[HN Gopher] Substack is (not) now powered by Ghost
___________________________________________________________________
Substack is (not) now powered by Ghost
Author : agd
Score : 325 points
Date : 2022-12-12 16:12 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| [deleted]
| holgersindbaek wrote:
| I'd loved to have implemented this for my chrismas themed
| solitaire: https://online-solitaire.com/?theme=christmas.
|
| Good job!
| jasonhansel wrote:
| This is why you should use the AGPL.
|
| Otherwise, corporations can and will make immense profits from
| your unpaid work without contributing anything in return.
|
| The goal of FOSS should be to create a new ecosystem that puts
| users in control, not to provide free labor to private
| enterprises.
| Kiro wrote:
| You have no right to dictate what the goal of FOSS is about.
| It's also patronizing to claim Ghost made some kind of mistake
| here. They obviously picked MIT for a reason, which means they
| are fine with companies making profits from their unpaid work.
| freedomben wrote:
| OP did not seem to be complaining about it though. In fact he
| seemed happy about it. Only the lack of attribution was a
| problem.
| 40four wrote:
| Maybe not outright complaining, but the whole thread does
| come off as a little passive aggressive/ salty to me.
| nerdawson wrote:
| It's written in a very passive aggressive way. He's not
| congratulating substack, he's calling them out.
|
| The attribution aspect of it seems intentionally misleading
| in my view. Are the MSM, who'll be chomping at the bit to
| attack their competitor, Substack, going to delve into the
| finer points of software licenses or rather just quote the
| tweet?
| jasonhansel wrote:
| I'm not saying that Ghost should use the AGPL, I'm saying
| that this is a warning to other projects that use the MIT
| license and wouldn't want to see their work commercialized
| this way.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| If Substack uses Ghost, why not just use Ghost itself? I'm
| thinking about doing that instead of Substack for my newsletter.
| cjbest wrote:
| One of the founders here. Here's a copy of the response I posted
| on Twitter.
|
| --
|
| A response to @JohnONolan here to clear up some serious
| misunderstandings
| https://twitter.com/JohnONolan/status/1602330377812643850
|
| First of all, huge respect to the Ghost team. Their open source
| contributions are valuable, and their approach to theming enables
| some great-looking things. That said, some important corrections:
|
| Substack is not "powered by Ghost". Rather, we built our own
| theming API that's compatible with themes built for Ghost,
| including those built by third parties.
|
| The Free Press is using a modified Tripoli theme, built by Ahmad
| Ajmi, under a paid license. This is how this is supposed to work.
| It's good for the theme developer if we support this - you should
| check them out here. https://aspirethemes.com/themes/tripoli
|
| This was relatively quick to build for Substack devs, because the
| structure of Ghost sites matches Substack fairly closely.
|
| With respect to the search library, this is an open source
| library that we are using in a fully compliant way. John's own
| screen shot shows that we don't load it "from Ghost's own CDN",
| it comes from jsDelivr https://www.jsdelivr.com
|
| This is a standard way to use an open source library. It's
| pulling from the version that the sodo-search maintainers
| published to NPM (thank you!).
|
| It is a good point that we should lock a version, so that if they
| accidentally published a minor version revision with breaking
| changes it doesn't cause problems for us. We've fixed that.
|
| We're grateful to the developer of the Tripoli theme and to Ghost
| for its contributors to open source work. We're exploring ways to
| give writers more customization on Substack. This is one approach
| we're considering but it's too early to know if we'll scale it
| up.
|
| And @JohnONolan, thanks for the note at the end about potential
| collaboration. In our minds, we're on the same side of an
| important battle for a better internet. We're definitely up to
| chat.
| hiidrew wrote:
| I love substack. You guys have been doing a lot for the info
| landscape to return to the blogsphere. But I would love you
| even more if there was dark mode, I want to read in bed!
| -sincerely a huge fan of your platform
| internet_jockey wrote:
| There's dark mode in the app (iOS or Android) and in the web
| reader at substack.com (which you can see when you're logged
| in)
| xNeil wrote:
| Hi Chris! Love what you're doing with Substack. One quick thing
| though - this may seem weird, but Substack at the moment does
| not, in my opinion, offer a lot of customisation of the
| website. If you see a website, it's extremely easy to tell its
| a Substack.
|
| Over the past year, I've only read high quality Substack posts
| - and my brain has sort of come to instinctively believe that
| if I see that specific layout, the post will be high quality.
| E.g. (not a very nice one) but in general, if I see the Medium
| layout, my brain almost immediately get turned off, believing
| the quality of the content to be sub-par.
|
| I think individual theming, as in the case of The Free Press,
| takes away that immediate notion. I understand that the vast
| majority of people will not face this issue, but I think I
| will. I just wanted to know if you think this is an issue, and
| if it is, what you'll do to 'counter' it. I'd really like to
| hear your thoughts on this!
| rchaud wrote:
| > E.g. (not a very nice one) but in general, if I see the
| Medium layout, my brain almost immediately get turned off,
| believing the quality of the content to be sub-par.
|
| What you're saying about Substack is what people said about
| Medium in 2013. Just as Medium didn't go into the toilet
| overnight, Substack's universal theme isn't going to save it
| from irrelevance if the content isn't there.
| cjbest wrote:
| This is a great point, and one that we're honestly in the
| process of trying to make progress on.
|
| Ideally, I would love to have both:
|
| - Writers and creators on Substack are in complete control of
| the brand and feel of their publication
|
| And:
|
| - All publications look & work well - Readers get the benefit
| of already understanding some of what this thing is, which
| makes it easier to subscribe with confidence - We can
| continue to ship rapid improvements across all of Substack
|
| In practice, there are tradeoffs involved here and we're
| trying to figure out how to push both sides as far as
| possible, while maintaining a simple and powerful product.
| klelatti wrote:
| Just to support this perspective.
|
| It's not only the quality point - which I agree with - but
| the fact that you know it's Substack means that readers
| immediately know it's a newsletter.
|
| Plus it stops you wasting time fiddling with themes too much!
| dmix wrote:
| Having themes work across multiple major platforms is a boon
| for theme designers (and people creating blogs). It's a great
| idea to standardize it as much as possible.
|
| > John's own screen shot shows that we don't load it "from
| Ghost's own CDN", it comes from jsDelivr
|
| That bit was the strangest part of the accusations, this is the
| Ghost CEO, he should know jsDelivr is not really "their" CDN
| but a generic asset host.
|
| > "However, directly loading scripts from our CDN on their
| platform is very bad for security."
| https://twitter.com/JohnONolan/status/1602330410490396672
|
| jsDelivr is meant exactly for this purpose though, isn't it?
| For JS files to be reused across different sites so it can be
| cached easier? Not locking versions is the only real issue
| here.
