https://notes.ghed.in/posts/2022/substack-centralization/

Notes

by Rodrigo Ghedin

On Substack Centralization

15/11/2022

Time and again we get the feeling that human history is doomed to the
same old script over and over again, only with slightly different
characters and contexts.

A few years ago Substack emerged as a prime destination for weekend
writers and people who want to take the radical act of writing
longform text on the web seriously. Not by chance: it is an
easy-to-use, fancy, and ever evolving tool. Most importantly, it is
totally free unless you charge for your newsletter, and there is no
pressure to charge for it at all.

It's not a surprise, then, that a centralization on Substack is
underway. Besides seeing more and more newsletters with addresses
ending in substack.com, my attention was drawn to the phenomenon by
this post from Erik Hoel (at his Substack page!). In it, Hoel extols
some of the alegedly decentralized features of Substack, its network
effects, and the growth potential it unleashes in newsletters of all
sizes.

It's not unlike what happened on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and
what happens in parallel on TikTok. Produce your content there, on a
powerful yet easy-to-use third party platform free of charge, in
exchange for people's attention. Or else, you end up in a situation
like Medium's, which seems to pivot every six months, leaving a trace
of confused and disapointed writers behind.

This works well until the day the platform starts wanting to
capitalize, to realize its promise (of profits). Then your reach
collapses, and if you want to communicate with people who have
followed/subscribed to your profile at some point in the past, you
need to pay.

Substack is still in the growth phase and has a cool, anti-social
media vibe. At heart, it's a classic startup, with USD 80+ million
raised in four rounds of investment by firms like a16z, Y Combinator,
and Quiet Capital -- the usual ones.

For all the good that Substack does (and it's quite a lot), the
balance of concentrating active web and email writing in a startup
only tends to the negative. Because it's only a matter of time before
the writers' belching begins. When it does, the next Substack better
be ready. These turnarounds are usually abrupt and destructive.

Discuss @ Hacker News or Twitter.

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