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  1. Last 7 days
    1. The blockchain, as universal ledger, creates a vast capacity for translocal coordination

      for - progress trap - blockchain - one unintended consequence is that it is very energy inefficient - from Substack article - The Cosmo-Local Plan for our Next Civilization - Michel Bauwens - 2024, Dec 20

    2. Open source technology, now responsible for 80% of all used software

      for - stats - 80% of all used software is open source - from Substack article - The Cosmo-Local Plan for our Next Civilization - Michel Bauwens - 2024, Dec 20

    3. ‘factor 20’ movement can be imagined, in fact, already exists, which aims to reduce energy usage by 95%, coupled with significant savings in the use of materials. This movement is already active in various European cities

      for - research further - EU movement - factor of 20 - from Substack article - The Cosmo-Local Plan for our Next Civilization - Michel Bauwens - 2024, Dec 20

    4. mutualizing forms of governance and ownership, can also have extraordinary effects on the amount of needed energy and materials. For example, in the context of shared transport, one shared car can replace 9 to 13 private cars, without any loss of mobility.

      for - stats - climate crisis - example - positive impacts of mutualisation / sharing - car sharing - 1 Shared car can replace 9 to 13 cars without loss of mobility - from Substack article - The Cosmo-Local Plan for our Next Civilization - Michel Bauwens - 2024, Dec 20

    5. This is what we have called ‘True Accelerationism’.

      for - definition - accelerationism - from Substack article - The Cosmo-Local Plan for our Next Civilization - Michel Bauwens - 2024, Dec 20

    6. current system is ‘closed source’, and is carried out by competitive agents that do not share innovations for very long time periods; the competitiveness of these agents requires behaviors that externalize costs

      for - examples - closed source IP externalises cost - from Substack article - The Cosmo-Local Plan for our Next Civilization - Michel Bauwens - 2024, Dec 20

      examples - closed source IP externalises cost - closed source circular economy is much more challenging than open source circular economy because - if inputs are kept secret and proprietary, reuse of End of life products are difficult to break down and reuse as input in a re-manufacturing process - closed IP creates fragmented and completing de facto standards that make interoperability impossible

    7. The current system of production is based on mass production, and requires the constant creation of new desires and needs, which need to be created through advertising, and require massive forms of potentially unnecessary material production

      for - addendum - add ecological footprint of advertising industry to material waste generated by consumer culture - from Substack article - The Cosmo-Local Plan for our Next Civilization - Michel Bauwens - 2024, Dec 20

      addendum - add ecological footprint of advertising industry to material waste generated by consumer culture - The advertising industry itself has a huge ecological footprint as well, in addition to the extra, unneeded material that planned obsolescence creates - references to be added

    8. The current global system of production and trade is reported to use three times more of its resource use for transport, not for making. This creates a profound ‘ecological’, i.e. biophysical and thermodynamic, rationale for relocalizing production

      for - stats - motivation for cosmolocal - high inefficacy of resource and energy use - 3x for transport as for production - from Substack article - The Cosmo-Local Plan for our Next Civilization - Michel Bauwens - 2024, Dec 20

    9. for - Substack article - The Cosmo-Local Plan for our Next Civilization - Michel Bauwens - 2024, Dec 20 - adjacency - web 3 and Blockchain / crypto technology - communities engaged in regeneration and relocalization - tinkering at the edge - missed opportunity - cosmolocal strategy as leverage point - safe and just cross scale translation of earth system boundaries - Tipping Point Festival - Web 4 - Indyweb

