researched and found out that there are other people who faced similar fate. Now recently, I read this note by user Claire Hartnell which I am reproducing in full.

I’ve just read 2 posts lamenting Substack’s descent into clickbait Notes driven short form content. I want to explain what’s happening here & why.

Initially, Substack, like all social media platforms, was like a market where independent & equal(ish) writers shared content. Some writers were more successful than others, but in a small marketplace, this didn’t undermine other writers. Users were still exposed to their writing. Gradually, more users began to flock to Substack. Now you have an algorithm problem. How does the algorithm address increasing information flows? There are 3 choices:

1. Distribute the flows randomly (every user gets served random content from big or small accounts)

2. Distribute the flows on a time basis (effectively queue them & serve them as they arrive)

3. Distribute the flows according to a hierarchical arrangement (show accounts on the basis of account size, Likes etc)

1) is the fairest but Substack can’t make much money this way. Users will keep seeing niche posts on gothic Victorian literature or whatever & they’ll stop engaging. 2) is how original bulletin boards worked. Stories take off for a while, then trail off into oblivion. For Substack, this could work but it doesn’t drive 💰💰. To monetise this site & pay back the investors, you need “success to the successful” loops. You need 3), where people keep seeing their echo chamber content & they ‘like’ it because others liked it (social contagion) leading to spiralling (success to the successful feedback loops). This way, you get writers with 250k subscribers who patently do not write 250k x better content than the bedroom blogger with 1 subscriber.

But as these 250k subscriber accounts start to generate income, outsiders with strong media platforms think: that sounds like a nice way to monetise my boring, orthodox political content. And maybe I can supplement the pennies I make submitting articles to The Guardian or The Times. So on they all come = massive new information flows.

Now Substack has an algorithm problem again. How to manage the variety? Just look at complex civilisations - the answer is simple: hierarchy. So now thresholds are introduced & you get a little character next to your name if you hit a certain number of subscribers. But like any caste or hierarchy, it becomes very difficult to jump between layers? Why, because each threshold is algorithmically destined to get more ‘serves’ than the layer below. A grand “success to the successful” spiral. How do people respond? Manically, with short form content. And the content must be: emotionally salient, easy to absorb, visually attractive & conformist.

The result? You get a Gresham’s Law of content. Bad content pushes out the good stuff & we’re all drowning in homogenous clickbait & wondering why we never stumble upon those interesting, curious accounts we used to find 3 years ago.

It’s because Substack is not providing a public service. It wants your eyeballs to monetise a few huge accounts so it can scrape its fee. And if you see thousands of small, free accounts every day? Fewer subscriptions = less income. So Substack will go the way of all the rest. Subscriber capital will concentrate in a few accounts at the centre & the periphery will try & game tge algorithm with pointless short form content bollox that you can read, understand & Like without any cognitive effort.

Which is why this post will get a few Likes, if I’m lucky. But if I posted a picture of my dog jumping off my garden wall like a lunatic (he does this) I’d probably get 50 Likes.

It’s depressing but it’s how the shitty attention economy works.

Claire talks about the Algorithm bias of Substack which evidently most users already know by now through observation. You can see that many Notes on your Substack timeline are attention seeking, click bait or rage bait. Most Notes I get on my feed do not have any connection to my area of interest. But that’s not the only problem with Substack. Claire has already explained how few big writers captures the oligopoly space on Substack. Now some of them do produce good articles while many of them produce mediocre content (and earn up to a million dollar in revenue). I won’t name these top writers who are good and who are mediocre. If you’re familiar with Substack by now, you know who these people are.

Substack has another bias which most people don’t talk about - the third world bias. In most developing countries, Substack doesn’t have payment revenue system to support independent writers. Substack’s payment system is Stripe which processes the revenue and provides transfers to content creators. This system is not available in most countries of the world, especially the developing nations. Take example of my home country India - a country of over 1.4 Billion people - so called largest democracy in the world. Many independent writers from India are on Substack but because of Stripe limitation, they don’t receive any money.

Some years ago, Substack started an invite-only experimental system in India where it allowed some businesses to enroll in its Stripe revenue model. But a normal writer cannot enroll in the screening process of this invite-only system which has arbitrary limitations. There are many great content creators on Substack who have a platform to write …. but they won’t get paid. If you’re in America, you can get started on Substack revenue system straightaway. Not in India and many other developing countries. I read somewhere that Substack was planning to expand Stripe revenue system to all independent writers in India by end of 2025. But I don’t see this happening.

Substack payment network - Only few developing countries on the list, that too with arbitrary limitations

So who are we - the independent writers from third world and poor nations? What best defines our status on Substack? We are data proles of the lowest order. We don’t own anything on Substack and neither do we get any income for our content. Our data belongs to Substack and many viewers appreciate it. I am just a small writer but there are many others with significant following, yet they earn nothing. To understand the concept of Data proletariat, I suggest you read the book Technofeudalism by Yanis Varoufakis.

I started writing nearly 6 years ago on blogspot (Blogger) and came to Substack 2 years ago. Writing for monetary gains wasn’t my real goal as I haven’t made a penny from both my blogs where I’ve collectively published more than 150 articles and two free ebooks. Writing was a way to refine my ideas, articulating and documenting my thought process. It has been a good journey as I experienced my evolving thought process over the years.

After 6 years of writing, I am starting to think that I want to write more, even full time if possible. But then I don’t see the incentive. Writing full time requires a more dedicated effort and a stable income. That Substack doesn’t give me or many independent writers like me from developing nations. There’s a lot of potential among these writers but not any real incentive. And that’s the sad reality of Substack. Meanwhile, there are users sitting in America or Canada who earn hundreds of thousands of dollar easily by doing part time writing.

What can you - the reader - do anything about it? You can ask Substack to start payment system for independent writers in India. Maybe they will listen.