| bakkoting wrote:
| Note that caching resources across sites isn't really a thing
| anymore. See https://github.com/whatwg/fetch/issues/904
| dmix wrote:
| TIL, makes sense from a (very limited) security
| perspective.
|
| CDN caching was never that useful anyway, non-cached jQuery
| etc downloads fast these days. Publishing libraries on a
| centralized public CDN, where the same URL is used across
| different sites is still the primary value prop for
| jsDelivr regardless.
| skykooler wrote:
| > non-cached jQuery etc downloads fast these days.
|
| ...If you have a fast internet connection, which is what
| all web devs seem to expect these days. jQuery etc are
| still just as big and heavy as ever.
| cjbest wrote:
| Yes this is how we see it. And we've fixed the version lock
| thing.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, I've inserted a "(not)" into the title above as a way of
| merging this information while preserving the original title.
| devmunchies wrote:
| TIL you can have custom themes on substack. My main (now
| voided) complaint with the platform was that you couldn't stand
| out aesthetically.
| pastor_bob wrote:
| InvaderFizz wrote:
| Right now I would just be happy with code highlighting and
| formatting for my posts that wasnt utterly broken. Since last
| year, GitHub gist imports have had a warning message on them
| that is only supposed to trigger on non-printable characters,
| but triggers on literally every gist import for Substack.
|
| Unfortunately, there is no other method for syntax highlighting
| on Substack.
|
| Support responded after a few weeks that its on their roadmap,
| but considering how long its been, I'm not hopeful.
| cjbest wrote:
| Thank you for the feedback
| benced wrote:
| What a crazy world we live in where someone can license their
| code and someone else can use the code under the terms of that
| license.
| draw_down wrote:
| Illniyar wrote:
| A response from substack.
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/cjgbest/status/160237030788431872...
|
| Seems like this is a bit of a clickbait. The theme is made by the
| substack user, substack is only using a single library from ghost
| to show search, and the cdn in question is jsdeliver which isn't
| ghost's cdn, it is basically a cdn for any open source
| javascript.
| [deleted]
| pwinnski wrote:
| This is a classy response from the Ghost folks to a clear license
| violation.
| jairajs89 wrote:
| Hey, Substack CTO here. We don't distribute Ghost's code at all
| and the only piece of code included is a client-side search
| library used by the third party theme. But that library is
| actually hotlinked and hosted on jsdelivr (via npm) with no
| modifications made to it what-so-ever. This includes the line
| at the top with the license link as Ghost originally built it
| k__ wrote:
| What does such a violation usually entail?
| tiffanyh wrote:
| > One thing that's a little disappointing: Ghost uses the MIT
| license, one of the most permissive OSS licenses there is.
| Essentially, anyone can do anything they want with our code, with
| ONE basic requirement: You must include copyright attribution.
| Which they have not.
|
| For a SaaS app, wouldn't that copyright attribution be on the
| server side, where the code is (hidden from the end user)?
|
| Is John stating he expects that copyright attribution to be in
| the "view source" of the HTML or some other user accessible
| location? What happens if that HTML/JS is
| minified/stripped/"compiled"?
|
| IANAL: but I'm genuinely curious how this situation is handled.
|
| https://twitter.com/JohnONolan/status/1602330414269472769
| kolaente wrote:
| As far as I understand it, MIT only requires you to include the
| attribution next to the binary so ias you guessed next to the
| source code on the server.
|
| However, the js shipped to clients is usually minified and
| transformed which means it may count as "compiled" and thus the
| same rules as for binaries would apply.
|
| Cases like these are the reason why the AGPL exists.
| shafyy wrote:
| > _Cases like these are the reason why the AGPL exists_
|
| Exactly. Not sure why they Ghost doesn't use AGPL. Still, it
| would have been kind of fair from Substack to approach this
| more open and collaboratively...
| freedomben wrote:
| Because AGPL probably would have made it a no-go for
| substack to use. They seem to genuinely want to
| collaborate:
| https://twitter.com/JohnONolan/status/1602330416643702784
| shafyy wrote:
| Why would AGPL have made it a no-go for Substack? Also,
| it looks like Ghost wants to collab but there's nothing
| from Substack in the Twitter thread you linekd?
| giantrobot wrote:
| Because AGPL infects their entire service. You'll be hard
| pressed to find any commercial service adopting AGPL
| projects. Even the GPLv3 is often immiscible with
| commercial services. At least GPLv3 can be contained to
| only part of your stack.
| wil93 wrote:
| IANAL but I think integrating AGPL code would affect the
| license of the rest of the codebase too: Substack would
| be forced to release the rest of their codebase as AGPL
| too. This is why AGPL is considered a "viral" license.
| ushakov wrote:
| > Ghost wants to collab but there's nothing from Substack
|
| Substack doesn't have to "collaborate" do they?
| miroljub wrote:
| While agree that it would be nice from the Substack to give
| credit to Ghost, they are not required to do.
|
| It's unfair to complain about Substack doing exactly what
| they are explicitly allowed to do by the company that
| released Ghost under that specific licence that they choose
| to.
| none_to_remain wrote:
| If I use some MIT licensed dependency to power a service at
| work, I don't beg permission from the maintainers first
| makkesk8 wrote:
| I highly doubt you can count minified as "compiled"
| Minification is a form of compression. Compilation is a form
| of conversion from a high level to a lower level
| interpretation and that is fundamentally different.
|
| But then again I'm not a lawyer :)
| cxr wrote:
| First off: weird take, and one that would be unlikely to
| hold up. But secondly: what is that supposed to matter,
| anyway? That is, why are you litigating the definition of
| the word "compiled"? No finding, whether for or against
| your argument, would have any bearing on questions about
| compliance with the terms of the MIT license, so the word's
| definition and its significance is null. It's a total red
| herring and a distraction to bring up in any discussion on
| the topic.
| jairajs89 wrote:
| Hey, Substack CTO here. We actually don't minify or modify
| the files in question at all and simply link to the
| versions hosted on the public jsdelivr CDN (which includes
| a link to the license right at the top of the file)
| jdsully wrote:
| The intent is for attribution to be kept with the code. If
| your minifier removes the attribution you're likely in
| violation.
| bombcar wrote:
| And the minifier's job is to remove things like comments
| which is right where the attribution is likely to be.
|
| Now if a third party thing like a cloudflare CDN were
| minifyer for you and removed it then who violated the
| license?
| jdsully wrote:
| If the CDN is just a part of your architecture that you
| voluntarily setup then you're likely the one violating.
| Even if not the CDN very likely has an indemnification
| clause in their contract which would shift that liability
| back to you.
| shawnz wrote:
| There is an informal standard in which copyright notices
| are annotated with a leading "/*!" to let minifiers know
| that they should be preserved.