      Summary adjacency between - web 3 and crypto / Blockchain technology - communities engaged in regeneration and relocalization - tinkering at the edge - missed opportunity - cosmolocal lens and framework as a leverage point for synthesis - cosmolocal projects as leverage points - cross scale translated safe and just earth system boundaries as necessary cosmolocal accounting system - meme: sync global, act local - new relationship - This article explores the untapped potential and leverage point offered by recognising a new adjacency and concomitant synthesis of - globalising Web 3 and crypto/Blockchain technology - communities engaged in regenerative and relocation interventions - The fragmentation between these areas keeps activists working in each respective one - tinkering at the edge - severely constraining their potential impact - This is a case of the whole Berlin car greater than the sun of its parts - By joining forces in a global, strategic and systemic way, each can achieve fast more through their mutual support - A cosmolocal lens offers a perspective and framework that makes joining forces make sense<br /> - Projects that recognize that the adjacency between - the globalizing technologies of web 3 and Blockchains and - interventions at the local community level - offer a significant leverage point to bottom up efforts to drive a rapid transition are themselves a leverage point - In this regard, incorporation of an equitable accounting system such as safe and just earth system boundaries that can be cross scale translated to - bioregional, - city and - community, district and ward scale - are an important cosmolocal component of a system designed for rapid transition - Global bottom up community scale events such as the Tipping Point Festival can help rapidly advocate for a cosmolocal lens, framework and strategy - At the same time, Web 4 technology that's goes beyond decentralising into people-centered can contribute another dimension to humanizing technology

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    1. we need a new countercultural energy that rejects being quantified as data for Technofeudal lords. That rejection can come in many forms, from data-sovereignty to a push toward Web 3.0.

      for - counterculture - fightback against technofeudalism - Indyweb - people-centered - Substack article - Best Served Cold: Luigi Mangione and The Age of Breach - Alexander Beiner

    2. The assassination is a koan that brings to light the paradox at the heart of civilisation: what’s real is our experience of being alive, not how we can be quantified, but we pretend the opposite is true.

      for - comparison - symbolosphere vs physiosphere - assassination of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson - Substack article - Best Served Cold: Luigi Mangione and The Age of Breach - Alexander Beiner

    3. Algorithmic control of our lives is an expression of the rot at the heart of Western civilisation: quantitative values subsuming qualitative experience.

      for - key insight - algorithmic control - quantitative values subsuming qualitative experience - Substack article - Best Served Cold: Luigi Mangione and The Age of Breach - Alexander Beiner

    4. This is precisely what happens in breach events; when the imaginal meets the real, forces are unleashed that nobody can control.

      for - breach events - unpredictability of - from Substack article - Best Served Cold: Luigi Mangione and The Age of Breach - Alexander Beiner

    5. End Times

      for - book - End Times - Peter Turchin - from Substack article - Best Served Cold: Luigi Mangione and The Age of Breach - Alexander Beiner

    6. psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk puts it, ‘the body keeps the score’.

      for - quote - the body keeps the score - psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk - from Substack article - Alexander Beiner - to - synchronicity - same quote mentioned in - YouTube I watched yesterday - prenatal and perinatal healing happens in layers - Kate White - https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DUcgWsFqPe7Q&group=world

    7. for - meme - the age of breach - Alexander Beiner - Article - Substack - Best Served Cold: Luigi Mangione and The Age of Breach Technofeudalism, accountability porn and the new counterculture - Alexander Beiner

    1. for - Technofeudalism: What killed capitalism - Yanis Varoufakis - from - interview - 2008 was the West's 1991 moment - Yanis Varoufakis - from - Medium article - An Emerging Third Option: Reclaiming Democracy from Dark Money & Dark Tech Seven Observations On 2024 and What’s Next - Otto Scharmer - neo feudalism - from - Substack article - Best Served Cold: Luigi Mangione and The Age of Breach - Technofeudalism, accountability porn and the new counterculture - Alexander Beiner

      from - interview - 2008 was the West's 1991 moment - Yanis Varoufakis - https://hyp.is/BZ88pKj5Ee-k86snmHsbnQ/www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nTBWf4JgYQ - Medium article - An Emerging Third Option: Reclaiming Democracy from Dark Money & Dark Tech Seven Observations On 2024 and What’s Next - Otto Scharmer - neo feudalism - https://hyp.is/cVix6KtFEe-zA8PBZvgw8w/medium.com/presencing-institute-blog/an-emerging-third-option-reclaiming-democracy-from-dark-money-dark-tech-3886bcd0469b - Substack article - Best Served Cold: Luigi Mangione and The Age of Breach - Technofeudalism, accountability porn and the new counterculture - Alexander Beiner - https://hyp.is/8V9iTrsaEe-Dqq_Oz0oc_Q/beiner.substack.com/p/best-served-cold-luigi-mangione-and

