Up until last year, I felt good about writing on Substack. When I used to wake up, usually my first task was jotting down ideas on my physical notepad or Substack draft. Nowadays I wake up just like before with the new ideas but don’t feel the same motivation to articulate my thoughts on to Substack draft. When there’s no outreach on Substack to an audience, what’s the purpose of writing articles? Actually there’s still a purpose and that’s why I will always continue to write although not with the same fervor as before on Substack. Articulating thoughts and converting them into writing helps me solidify my thinking and also dissipate the erroneous parts of it.
Now Substack is fading as some writers have already recognized. Read this article by publisher Scott Carney. My criticism of Substack is in these past articles and all points of criticism still stand - algorithms bias, third world bias (writers from many developing nations can’t enroll into payment model), arbitrary and hidden rules of moderation etc (1, 2). Now let me elaborate further on problems of Substack - 1) Rising mediocrity and Substack itself promoting & awarding mediocrity 2) Lack of creative destruction in writing style, ideas and narrative 3) Identity crisis of Substack.
Substack mediocrity
Most small writers already know this by now that Substack revolves around few top writers who Substack rewards disproportionately. Discoverability is the biggest problem for smaller writers who struggle to build an outreach for their content. Ideally, Substack algorithms should provide a balancing mechanism which can promote smaller writers to some reasonable degree. Substack doesn’t and leaves small writers with the task of promoting their work. But how? And Substack feels comfortable in business model of retaining top writers and earning a commission from their paid subscription as it feels a safe bet.
This creates problem in two ways. Firstly, many of the top writers aren’t some extraordinary content creators. Some are but many are not. People like Noah Smith & Matthew Yglesias are idiots. Their top position on Substack is partially due to their early entry on the platform and partially just by chance. Think of it as a free market where the early movers get rewarded disproportionately while late comers who may offer better product or services, however, struggle to find footing in the market. And winner in a free market doesn’t necessarily mean that his product is actually superior than his rivals.
So these early movers and top Substackers earn big money on Substack. This was all well and good as long as audience (consumers) kept flocking to Substack and liked their content. But what happens when audience start losing interest in top Substackers? At that point, the audience (consumers) may wanna try a new creator - a different writer with different writing style & narrative - to subscribe. But due to lack of discoverability of smaller writers on Substack who may be more talented and which audience (consumers) may find appealing, the audience (consumer) however fail to connect to them. So consumer may simply walk away without renewing his subscription and he also doesn’t create a new subscription to some new author.
It’s also worth noting that the top Substackers are mostly commentators of conventional wisdom (whether in politics or economics or any other field) and they are - literally or figuratively - the conventional writers of pre-2016 era who occupied the mediocre editorial boards of mainstream media once upon a time. And frankly speaking, to be popular, you need to be mediocre nowadays. Heterodox and avante-garde creators may provide fresh content and newer ideas but it’s not as highly popular because of people’s habitual attraction to conventional opinion.
Second problem with Substack which I’ve known since long but forgot to mention in previous articles is Substack’s advice to creators which basically is that new creators should promote their content on other social media platforms to build subscriber base and larger following. But there’s not much logic in trying to promote Substack content on Facebook, X or Instagram especially for smaller writers who don’t have a fan following. Why? Because X, Facebook & Instagram are platforms of very different nature in comparison to Substack. So how can content creators build new Substack subscribers through promotion on X & facebook? To give you an analogy. It’s like a South Indian chef is being asked to build a customer base by opening a restaurant in traditional Chinese district or Spanish neighborhood or Miami area or Korea town. There’s no compatibility between the customer preferences and chef’s services.
The logic of Substack suggesting content creators to cross promote their work on other platforms was probably that new content creators will somehow lure new consumers (audience) from other platforms. But this is very difficult especially in times when platform like X (formerly Twitter) has degraded to a great extent and many intelligent users have abandoned X platform. And social media platforms these days are generally based on attention seeking, short form, clickbait type addictive content and this doesn’t fits well with long form writing style of traditional Substack.