|
| See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11248363/the-
| purpose-of-...
| thomasballinger wrote:
| I figure compilation is a big tent and this counts, but
| imagine
|
| --rename-properties WARNING: renaming properties requires
| deeper analysis, considered compilation in the US
| bambax wrote:
| Minified versions of most JS libraries include a copyright
| notice as a top or bottom comment. How hard is it to respect
| this basic requirement?
| coldtea wrote:
| Quite hard. Isn't the whole point of the minification to
| remove non functional parts to make the size smaller?
| bambax wrote:
| Not hard at all. A couple of comments won't make any
| difference. Here's the minified version of one of react
| components for example:
|
| https://unpkg.com/react@18.2.0/umd/react.production.min.j
| s
| zerocrates wrote:
| Not really hard... for one there's a convention of
| putting an exclamation point at the start of comments
| that should survive the minification/compilation process,
| for this very purpose.
| jairajs89 wrote:
| Hey, Substack CTO here. We actually link directly to the
| jsdeliver CDN to use the files that get built for
| distribution in the sodo-search npm library. We make no
| modifications to the files (including not minifying them
| anymore than they are). The files actually do have a link
| at the top to the license file, which is hosted in the same
| directory on jsdeliver.
| srt72910 wrote:
| understood
| bakkoting wrote:
| > The files actually do have a link at the top to the
| license file
|
| That's not actually the license for the file; it's the
| license for the resources it includes. The license for
| the file is available elsewhere but is not directly
| linked. See my comment at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33959622
| _fat_santa wrote:
| The way I do it in my SaaS app is there is an "attributions"
| page. On it I have a list of all OSS software I've used in both
| frontend and backend.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| I like it - though it'd be hard to resist aliasing
| /attributions.txt to /lawyers.txt ...
| agluszak wrote:
| Unfortunately a mention in the "attributions" page won't pay
| the OSS developers' rent.
| nerdawson wrote:
| It's more acknowledgement than is required to use most OSS.
|
| If the OSS developers want to generate revenue, there are
| plenty of paths they can follow.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| If you want people who use the software you develop to pay
| you to use it, you should not release your software under
| an open source license.
|
| You probably already knew this, I don't mean to point out
| the obvious. I am just confused by your comment, and others
| like it that frequently come up on HN these days. People
| saying or implying that there is something unfair about
| using open source software under the license terms that its
| developers have chosen to release it.
| samtho wrote:
| > For a SaaS app, wouldn't that copyright attribution be on the
| server side (hidden to the end user)?
|
| I agree and my take on this is based on the way compilers
| generate binaries. I would not expect a compiler to inject
| random copyright notices in sdtout, for example. Ghost, in this
| case, is acting like "compiler" and the HTML can be thought of
| as the "output" akin to a binary generated by a traditional
| compiler. The MIT license (and similarly permissive ones) do
| not dictate software usage and thus it's output is not required
| to have any attribution, only source code.
| sdedovic wrote:
| Ah you may find it interesting, the GPL3 license actually
| does prescribe showing copyright notices in stdout [1].
|
| > If the program does terminal interaction, make it output a
| short notice like this when it starts in an interactive mode
| ...
|
| > The hypothetical commands `show w' and `show c' should show
| the appropriate parts of the General Public License. Of
| course, your program's commands might be different; for a GUI
| interface, you would use an "about box".
|
| This is to say it is not entire unusual to have copyright
| notices in output.
|
| [1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html
| taeric wrote:
| This feels silly. Not a single one of my userland tools
| does this, but they are clearly all GNU...
| bombcar wrote:
| Note the "interactive mode" - this means like starting an
| editor or nslookup kind of thing.
| taeric wrote:
| Less is interactive, and does no such thing.
|
| I mean, I get it. This will be nigh impossible to codify,
| such that there will be reasons things can and cannot
| work in certain situations. This line of attack here,
| though, is feeling overly forced and would actually sway
| me to never use such licensed stuff. And I'm pretty heavy
| on the open source support.
| bombcar wrote:
| Yeah it's clearly a "recommendation" and people seem to
| use it pretty sanely.
|
| bash doesn't do it even if you start a subshell. I know
| I've seen the NO WARRANTY message flash on my screen but
| darned if I can find a gnu program that does it by
| default.
| mroche wrote:
| Bear in mind these are suggestions, not part of the terms
| and conditions of the license itself.
| jairajs89 wrote:
| Hey, Substack CTO here. We're actually not using Ghost's
| platform and have instead built a theming API that is
| compatible with third-party themes that are built for Ghost.
| The one piece of code that the theme uses that's developed by
| Ghost is the open source search library used on the frontend.
| In this case the theme links directly to the files that Ghost
| has distributed on jsdelivr via npm
| sn0wf1re wrote:
| Would be nice if upstream Ghost made this easier for users. I
| just checked my blog and it has a default footer with a link
| "powered by ghost", they could just as easily have a link to
| the license.
| __derek__ wrote:
| > For a SaaS app, wouldn't that copyright attribution be on the
| server side, where the code is (hidden from the end user)?
|
| I'm curious about this because the end user's browser is where
| the (copied) code is run, not on the server. That's why they
| need to hot-load additional code from Ghost's CDN, rather than
| doing so on build servers.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I think I'm safe just having a .txt file you can somehow
| discover and read from the same server that hosts the website.
| But in order to do what feels right, I always put it into an
| "About" section somewhere.
| greenthrow wrote:
| They are shipping Ghost client side javascript. That should
| have the mentioned notice on it.
| jairajs89 wrote:
| Hey Substack CTO here. We actually don't host, modify, or
| minify the client side library in question. We link directly
| to the jsdelivr CDN for it and the distributed files from
| there have a license link at the top
| staunch wrote:
| On the one hand, it does seem like it'd be nice if Substack had
| signed a support/integration deal with the Ghost team. That way
| Ghost could have gotten paid _something_ for their hard work, and
| Substack could have avoided critical mistakes like the CDN
| security issue.
|
| On the other hand, this seems like what success looks like for an
| MIT licensed project. A big company using the code to power their
| product without even having to contact, let alone ask permission
| of, anyone.
|
| It seems to feel different for end-user applications like Ghost.
| But it's not actually any different than if they had powered
| Substack with SQLite or Postgres.
| greenthrow wrote:
| I don't think you understood the linked thread. The problem is
| not that they are using Ghost. The problem is they are not
| including the attribution required by the license.
| staunch wrote:
| I understood that criticism but don't think it's correct, as
| many others have pointed out. This is MIT licensed software
| running on a server. Substack is not redistributing software
| to end users, by any common definition.
| greenthrow wrote:
| As shown in the thread they are shipping Ghost's client
| side code to the browser. The attribution needs to be
| there.