  2. Nov 2024
    1. To effectively combat the roots of fascism, it is crucial to integrate both horizontal and vertical decentralized decision-making structures.

      for - commons - new definition - pathological conservatism - new definition - benign conservatism - new definition - beneficial conservatism - adjacency - citizen assemblies - cosmolocal - community organization - horizontal and vertical decision-making as cosmolocal - Fair Share Commons - FSC - pathological conservatism - hypocrisy of modern conservatism that cannot acknowledge first nations - TPF as a vehicle for citizen assembly in each ward and district of a city - to - Youtube - Trump won, now what? - Roger Hallam - to - Substack article - - A global history of societal regulation - metacrisis, polycrisis - role of the commons and cosmolocal coordination - Michel Bauwens

      adjacency - between - citizen assemblies - cosmolocal - community organization - citizen assemblies - horizontal and vertical - Fair Share Commons - FSC - town anywhere - TPF - one per city ward or district - progress traps - wicked problem - pathological conservatism - deep conservatism - ECOnomy is a subset of ECOlogy - Modernity has many forms of shallow, pathological conservatism - Indigenous and first nations peoples practice deep, beneficial conservatism - adjacency relationship - One of the biggest progress traps is pathological conservatism when - a technology has become popular and ubiquitous but an unintended consequence becomes exposed - In that case, incumbents who profit from the established supply chain will defend it at great cost, even if the harm it causes becomes increasingly obvious. - They will do this until it reaches a point that the harm is so great that it can no longer be defended. - Often, great harm is done before that point is reached, if it is reached. - Misinformation, gaslighting and fascism can emerge as a form of pathological conservatism in an attempt to preserve the harmful aspect of the status quo. - Fossil fuels, internal combustion engines and the climate change they cause are an example of this, creating a wicked problem in which those trying to solve the problem are also contributing to it - Citizen assemblies are a bottom up response and counterweight to centralized power that is driving pathological conservatism - In contrast to the pathological conservatism, environmental awareness is a practice of benign and beneficial conservatism - the conservation of our natural environment - In fact, many who call themselves conservatives and nationalists are hypocritical because - if they went further in their conservativism logic, they would have to acknowledge the first nations people who came before them - The natural resources that were part of indigenous peoples lives for millenia that colonialists have built their entire fortune on represents even greater degree of conservatism, yet the hypocrisy is that - modern conservatives often cannot acknowledge this reality of a deeper form of conservatism as it threatens their false entitlement - This brings into question their claim of practicing conservatism - pathological conservatives act as if the ECOlogy is subordinate to the ECOnomy when in fact, the ECOnomy cannot exist without a functioning ECOlogy - citizen assemblies can be implemented in each ward and district of a large city - On top of these, Fair Share Commons and community cooperatives can be built as formal structures to drive specific projects - In order for participatory democracy to work effectively requires education on Deep Humanity and conflict resolution, otherwise risks low resiliency due to internal conflicts and derailment of vision - In order to scale, it requires both horizontal and vertical components or organization. This implies a cosmolocal strategy: - horizontal decision-making with local group is local, whilst - vertical decision-making with non-local groups based on broader issues is cosmo - A global Tipping Point Festival that employs social tipping point theory to emerge a global network of citizen assemblies / commons assemblies / people's assemblies in each ward and district of a city to relocate healthy power back to the people

      to - Youtube - Trump won, now what? - a love-based approach to replace power-based approach for dealing with fascism and polarization - Roger Hallam - https://hyp.is/wUDpaKsAEe-DM9fteMUtzw/www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiKWCHAcS7E - Substack article - A global history of societal regulation - metacrisis, polycrisis - role of the commons and cosmolocal coordination - Michel Bauwens - https://hyp.is/wlywbqkTEe-ROXfhSmA3bA/4thgenerationcivilization.substack.com/p/a-global-history-of-societal-regulation