Substack lacks creative destruction
What was the original idea of Substack? It was a platform for independent writers to publish their content. By content, it means mid to long form essay type articles and usually of characteristics which you cannot otherwise find in mainstream media and magazines. Articles can be on politics, economy, culture, Science, sociology, history etc or a brew of these multiple themes. The mainstream media as we know has become completely bankrupt and doesn’t publish content of this type and actually doesn’t publish any interesting content at all.
Just like any industry, the Substack also needed creative destruction in its business of content creation (or content promotion more precisely because Substack itself doesn’t create any content) to retain & expand its customer base. And for that, it’s necessary to promote avante-garde and heterodox writers as much as possible. Otherwise, Substack will just become like pre-2016 mainstream media which peddled boring conventional opinion in their op-ed sections. And so Substack disproportionately rewarding few writers and putting them on top of the pyramid is actually making Substack boring & mediocre.
And when smaller writers started realizing that they cannot find an outreach on Substack, they either abandon the platform or reduce the frequency of posting. For simple reason - Why would they invest their time & energy in creating content on Substack which doesn’t reach viewers? You may have noticed many abandoned blogs on Substack where creators stopped publishing content.
And secondly and I couldn’t emphasize this point enough which I have already covered in previous article. It’s how Substack has treated writers from many developing nations as ‘second class’ writers and denied them access to paid subscription model. So while discoverability is already a problem with Substack for smaller writers, the attitude of Substack towards writers of developing countries is much worse. So there is little motivation & incentive for writers from these countries to publish content. And believe me that there are many quality writers in these nations who, if incorporated into payment system, will expand content diversity and depth on Substack. But perhaps this is what Substack actually doesn’t like even when this sort of diversity and competition will actually propel creative destruction on Substack.
On a more intellectual level, I would like to point out an interesting phenomenon on Substack. Substack is projected as a progressive cosmopolitan community of writers in contrast to X (which is now heavily tinged with right wing content, racism and vulgarity). One feature of a progressive community should be a certain degree of equality among its members. So why does Substack provides a user from America with privilege access to paid subscription system but not to users in Brazil or India? But that’s not the only point. Have you ever seen the top-of-the-pyramid writers of Substack ever raising this issue about this greatly unfair discrimination between writers of first world and third world nations? Have you heard Paul Krugman or Heather Cox Richardson ever questioning why writers in developing nations aren’t getting paid?
Substack Identity crisis
Substack is facing an identity crisis as it’s trying to compete with other social media platforms like X, facebook and Instagram. One of the reason why Substack introduced Notes feature was an attempt by Substack to transform into a hybrid social media platform that is a cross between its old self and X, tiktok & Instagram. I am familiar with Notes feature and it’s quite attractive (addictive) with its short video reels & especially new trend of AI videos, photos, memes etc and short form messages like microblogging Twitter (X) and tiktok.
A short AI video on Substack feed
There is a logic in Substack trying to emulate reels & microblogging feature of X but it diverts Substack away from its original concept of long form writing. Since last few years, the social media platform like X have degenerated into vulgarity and disinformation which has lead to many users abandoning X. Perhaps Substack wants to capture this audience and somehow incorporate them into Substack community. Substack Notes might be a ‘sanitized’ version of X which was once popular among people.
I mentioned how it’s difficult for Substack writers to build a subscriber base through content promotion on other social media platforms. However, there’s a flurry of activity from users of other Social media platforms like tiktok who are promoting their reels content on Substack Notes. And in a strange irony, while traditional Substack users cannot attract audience from other social media platforms, the users of other social media platforms can do exactly this on Substack more successfully through Notes feature.
In Conclusion
One thing should be kept in mind. We can criticize Substack for the above mentioned problems but Substack isn’t obligated to provide us a decent service. Substack is a private company and its only purpose is maximizing profit. If Substack made profits through business model of traditional long form writing efforts of publishers, that’s well and good and Substack being nice is only an incidental outcome to its primary objective - profit making. Tomorrow if Substack can make profits by changing its business model and becoming more like tiktok or X (or even possibly becoming vulgar in process), then Substack will be happy to adopt such model. Substack has no obligation to publishers or audience of providing what they wish for.
I have witnessed the enshittification of Google, Twitter, eCommerce giants (like Amazon), video game industry and so many other things. And I wouldn’t be surprised if some years down the line, Substack is another ‘enshittified’ platform like X and Facebook.