| jairajs89 wrote:
| Hey, Substack CTO here. We don't distribute Ghost's code at
| all and the only piece of code included is a client-side
| search library used by the third party theme. But that
| library is actually hotlinked and hosted on jsdelivr (via
| npm) with no modifications made to it what-so-ever. This
| includes the line at the top with the license link as Ghost
| originally built it
| shafyy wrote:
| > _But it 's not actually any different than if they had
| powered Substack with SQLite or Postgres._
|
| I disagree. It's more comprable to if they used WordPress
| instead of Ghost. The database is a few layers further down,
| whereas Ghost is basically 90% of the end product (not sure how
| much they've adapted, but looks like a lot from John's Tweet)
| staunch wrote:
| Well, it's a bit more complicated than that.
|
| Substack is positioning themselves to their customers, which
| are journalists/authors, as a comprehensive alternative to
| having a normal job working at a newspaper or magazine. That
| seems to include high-touch customer support, an integrated
| business model with payments, a mailing list system, a
| distribution method, etc. It's more of a service than a piece
| of software.
|
| Ghost actually seems to have jumped on Substack's bandwagon
| by trying to skew their blog software toward being a direct
| Substack alternative.
|
| So Ghost seems to have adopted Substack's business model and
| Substack seems to have adopted some of their blog technology.
| huksley wrote:
| I think one of the points that Substack reverse engineered how
| search works. They use this package
| https://github.com/TryGhost/sodo-search which does not have any
| docs.
| placatedmayhem wrote:
| Mildly off-topic, but I'm somewhat tired of the reuse of names
| for different software. Originally, I was confused by this post
| and why Substack would be using Norton Ghost. There's also the
| Android post-explotation framework and ImmersionRC's Ghost radio
| control protocol.
| dmix wrote:
| As long as it's a distinctly different product category /
| market it's not a big deal. You can usually glean the meaning
| from the context pretty quickly.
|
| If one brand becomes large then the other one's can just have
| context added like appending "Norton" to Ghost. Or just say
| "Ghost blog service".
| aftbit wrote:
| If you are like me and had never heard of Ghost before today,
| here's a link to their Github repo:
|
| https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost
| rojobuffalo wrote:
| Have any writers migrated from Substack to Ghost?
|
| Substack support has been nonexistent for the past 6 months. I've
| reached out about a handful of broken features and get no
| response, except in one case months ago where they dismissed it
| in the weirdest way. Archive search does not work; ex. I have a
| post about monkeys, it has "monkey" in the title and the body,
| and when I search "monkey" it doesn't come up in results. The
| support response said "this is normal, just because a post has a
| keyword in the title or body doesn't mean it's always included in
| search results"...what? I asked for clarification and they never
| replied.
|
| It feels like Substack has strayed from the promise of being
| focused on writing and email. They added "Save" and "Listen"
| buttons to the top of emails, which are visually prominent; and
| those buttons make no sense in an email. They're a trick to take
| people to the iOS app.
|
| They endlessly promote new features to writers and readers and it
| all feels like their trying to lock you into something that's
| harder to migrate out of.
| busymom0 wrote:
| Hmm I had the opposite experience. I emailed them 3 or 4 bugs
| and they fixed it. This was several months ago though. I am a
| paid user to several substacks in case that matters.
| rojobuffalo wrote:
| That's interesting. Prior to July I did get replies, but they
| never fixed anything. "Thanks we'll pass this on to the dev
| team" but then nothing. I think that's normal but not great.
|
| Since July I've sent emails about 3 issues and the only
| response I got was the one I mentioned above.
|
| I'm a writer with a few paid subscribers.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I've put in a couple of support requests and gotten reasonably
| prompt, helpful responses.
|
| Possibly you're not a writer? They make it possible for writers
| to earn a decent amount of money (not that I am) and keep their
| copyright. Can you tell us another platform that does that
| better?
| klelatti wrote:
| Exponential View Substack -> Ghost -> Substack
|
| The Browser Substack -> Ghost
|
| and seemed quite happy with the move last time I checked.
| Xeoncross wrote:
| I've always found open source projects to build superior
| libraries that commercial entities always end up adopting.
|
| I've always found commercial entities to build superior products
| that open source projects always end up adopting.
|
| One makes the tools, the other assembles them and sells it.
|
| Must be the focus on profits that helps push companies to build
| products users want, while the love of the craft pushes
| developers to make the best foundations.
| ambicapter wrote:
| > Must be the focus on profits that helps push companies to
| build products users want, while the love of the craft pushes
| developers to make the best foundations.
|
| Shamelessly stealing this line of thinking to use in the
| future.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I love this line and I personally think there's nothing wrong
| with it (not that I'm suggesting anyone implied there is).
|
| And this is also how I separate my work from my hobby. I'm
| proud of those who can make money from a hobby, but I simply
| do not try. The motivations are fundamentally different and
| it changes how much I enjoy my hobby. I wish I learned this
| in my early 20s. I spent years thinking, "if it can't make
| money or someone's done it better, it's not worth doing."
| somrand0 wrote:
| under perfect capitalism (using my ill-defined opinion of
| what capitalism is)
|
| be prepared to pay royalties, or possibly face criminal
| copyright infringement, for using that line of thinking in
| the future.
|
| (this comment is supposed to be some sort of "joke". but the
| yoke is on most of us)
| pessimizer wrote:
| Or it's capital preying on basic research funded by the public.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| If someone published code as MIT then use by commercial
| entities is hardly preying on it.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > Or it's capital preying on basic research funded by the
| public.
|
| How, exactly, is open source "basic research funded by the
| public"?
| dmix wrote:
| If anything private capital funds OSS as much or more than
| anything else. OSS is primarily driven by time donation by
| the coders anyway. If they don't want companies using it
| there is a well established system to prevent that... it's
| called licensing.
| wpietri wrote:
| It could be preying, but it doesn't have to be. In recent
| decades we've seen a rise of IGMFY capitalism. But there are
| varieties of capitalist thinking that see companies as
| situated in a society that they are part of in a way that
| gives them duties as well as rights. That's not popular
| today, of course, but it's not impossible that we'd return to
| it.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| > Must be the focus on profits that helps push companies to
| build products users want, while the love of the craft pushes
| developers to make the best foundations.
|
| Ghost is a non-profit organization that publishes it code as
| MIT.
|
| You don't structure your company as such because you're wanting
| to generate a lot of profits nor prevent others from profiting
| from your work.
|
| It seems like Substack is just embarrassing what Ghost set its
| charter as: a non-profit that allows others to benefit from its
| work.
|
| https://ghost.org/about/
| Xeoncross wrote:
| I think you understood this backwards: Ghost is the developer
| creating the foundations that other companies use to make
| money.