    1. for - book - The Destiny of Civilization - from - Substack article - A global history of societal regulation - Why commons-based institutions now need to regulate the market and state, ‘cosmo-locally’ - Michel Bauwens

      from - Substack article - A global history of societal regulation - Why commons-based institutions now need to regulate the market and state, ‘cosmo-locally’ - Michel Bauwens - https://hyp.is/ID3F7KiwEe-26QsBOrdtlQ/4thgenerationcivilization.substack.com/p/a-global-history-of-societal-regulation

    1. for - article - substack - altruism - indigenous - Will Ruddick - adjacency - indigenous altruism mythology - Deep Humanity - individual / collective gestalt - source - Donna Nelham Summary - A brief but insightful article that clarifies the roots of common misunderstanding of - altruism practices in indigenous cultures. - As often the case, an oversimplification is the root of the misunderstanding - The oversimplification posits that such altruism is completely selfless, - but this contradicts common sense as well as the foundations of biology and evolution - From a Deep Humanity perspective, it again highlights the importance of the idea of the intertwingled individual / collective gestalt

  3. Oct 2024
    1. for - from - recommendation - from - Michel Bauwens - on Fair Share Commons chat thread, 2024 Oct 17 - context Karl Marx liberation of the individual - to - substack article - Why Human (Contributive) Labor remains the creative principle of human society - Michel Bauwens article details - title: From Modes of Production to the Resurrection of the Body: A Labor Theory of Revolutionary Subjectivity & Religious Ideas" (2016) - author: Benjamin Suriano

      to - Substack article - Why Human (Contributive) Labor remains the creative principle of human society - Michel Bauwens - https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2F4thgenerationcivilization.substack.com%2Fp%2Fwhy-human-contributive-labor-remains&group=world

    1. St Columba Columba (521-597), known as Colm Cille in Ireland, went to the west coast of Scotland and to the island of Iona to do penance and escape from the blood spilled in his family battles at home in Ireland.

      for - from - AnMaonaigh - annotation - Christian Monastic Communities - from article - Why Human (Contributive) Labor remains the creative principle of human society - Michel Bauwens - Substack - https://hyp.is/iITCrH2hEe-nIc9iOR4VeQ/4thgenerationcivilization.substack.com/p/why-human-contributive-labor-remains

  4. Sep 2024
    1. What To Do With Substack? by [[Dan Allosso]]

      The "recency" problem is difficult in general in social media which tends to accentuate it versus the rest of the open web which is more of a network.

  5. May 2024
    1. I’m less inclined to click on a Substack newsletter link. All the essays look identical. The site branding is bland (not necessarily a bad thing), but the per-newsletter branding is beholden to the site (sub-optimal). My mind is starting to re-categorize Substack from “Whoa, maybe a neat new voice to be found??” to “Ugh, another 3,000 unedited words sent too frequently?”

      More Substack thoughts for the pile

  6. Jan 2024
    1. A very important project under construction, to regenerate and cosmo-localize our world

      to - Michel's Substack - Translation of interview with Hugo Mathecowitsch on the topic of - A system of sovereign bonds but for alternative types of sovereignties? https://hyp.is/RBLQirocEe6eoeeG2hk_Sw/4thgenerationcivilization.substack.com/p/a-system-of-sovereign-bonds-but-for?showWelcome=true

      for - interview - Hugo Mathecowitsch - Michel Bauwens - substack article - interview - alternative types of sovereignties

    1. I like having as few opportunities as possible for would-be enshittifiers to mess around with what I'm trying to do

      Molly says: "If anyone enshittifies my newsletter, it's going to be me, dammit!"