| shafyy wrote:
| > _It seems like Substack is just *embarrassing* what Ghost
| set its charter as: a non-profit that allows others to
| benefit from its work._
|
| (emphasis mine). Nice Freudian Slip there, buddy :-)
| FormerBandmate wrote:
| I mean look at desktop Linux. If anything's ever been "by
| coders, for coders", it's that
| bluehatbrit wrote:
| I quite O'Nolan's tone here. It's obviously not a collaboration
| as you might first expect from the top tweet (and title on HN),
| but he's quite gracious about it at the same time. It would be
| quite easy to get frustrated and outraged at Substack, we've seen
| it happen before. However despite the two, fairly substantial,
| issues he's pretty gracious about it while poking a bit of fun.
|
| Hopefully Substack do the right thing here and correct those two
| problems openly. It would only be a good thing for
| blogging/publishing if they actually contributed back as well.
| jairajs89 wrote:
| Hey, Substack CTO here. The Ghost-written code in question here
| is the client-side search library that the third-party theme
| uses. We link directly to the files hosted on jsdelivr (via
| npm) which in-turn uses the files Ghost built for distribution.
| Those files include the license link at the top, as Ghost
| intended, and are not modified or minified by us at all
| bluehatbrit wrote:
| Thanks for the response, I appreciate the correction!
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Whoa!
|
| Hotlinking Ghost CDN URLs in Substack production HTML.
|
| Yes this is a bad look for Substack. And it puts them - and their
| users - at Ghost's mercy.
| peter422 wrote:
| They are not hotlinking ghost urls... JSdelivr is a giant JS
| CDN. Ghost is in the url because they developed the library so
| it's the GitHub path. You could use this library on your
| website right now... They open sourced it!
| jairajs89 wrote:
| Hey, Substack CTO. That's exactly right. Thank you for this
| cxr wrote:
| There's more to it than that. There are two resources
| involved. One is using Ghost's (jsdelivr-backed) CDN. The
| other is just using jsdelivr's CDN for any and every NPM
| package that gets published in the clear.
|
| The asset that thefp.com is using is the one that gets
| loaded from the latter (the one served from the public
| CDN), and you can see that this was true even at the time
| that O'Nolan's screenshots were taken. For some reason, he
| mixed them up; the only evidence that we have of anyone
| here using the CDN that Ghost is (presumably) paying for is
| Ghost's own use of it themselves.
| [deleted]
| jairajs89 wrote:
| Hey, Substack CTO here. We don't hotlink to Ghost at all and
| instead use jsdelivr to link to client-side open-source
| libraries. jsdelivr is awesome btw, works with any npm module,
| and is fast and reliable https://www.jsdelivr.com
| cptcobalt wrote:
| Totally. I feel like Ghost has integrity and wouldn't resort to
| shenanigans, but this is a wildly poor security posture and
| really a faux pas to be forcing ghost to incur CDN costs on
| this.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| It's also incredibly easy for Ghost to prevent hot linking.
|
| It just 2-3 lines in your nginx/apache config file that blocks
| hot linking, and many people consider this a standard practice
| to do regardless.
| imaurer wrote:
| I really enjoyed this interview with Ghost founder John O'Nolan.
| Seems like a very smart, classy guy leaving the world better than
| he found it
|
| https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/139-john-onolan-of-ghos...
| Waterluvian wrote:
| When John says "product engineers" does that mean "the engineers
| who specifically work on the code that gets used by customers"?
| Ie. excluding the engineers who do all the support stuff:
| CI/CD/testing/etc. ?
| koopuluri wrote:
| Based on Ghost's MIT license, seems Substack using it is fine,
| but damn would have been nice to have at least some kind of
| attribution... leaves a sour taste to take without acknowledging.
| rchaud wrote:
| > leaves a sour taste
|
| An honour system with no enforcement against bad actors will
| usually do that.
| dspillett wrote:
| _> Based on Ghost 's MIT license, seems Substack using it is
| fine,_
|
| As long as they provide appropriate attribution, which
| apparently1 they are not so it isn't fine.
|
| _> but damn would have been nice to have at least some kind of
| attribution..._
|
| Not just nice, but _required_. From the licence: "The above
| copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included
| in all copies or substantial portions of the Software."
|
| Many projects, commercial and other OSS ones, get conformance
| with MIT and similar licences wrong in this way.
|
| ----
|
| [1] Caveat: Going by the Twitter thread. I've not verified
| this. Maybe they have it somewhere hidden away, so are
| compliant but minimally so2.
|
| [2] Which would be a dick move3, but compliant.
|
| [3] Which I wouldn't put past them as they are using Ghost's
| CDN to include some of the stuff instead of covering the
| hosting for that themselves, which is hard to think is
| accidental. If this _is_ accidental then I 'd never trust them
| from either a code quality PoV or an infrastructure security
| PoV.
| peter422 wrote:
| The copyright notice and license is referenced in the JS
| library, that's enough.
|
| This is literally no different from any reason person using
| bootstrap on their site in terms of license. Does every site
| powered by bootstrap have a link or attribution to Twitter?
| dspillett wrote:
| I'd not checked personally, but the original Twitter thread
| suggested more than "a library" had been used.
|
| [knee jerks back]
|
| Though I'm assuming here, as I reply without having yet
| revisited the full thread, you have checked or otherwise
| have been furnished with new information, and are right!
|
| Quick everyone, to the research-o-tron!
|
| ----
|
| Update: it looks like the library was being drawn in by a
| 3rd party theme/add-in that isn't included in the main
| distribution at all. More detail elsewhere in this thread
| (above, unless voting has for some reason reversed).
| loeg wrote:
| Ish. Pointing clients at Ghost's CDN instead of substack isn't
| great. Nor is stripping the copyright header.
| cxr wrote:
| It doesn't seem that Substack is actually doing either of
| those things here, contrary to the claims in the original
| tweet.
| jairajs89 wrote:
| Hey, Substack CTO here. We don't distribute Ghost's code at all
| and the only piece of code included is a client-side search
| library used by the third party theme. But that library is
| actually hotlinked and hosted on jsdelivr (via npm) with no
| modifications made to it what-so-ever. This includes the line
| at the top with the license link as Ghost originally built it
| cptcobalt wrote:
| It's not a "would be nice", it's a license violation to not be
| using it with copyright attribution.
| https://twitter.com/JohnONolan/status/1602330414269472769
| bombcar wrote:
| That's not obviously clear - after all MIT software can be
| used to produce output that doesn't need to include a "made
| by X" - and arguably that's what ghost provides.
|
| And they didn't even copy the JavaScript to their own CDN ...
| yawboakye wrote:
| in a non-gotcha world, john of ghost reaches out privately to
| chris (or someone else) of substack to compare notes and clarify
| what's going on here. but those regretful days of chivalry are
| long gone, aren't they? they're replaced by the superior practice
| of submitting your grievances to the universal jury, in the
| absence of the accused. civility and principle of charity be
| damned. a few people have highlighted the calmness of the
| exchange--i think the public part was absolutely unnecessary. my
| one-and-a-half cents.
| the-printer wrote:
| So at what point does Substack cut the man and his team a check
| because from the looks of his observations Substack will likely
| need consultation and support.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| Sounds like you're describing the SQLite model.
|
| Completely permissive license but companies pay for support (or
| custom features).
| samhuk wrote:
| Genuinely curious (I don't know all that much about these
| things): To what extent does the SQLite model incentivize
| poor documentation since that would drive use of paid support
| services?
| rchaud wrote:
| If the documentation is poor, the implementers won't even
| be able to get it to a point where they would consider
| paying for consulting.
| samhuk wrote:
| I mean poor _enough_ that its easy to get set up but more
| complex usage ends up requiring support services, by
| which lock in has started occuring.
| ruuda wrote:
| For what it's worth, SQLite's documentation is one of the
| best among all software I've ever used. It's clear,
| detailed, well-organized, and everything is documented.
| bakkoting wrote:
| Here's [1] the actual JS file which Substack is loading, pulled
| directly from the network tab on the page linked in the thread.
|
| Notably, the first line is "For license information please see
| sodo-search.min.js.LICENSE.txt". But if you go to that file [2],
| it's not the license _for this file_; it's the licenses _for the
| OSS code it includes_. I suspect that Substack thought that link
| pointed to the actual license; I did too before I started writing
| this comment. Possibly that confusion has lead to some talking
| past each other.
|
| The actual license is at [3], which is obvious if you know how
| npm packages work, and probably not obvious otherwise. I don't
| see a link to that file anywhere.
|
| [1] https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@tryghost/sodo-
| search@1.1/umd/s...
|
| [2] https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@tryghost/sodo-
| search@1.1/umd/s...
|
| [3] https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@tryghost/sodo-
| search@1.1/LICEN...
| gnicholas wrote:
| Huh, so it's a ghost in the machine?
| gizmo wrote:
| Sleazy and disrespectful behavior by substack. Just like medium,
| all these publishing/newsletter platforms go to $%@& real quick.
| The first time I saw the "sign up to continue reading" banner I
| knew substack was done, this just confirms it.
| simonsarris wrote:
| Chris Best of Substack replied:
| https://twitter.com/cjgbest/status/1602370307884318720
|
| _Substack is not "powered by Ghost". Rather, we built our own
| theming API that's compatible with themes built for Ghost,
| including those built by third parties._
|
| _The Free Press is using a modified Tripoli theme, built by
| Ahmad Ajmi, under a paid license. This is how this is supposed to
| work. It 's good for the theme developer if we support this - you
| should check them out here._
| traviswt wrote:
| Great set of replies and a wonderful example of why hearing
| both sides is important. You should definitely click and read
| through Chris' thread, but the final note "We're definitely up
| to chat" is a great olive branch.
| cjbest wrote:
| Thanks. Happy to answer questions here too.
| ben-parry wrote:
| Response from Chris Best Substack's CEO:
| https://twitter.com/cjgbest/status/1602370307884318720
| raiyu wrote:
| Seems like minimal overlap potentially if they were just using
| it for a theme, but the tone is a bit defensive, and I don't
| think that John was rude in his original tweets and more of
| like tongue in cheek sort of fun and offering to collaborate.
|
| A more direct, yes we use some code, oops we will add
| attribution, thanks again, much appreciated, would have
| sufficed.
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| If this had been private communication, sure.
|
| By putting this on Twitter, it immediately gets turned into
| something that could spawn clickbait headlines and could
| tarnish the company's reputation long term. Maybe John didn't
| mean for any of that, but his tweets don't mention the MIT
| licence initially and seem like they're building up an
| allegation.
|
| I think Chris responded exactly like a for-profit company's
| CEO should, pre-emptively countering tech journalist
| headlines, clearly and concisely describing the situation,
| and still reaching out for the potential of collaboration.
| cxr wrote:
| You're not following/understanding what the linked Twitter
| threads are actually saying.
|
| There is no mention of O'Nolan being rude (although he did
| make a number of untrue claims, which at least pretty
| negligent--but that's not a charge that the linked tweets
| say, either...)
|
| There was no code use, and there was no copyright
| violation/failure of attribution, so there is no "yes we use
| some code, oops we will add attribution" called for, nor
| would it even be logical to do so.
| ArnoVW wrote:
| It's a known thing, and it's called the SaaS loophole.
|
| https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/11467/can-i-u...
| lucideer wrote:
| I've been a big fan of ghost for a while, both the software and
| the company & its values.
|
| This thread is really making me rethink the latter.
|
| He's just so confidently wrong in every tweet.
| lucideer wrote:
| Tweet-by-tweet elaboration:
|
| 1 & 2: "substack is powered by ghost"
|
| A customer of substack is using a port of an open source ghost
| theme.
|
| 3: some screenshots
|
| Of the substack sourcecode showing that they're loading an open
| source ghost JS search UI library from the jsdelivr CDN
| service.
|
| Substack are using an open source front-end lib that the Ghost
| team open sourced. For other people to use.
|
| 4. Screenshots of the substack HTML sourcecode showing the
| classes are the same as ghost
|
| Because they're using an open source theme ported from ghost...
|
| 6 & 7. Substack are loading the open source library from
| "Ghost's own CDN"
|
| First I've heard that Ghost have acquired Jsdelivr.
|
| 8. "directly loading scripts from our CDN on their platform is
| very bad for security [...] Any updates or changes we ship
| could inadvertently brick their whole platform"
|
| I actually do agree that using 3rd party CDNs like Jsdelivr is
| bad for security (supply chain attacks are a real pain with
| package managers, using other people's CDNs increase that pain
| significantly). But... it's not Ghost's CDN & the implication
| that Ghost could push a release of their open source JS lib to
| jsdelivr that would brick consumers is pretty sinister.
|
| 9. Substack are using MIT without attribution
|
| They're not. Already covered by multiple comments on HN & in
| the Twitter replies. John just doesn't understand how the MIT
| license he chose works.
|
| Tbh he doesn't really seem to understand how open source works
| in general.
|
| ---
|
| Note: large companies using open source code and not
| contributing back is a big problem. It's what Substack are
| doing and we should talk about it. But that conversation should
| be informed and fact-based. This thread is ignorance start to
| finish.
| digianarchist wrote:
| I used to really dislike John. I've sparred with him on Hacker
| News a couple of times on various issues (under a different
| account).
|
| I then listened to a podcast [0] he was on and basically
| changed my mind on the guy. I still feel he desperately needs
| to hire a communications director for Ghost but I've softened
| my view on him as a person.