    1. read [[Dan Allosso]] in Peer to Peer?

      Not sure if you've seen/found it before, but as academia has been having bigger problems with granting tenure over the past 20 years, there's been a rise of discussion of alternate academia pathways, often under the term #AltAc in social media and other locations. Careers in writing in other spaces have certainly abounded here.

    1. Read [[Doug Belshaw]] in I am so tired of moving platforms on 2023-12-27 (accessed:: 2024-01-05 09:58:46)

    2. Venkatesh Rao thinks that the Nazi bar analogy is “an example of a bad metaphor contagion effect” and points to a 2010 post of his about warren vs plaza architectures. He believes that Twitter, for example, is a plaza, whereas Substack is a warren: A warren is a social environment where no participant can see beyond their little corner of a larger maze. Warrens emerge through people personalizing and customizing their individual environments with some degree of emergent collaboration. A plaza is an environment where you can easily get to a global/big picture view of the whole thing. Plazas are created by central planners who believe they know what’s best for everyone.
  7. Dec 2023
  8. May 2023
    1. Keep Comments Open! by Dan Allosso

      Some thoughts about the ability to turn off public comments on Substack posts, which may diminish the conversation.

    1. Those are good points.

      Reply to Dan Allosso at https://danallosso.substack.com/p/what-value-do-i-add-to-the-substack/comment/16463063

      I just saw this morning that Jillian Hess, a professor/researcher/writer at a community college in New York, is also contemplating some of the same territory and trying to balance out the necessaries: https://jillianhess.substack.com/p/introducing-ps-a-new-paid-subscriber

      I see that she's using both Amazon and Bookshop affiliate accounts and links in her stream. Have you delved into this for supplementation (albeit probably small)? I've done it for years and it never nets enough to even cover my hosting costs, though it makes the hobbyist portion of the outlay a bit more comfortable.

      Beyond this, you might appreciate her particular Substack on note books and note taking or her new book: Hess, Jillian M. How Romantics and Victorians Organized Information: Commonplace Books, Scrapbooks, and Albums. 1st ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. https://amzn.to/3VY4RU7

      You're probably beyond needing them, but Substack has been building their writer resources and tips for helping to build paid audience. Details at https://on.substack.com/s/resources and https://on.substack.com/s/office-hours

    1. As an English professor at a public community college, I teach 3-4 extra courses a year—in addition to 6 -7 contractual courses—to supplement my salary and to make living in NYC more affordable. As I prepare to go back to teaching a full load, I need to be honest with myself about what I can actually accomplish. I spend 20-30 hours on each Noted post—while I love the work, it is a lot of work. And, it’s not sustainable for me to keep up my current pace of writing if I am also juggling around 10 courses. So, I’m asking you, dear reader, to consider upgrading your subscription. Right now only 1% of you are paid subscribers. If 5-10% of you upgraded, it would mean that I wouldn’t need to teach extra classes and could devote all of that time to Noted.

      6-7 contractual courses at a public community college in New York is roughly equivalent to 5-10% of Hess' Substack subscribing at $50/year.

      Rough estimates of the variables could fill in the holes here to get a current estimate of subscribers.

    1. Perhaps you're conflating too many things? Ask first, what value do I add to the world? (Arguably loads.) Then ask: How do I (best) distribute this value? To this perhaps one of your answers is Substack, which may or may not be one of many tools you use for this purpose. Then the follow on question is what value do you get back from it?