|
| [0] - https://www.notoverthinking.com/episodes/john-onolan-on-
| life...
| lucideer wrote:
| Thanks for the rec, I'll definitely try and give it a listen.
|
| He can't be that bad if he's behind what Ghost have to date
| presented themselves as. He does seem to have some pretty
| severe gaps in technical literacy though: which is very
| excusable if it's not coupled with blind confidence.
| ben-parry wrote:
| Response from Chris Best, Substack's CEO:
| https://twitter.com/cjgbest/status/1602370307884318720
| quanticle wrote:
| The way they used our search library is kind of interesting. They
| could've copied the code locally and modified it to work
| with the Substack API, but I guess Substack doesn't have
| an API?
|
| Substack doesn't have an API. Their editor is laughably primitive
| compared with other solutions. Their visual look hasn't changed
| at all since their inception. They don't have discoverability.
| Can anyone tell me what Substack is doing with all the millions
| of dollars of funding they've taken? We joke about Twitter being
| massively overstaffed, but Substack, to me, looks just as
| bloated, organizationally.
| rchaud wrote:
| > Can anyone tell me what Substack is doing with all the
| millions of dollars of funding they've taken?
|
| Padding the paycheques of America's biggest contrarian writers
| apparently. Greenwald, Taibbi, Andrew Sullivan all have paid
| gigs there.
| coldtea wrote:
| It would be sad if these, who are very tame, and not long ago
| would have been considered doing a mighty fine job to the
| side they're now rejected by, were the "biggest contrarians".
| Would imply a total lack of actual contrarians, and an
| overencompassing uniformity and party line-ism...
|
| Then again that's what you get when you build two bipartisan
| monocultures of echo chambers...
| jdm2212 wrote:
| They don't have "paid gigs" there. They bring in tons of
| subscription revenue, and Substack gave them advances against
| that subscription revenue. In each case, they quickly earned
| out the advance.
| bgentry wrote:
| Are you sure that any of those three got an advance from
| Substack? They don't appear in any of the articles listing
| authors with paid advances except in providing commentary
| about the existence of such a system. They might have all
| even joined before Substack had its advance program.
|
| You are otherwise correct about them not having a "paid
| gig". They each built their own large paid subscriber base
| from which Substack takes a 10% cut. They pay Substack for
| the service, not the other way around.
| burkaman wrote:
| In addition to advances they will sometimes just pay a
| writer to move to Substack.
|
| > But the advances also had limitations. On a per-deal
| basis, we could never really do better than break-even. A
| Substack advance was effectively an interest-free loan that
| would never be paid back if a publication failed.
|
| > With Substack Pro, we pay a writer an upfront sum to
| cover their first year on the platform. The idea is that
| the payment can be more attractive to a writer than a
| salary, so they don't have to stay in a job (or take one)
| that's less interesting to them than being independent. In
| return for that financial security, a Pro writer agrees to
| let Substack keep 85% of the subscription revenue in that
| first year. After that year, the deal flips, so that the
| writer no longer gets a minimum guarantee but from then on
| keeps 90% of the subscription revenue
|
| - https://on.substack.com/p/why-we-pay-writers
|
| Depending on the payment it's possible that a writer could
| lose money on this, because they would have made more from
| subscriptions than they did from Substack, but I'm guessing
| for very big names Substack is paying quite a bit more than
| they would have made from their first year of
| subscriptions.
|
| Also, this wasn't public for a while and there's probably
| more that is still not public.
|
| > We haven't said anything about Substack Pro in public
| until now because we have been in a "figuring it out"
| phase, seeing what resonates with writers and how the deals
| perform over time.
| bombcar wrote:
| On the surface that's a better deal than many publishing
| houses give actual book authors - some major percentage
| of books never "pay back" the advance and it rarely gets
| to be heavily author-favoring.
| burkaman wrote:
| Yeah I don't think there's anything wrong with this kind
| of arrangement, writers getting paid is good. I do think
| it's possible that Substack is spending more than a
| sustainable amount on acquiring big name writers because
| they want to show results and growth to their investors.
| jdm2212 wrote:
| > On a per-deal basis, we could never really do better
| than break-even. A Substack advance was effectively an
| interest-free loan that would never be paid back if a
| publication failed.
|
| They made a ton of money on Matt Yglesias's advance. His
| advance was ~$250k, and he brought in two or three times
| that in revenue (the terms of his deal were: he gets 250k
| upfront, they get his first year's revenue). I'm not
| aware of any other writers who've published their
| numbers, but Greenwald, Sullivan and Taibbi all have a
| TON of subscribers.
| lkbm wrote:
| Scott Alexander didn't give a number, but reported the
| advance was less than he would have made if he just did
| the default system, as of March 2022[0].
|
| He also points out that Taibbi says "Every one of the
| Substack Pro writers I know would have made more money
| not taking the advance", which obviously includes Taibbi
| himself.
|
| [0] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/adding-my-data-
| point-t...
|
| [1]
| https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1372612686803042317
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > Padding the paycheques of America's biggest contrarian
| writers
|
| You say that like it's a bad thing.
|
| Being a contrarian means that the mainstream media doesn't
| like them, but apparently enough readers do that they can
| make bank.
| DoctorOW wrote:
| "Mainstream Media" especially in contexts like these is
| meaningless. You seem to mean many PEOPLE don't like them.
| There's an argument to be made that for the average person,
| being attacked by a number of Substack's writers would make
| that average person less likely to explore their other
| writers offerings. Fewer readers means less revenue.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| What?
|
| "Mainstream media" is certainly not meaningless. A good
| proxy would be any organ considered an "authoritative
| source" by Facebook: NYT, WaPo, CNN, Politico, AP, etc.
|
| As for "fewer readers" I don't know what you mean. The
| "readers" are paying their money, aren't they?
| DoctorOW wrote:
| Meaningless in that the phrase is used almost exclusively
| in the way you use it, and yet you (and others) aren't
| able to construct a coherent definition. Regarding your
| examples, Facebook was a weird choice of authority when
| viewership/readership are easily researched numbers. I
| bring this up partially because the only thing that you
| believe is "media" is news sources but the most popular
| news sources aren't "mainstream media"? There is clearly
| something specific you're filtering for but are unwilling
| to say. Until you do the term means nothing.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Wow, you're really going to elaborate lengths of pedantry
| here, aren't you?
|
| "Please define 'mainstream media' and no, I'm not
| satisfied with your definition."
|
| Why is this important? You could make a list of 100 news
| sources and ask a random sample of 1,000 people to check
| Yes/No on "is this mainstream media?" You would get a
| very high level of agreement. It's not my responsibility
| to give you a definition you're happy with. This isn't a
| scientific debate.