      Given HCR's numbers (especially in comparison with Twitter) and her time on the platform, I suspect she may have (or at this point had) some sort of special platform deal with Substack which isn't publicly known beyond the basics of what the typical person could get. It's probably the modern digital equivalent of the sort of deal a highly visible academic might get from a magazine like The Atlantic. The pay scale may be different but we can obviously see that the daily output is wildly different too. If you're not aware, when Substack started they reached out to a wide variety of famous/semi-famous people and helped them to build a quick audience that would have taken them far more time and effort than they would otherwise have ever invested. Part of this was providing initial payment/seed money which was really their early investment for getting lots of quality content on the platform as a means of drawing the masses to come to the platform to both read and create as well. Unless you're a massive name working with them directly, you're unlikely to get this sort of deal today, and this means a tougher up hill slog for the "rest of us" as the platform doesn't need to pay for this sort of scaling/network effect now. If nothing else, knowing these early economies of Substack (and really lots of other social platforms, Medium certainly followed this script as an example) will help you to have a broader perspective and better compare your apples to others' oranges.

    1. https://substack.com/notes

      Yet another status update-like product, this time from Substack as Twitter is heavily waning...

  9. Apr 2023
    1. Introducing Substack Notes<br /> by Hamish McKenzie, Chris Best, Jairaj Sethi

    2. In Notes, writers will be able to post short-form content and share ideas with each other and their readers. Like our Recommendations feature, Notes is designed to drive discovery across Substack. But while Recommendations lets writers promote publications, Notes will give them the ability to recommend almost anything—including posts, quotes, comments, images, and links.

      Substack slowly adding features and functionality to make them a full stack blogging/social platform... first long form, then short note features...

      Also pushing in on Twitter's lunch as Twitter is having issues.

    3. There are more than 35 million active subscriptions to writers on Substack, including more than 2 million paid subscriptions.

      As of April 2023, only 5.7% of Substack active subscriptions are paid.

      How exactly do they define "active" subscriptions?

  10. Dec 2022
  11. May 2022
    1. #webmention is just...magic. Instead of getting comments on twitter, substack, your blog, etc etc. It just all comes to one place? I'm actually surprised @SubstackInc doesn't have support already: anytime someone blogs or substacks about your newsletter, you get a mention?

      #webmention is just...magic. Instead of getting comments on twitter, substack, your blog, etc etc. It just all comes to one place? I'm actually surprised @SubstackInc doesn't have support already: anytime someone blogs or substacks about your newsletter, you get a mention? 👌👌

      — person72443 (@person72443) May 9, 2022
      <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

      The linguist in me notes that the tweet above from @person72443 is the first time I've seen someone verbify Substack as "substacks"

  12. Feb 2022
    1. Our business wouldn’t exist without Substack, and we think the world of them, but we’re excited to announce that Every will be run on a platform we built ourselves.

      Every is an example of a newsletter built on Substack that realized what a massive cut was being taken out of the middle so they created their own platform instead.

    1. Substack has now sold 1 million subscriptions to mostly individual publishers.

      Today, we can announce that there are more than 1 million paid subscriptions to publications on Substack. On Substack, the newsletter from Substack https://on.substack.com/p/one-million-strong on 2021-11-15

    1. Nonfiction Techniques Spring 2022

      Caveat emptor. A lot of these "influencer" methods are leaving 30% or far more of their value with the platforms they're using for distribution. A better path is to build and promote your own platform and have a direct relationship with one's readers (in newsletter spaces, it's about "owning"/having your reader's email address). Some other newsletter options can be found here: https://indieweb.org/newsletter as well as methods for building and owning your own technology stack across its site. If nothing else, consider having a website where you can have a portfolio/archive of your work.

      Careful watchers of the newsletter space will notice that almost all of the highlight examples on these services are established big names with pre-existing platforms and audience. Where are the stories of the other 99.9% and how well they're doing? Who is actually making a full time living doing this without a significant leg up to start? As examples, look for major writers leaving the New York Times to set up newsletters, or people like Steve Hayes and Jonah Goldberg leaving The National Review to set up The Dispatch (as a newsletter platform)—it's a good bet that they're getting a better deal from Substack than the average person. The NiemanLab has some relatively good coverage of some of this space. (Their annual predictions series also has solid forward looking coverage of the journalism/technology space: https://www.niemanlab.org/collection/predictions-2022/.)