| DoctorOW wrote:
| I pointed out that you've yet to make any attempt to
| define it and still haven't.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| If there's anyone besides you who's confused, we haven't
| heard from them yet.
|
| I searched "mainstream media" on DDG and got a number of
| definitions. Maybe you could try that.
| DoctorOW wrote:
| Your definition differs from the results offered as
| evidenced by your examples differing from other examples:
| i.e. of The Big Five[1] you picked on only the smallest,
| not even focusing on journalisitic enterprises because
| one of the larger organizations literally called "News
| Corp" didn't have a single of its publications make your
| list of news outlets. Curious.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainstream_media#The_%
| 22Big_fi...
| afavour wrote:
| Yeah that still doesn't seem like a good thing.
|
| No one is worth reading solely because the "mainstream
| media" doesn't like them. People who jabber complete
| fiction are disliked in that way. Doesn't mean they're
| worth the time.
|
| Glenn Greenwald in particular depresses me. The days of his
| blockbuster stories feel like distant memories, now he just
| posts poorly edited (or more likely not edited at all)
| opinion pieces powered by nothing but rage. I genuinely
| don't get why people would pay for it.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I don't subscribe to him either. Some people do,
| apparently.
|
| Ted Gioia is totally worth it. I haven't looked at Greil
| Marcus' stuff yet.
| sofixa wrote:
| > You say that like it's a bad thing.
|
| It can be, yes.
|
| Exhibit A: Alex Jones. Whacky conspiracy theory and snake
| oil peddler. It's literally in nobody's interest he be
| published anywhere, apart his own personal financial one.
|
| In most cases there's probably a good reason for someone to
| be shunned by everyone "mainstream".
| wpietri wrote:
| > Can anyone tell me what Substack is doing with all the
| millions of dollars of funding they've taken?
|
| Last I looked, a bunch of it was going to pay writers to
| publish on Substack:
| https://www.vox.com/recode/22338802/substack-pro-newsletter-...
| lzaaz wrote:
| >Their visual look hasn't changed at all since their inception.
|
| I don't like that you are suggesting that the visual look must
| change. Nothing is wrong with leaving things the way they are.
|
| >They don't have discoverability.
|
| What does this mean? Suggested posts and authors, which are
| nothing but thinly-veiled ads so you stay in the page? Good
| that they don't have those.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| They paid writers. The quality of the content is ultimately a
| lot more important than the technology used to deliver it.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| But how else are they going to advertise that horribly full of
| themselves writers with subjects as interesting as How The
| Silicob Valley Accepted Me As Its Child And How I Made My First
| Million (contents: a load of self serving crap oh and also my
| dad is a millionaire and used his connections for me) are now
| writing on Substack?
|
| It's just another Medium, except for some reason the writers
| there are _even more_ pompous and full of themselves.
| xwowsersx wrote:
| Maybe you have something else in mind when you say
| "discoverability", but.. https://substack.com/discover Seems
| they do have it.
|
| As for the bloat, I can't really comment, but would note that
| Substack did substantial layoffs like everyone else.
|
| As for what they're doing: they built mobile apps, adding
| podcasting and video, etc, better discoverability.
|
| I can't say whether they've done "enough" to satisfy you, but I
| also don't think we should pretend Substack hasn't done any new
| product development work since inception.
| quanticle wrote:
| Those are all fair responses. I guess I just haven't seen
| much uptake of those new features among the Substack writers
| that I follow. When they do podcasts, they're hosted by
| ACast, SimpleCast, or one of the other podcast hosting
| platforms out there. Videos are hosted on YouTube (like
| everyone else's).
|
| I would _prefer_ if Substack spent more resources on
| improving its "core" newsletter/blog experience, but I can
| understand, given their status as a home for controversial
| writers, their desire to be a self-contained service.
| soneca wrote:
| They added comments, chat, an app for reading, sections.
| There is a lot happening in Substack core product.
|
| Edit: this looks like a good list for my standards:
| https://on.substack.com/p/product-news-dispatch-nov-22
|
| And Substack discoverability is becoming a big thing for
| writers. I know the impact from a lot of anedoctes.
| vxNsr wrote:
| My understanding is that these days most technical people
| are wary of being locked into a single platform, so even
| though substack is making a pretty compelling walled garden
| anyone with knowledge of recent SV history is hesitant to
| dive head first into it. As once they get big enough
| they're pretty much guaranteed to do something anti-
| competitive that is against the interests of their
| customers/users who now have no choice as the cost of
| leaving has grown too large.
| setgree wrote:
| Funny side-note: @substack is the wrong handle, I assume John
| meant to tag @SubstackInc.
|
| AFAIK there's no formal mechanism for bidding on naming rights,
| but Twitter could easily set up an auction platform, take a small
| cut off the top, and do quite nicely.
| dibt wrote:
| You can request an already registered name if you own the
| brand. Owning the domain substack.com might be enough to prove
| ownership. People have been successful with this in the past.
|
| They may not do anything about it, though, if @substack is
| being used. Logging into Twitter is enough to keep the account
| active. I don't know if that is changing with the new owner. I
| know that Musk said they will be making names for inactive
| accounts available soon.
| setgree wrote:
| That makes sense. It would also make sense to have auctions
| for high-value handles.
|
| Or, to take a page from 'Radical Markets', twitter accounts
| could be associated with a reservation price (a price at
| which a person would definitely sell), and 'taxed' (re:
| charged) a proportion of that reservation price. I believe it
| was Patio11 who observed that his upper limit on willingness
| to pay for twitter would be very high. Right now, Twitter
| doesn't capture any of that.
|
| That might only work for bluecheck accounts, not sure. I
| don't want to lose my random 10 follower account for $100,
| but neither do I want to pay to be a lurker
| xNeil wrote:
| Hi Chris! Love what you're doing with Substack. One quick thing
| though - this may seem weird, but Substack at the moment does
| not, in my opinion, offer a lot of customisation of the website.
| If you see a website, it's extremely easy to tell its a Substack.
|
| Over the past year, I've only read high quality Substack posts -
| and my brain has sort of come to instinctively believe that if I
| see that specific layout, the post will be high quality. E.g.
| (not a very nice one) but in general, if I see the Medium layout,
| my brain almost immediately get turned off, believing the quality
| of the content to be sub-par.
|
| I think individual theming, as in the case of The Free Press,
| takes away that immediate notion. I understand that the vast
| majority of people will not face this issue, but I think I will.
| I just wanted to know if you think this is an issue, and if it
| is, what you'll do to 'counter' it. I'd really like to hear your
| thoughts on this!
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post duplicate comments! We'll leave
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33958955 up.
| xNeil wrote:
| Hi! Very sorry - won't happen again.
| dang wrote:
| Appreciated!
| tiffanyh wrote:
| Is the title of the post still accurate?
|
| @dang, thoughts?
| [deleted]
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