      (Apologies for lurking... 😅, but happy to chat technology/publishing with anyone interested.)

  13. Nov 2021
    1. when I browse from someone’s blog over to their Substack it feels like going from a sweet little neighborhood into a staid corporate park. A little piece of joy dies in me when that happens because it’s another reminder of the corporatization of the web.

      --Ray

  14. Sep 2021
    1. The result is a job that feels more durable, and sustainable, than any other employment I’ve had. In the past, to lose my job might require only a bad quarter in the ad market, the loss of an ally in upper management, or the takeover of my company by some indifferent telecom company. Today, I can really only lose my job if thousands of people decide independently to “fire” me.
  15. Jul 2021
    1. “Substack is longform media Twitter, for good and for ill,” wrote Ashley Feinberg in the first installment of her Substack.

      Definitely a hot take, but a truthful sounding one.

  16. May 2021
    1. Substack insists that advances are determined by “business decisions, not editorial ones”. Yet it offers writers mentoring and legal advice, and will soon provide editing services.

      Some evidence of Substack acting along the lines of agent, production company, and studio. Then taking a slice of the overall pie.

      By having the breadth of the space they're able to see who to invest in over time, much the same way that Amazon can put smaller companies out of business by knocking off big sales items.

  17. Apr 2021
    1. Since I’m doing that, I’m also considering whether it makes sense for me to have a substack blog as well?

      Given some of the press Substack has gotten in the past few months, I think there's more to be said for actively leaving Substack to move to WordPress or some other platform where you can use your own domain name and content.

      Congratulations on the move!

    1. I have a feeling some of the money framing in the newsletter space is overblown. Some bigger names with pre-existing platforms (and by this I mean exposure, popularity, voices, and other possible media outlets already) have some serious upside to creating paid newsletters. Many of these platforms are trying to not only capture a slice of these pies, they're trying to leverage those same big names to actively make it seem to the average person that they too could have a paid newsletter (see how easy it is...). The reality is that many of these others are going to spend a lot of time and effort to try to garner pennies on the dollar or ultimately fail. This sort of game works much better in the YouTube space where self-hosting the video and doing distribution is a much higher bar. The VC space for newsletters is going to have a dreadful crash when folks realize that there's more competition in the space than they bargained for.

    2. Jessica Lessin, the founder and editor in chief of The Information, a newsletter-centric Silicon Valley subscription publication, said part of its edge was “sophisticated marketing around acquiring and retaining subscribers.”

      Knowing market efficiencies can significantly help some platforms. Not all platforms have this value built in. Many writers are unlikely to see this sort of value in places like Substack which are trying to buy in bulk while they're experimenting. What happens to well-paid writers a year from now when the experimentation ends or dies completely? Where do they take their business then?

      I don't see this ending well for most.

    3. (Substack has courted a number of Times writers. I turned down an offer of an advance well above my Times salary, in part because of the editing and the platform The Times gives me, and in part because I didn’t think I’d make it back — media types often overvalue media writers.)

      This is an important data point. Almost no one is putting any value on editing and other institutional support that outlets provide. Some writers can see at least a little bit of the future.

  18. Mar 2021
    1. I just wanted a way to send out my irregularly-updated newsletter to a couple thousand subscribers without getting caught in a spam filter.

      This is the short version of what Substack is and why people want to use it.

    2. So Substack has an editorial policy, but no accountability. And they have terms of service, but no enforcement.

      This is also the case for many other toxic online social media platforms. A fantastic framing.

    3. It’s become the preferred platform for men who can’t work in diverse environments without getting calls from HR. 

      This is a damning definition of Substack

    4. Substack’s nice interface and large community made it easy for content to go viral. And that’s what I wanted. I didn’t need to be paid, but I wanted to get some of my weirder ideas in front of a broad audience. What I’m saying is that Substack suckered me in with the promise of growing my readership, and the bait was that they had so many great writers with huge followings. But now I’m left wondering how many of those huge followings were made possible by payouts from Substack. 

      YouTube's model is certainly more mature, but is very similar. Some very high profile creators get paid very well and act as scions for hoi poloi who also think they can replicate the same system and become rich themselves. The incredibly vast majority will never come close.

    5. Substack is taking an editorial stance, paying writers who fit that stance, and refusing to be transparent about who those people are.
  19. Feb 2021
    1. In response to this email explosion, the startup Substack launched in 2017 as a newsletter publishing and monetization platform. Most newsletter platforms and payment systems aren’t integrated in any smooth or meaningful way. Charging for access can be an onerous task. Through the Substack system, though, a publisher can easily set up metered access to a newsletter for a subscription fee. As of October, Substack boasts over 25,000 subscribers across various newsletters, paying on average $80 a year. Rolling Stone reporter Matt Taibbi recently launched his novel, The Business Secrets of Drug Dealing, in serial on Substack. Judd Legum’s Popular Information is also published via Substack.

      为了应对这种电子邮件爆炸式增长,创业公司 Substack 在2017年推出了一个新闻发布和盈利平台。大多数通讯平台和支付系统并没有以流畅或有意义的方式集成。收费访问可能是一项繁重的任务。不过通过Substack系统,发布者可以很容易地设置对新闻稿的计量访问,并收取订阅费。截至10月,Substack拥有超过2.5万名订阅者,涵盖各种通讯,平均每年支付80美元。《滚石》杂志的记者马特·泰比(Matt Taibbi)最近在Substack上连载了他的小说《毒品交易的商业秘密》。贾德·莱古姆的《大众资讯》也通过Substack发布。

  20. Jan 2021
    1. One of the things that Platformer members support is my ability to use part of each week to mentor junior writers. Today I want to tell you about my first mentee: Benjamin Strak, author of Design Lobster. As its name suggests, it’s a newsletter about how objects look and work, with an eye toward connecting modern designs with historical antecedents.

      Example of a writer with a platform helping out new talent.

  21. Nov 2020
    1. More importantly, both systems assume that writers have full access to the full conversation that prompts them into writing. On Substack, there are too many walls dividing up the garden.
    2. Substack is the medium of the solo artist. High-rolling soloists at that.
    1. Substack, viewed as a blogging platform, is a lot like Medium — a would-be walled garden, though run by less unscrupulous folks than own the big social-media platforms. I’m temperamentally suspicious of them, as I am of any platform that is, ultimately, subject to the whim of a proprietor. So although I use both Medium and Substack, everything I write therein is also published verbatim on my ‘live’ blog, which is completely under my control, and for whose hosting I pay with my own money. For me, Substack provided merely a convenient and reliable way of sending out the email version of what really matters — the live blog on the open Web. Both Substack and Medium have fairly honourable business models and have facilities whereby writers can get paid, if they wish to be. (I don’t.) And that’s a good thing (though it leads to the power-law outcome that Greer mentions). But it also has the downside in terms of the public sphere that, ultimately, their writing exists mainly inside a walled, members-only, garden. A genteel garden, but still a private garden. That’s why I’ve always followed Dave Winer’s lead: write wherever you like, but always make sure your stuff is also published on the Web.
  22. Nov 2019
    1. In a world of publishing platforms that are dominated by venture capital-backed operations, (even the newsletter platform Substack has raised $17.5m in VC funding) this is a refreshing state-of-affairs. The Ghost Foundation has an annual run rate of $1.73m (and posts this publicly) — and hasn't taken VC money. Ghost was actually launched as a Kickstarter, which long-term readers might remember…  

      Something to watch with respect to this is Jonah Goldberg and Steven Hayes who are working with Substack to put out a membership driven news website.