[HN Gopher] Sovereign writers and Substack ___________________________________________________________________ Sovereign writers and Substack Author : feross Score : 79 points Date : 2021-03-22 14:48 UTC (8 hours ago) (HTM) web link (stratechery.com) (TXT) w3m dump (stratechery.com) | mdoms wrote: | Substack is what happens when the mainstream media elites | overplay their hand and force heterodox writers out of the | "mainstream". As it turns out there are still plenty of people | who want to read this kind of writing, and we don't appreciate | the gatekeeping from formerly reputable sources. | ceilingcorner wrote: | _Of course things aren't so simple; Sullivan, like several of the | other names on that leaderboard, are, to put it gently, | controversial. That he along with other lightning-rod writers | ended up on Substack is more a matter of where else would they | go?_ | | While Substack is portrayed as being a good move for writers and | journalists (and certainly it is, financially), I don't think | this is actually good for journalism as a whole. It often will | just mean that successful writers are the most celebrity-like | ones: writing controversial things because it gets more traffic | and therefore more income. | | I don't know about you, but I don't want the tactics of Kim | Kardashian to be the model of a future journalist. | jameshart wrote: | Substack is a great move for a _columnist_ but a terrible move | for a _reporter_. | | Unfortunately not all journalists are completely clear which of | those they are. | bhupy wrote: | That's what journalism has _always_ been like, save for a few | decades in one specific country (the US). The past few decades | of supposed "objectivity" and "neutrality" in American | journalism were a historical aberration. | | https://www.wired.com/story/journalism-isnt-dying-its-return... | slibhb wrote: | I watched a classic movie from the 50s recently, Sweet Smell | of Success. In the movie columnists are portrayed as almost | exclusively venal and engaged in corrupt influence-peddling | (except for one guy who refuses to compromise in the face of | blackmail). | | It was an interesting counterpoint to the "journalists used | to be objective" stuff. | ceilingcorner wrote: | Anti-discrimination laws, human rights, and democracy are | also historical aberrations. But I think they're _kind of_ | worth keeping around. | | Perhaps getting accurate facts about the world is also | important? | bhupy wrote: | > Anti-discrimination laws, human rights, and democracy are | also historical aberrations. But I think they're kind of | worth keeping around. | | Nazism was also a historical aberration, but that's | certainly not worth keeping around. Just because some | "good" things were historical aberrations, doesn't mean | that all historical aberrations are "good". | | > Perhaps getting accurate facts about the world is also | important? | | I don't think anybody disagrees with this. The central | question is: is _journalism_ the institution that should be | responsible for getting accurate facts about the world? | That 's almost never been the case, and even today, isn't | the case in most countries (including Western Europe). We | typically use other institutions to suss out facts, | including academia and peer-reviewed research. News | articles published by mainstream outlets aren't peer- | reviewed, and bias has existed in journalism since time | immemorial. That was the point of my original response. | Substack isn't "good" or "bad" for the future of | journalism, it's "neutral", since it doesn't change the | status quo all that much. | adolph wrote: | Were people getting accurate facts about the world | previously? | | _Wen it came out in 1988, Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman's | Manufacturing Consent rattled the accepted view in post- | Vietnam, post-Watergate America that journalists' | relationship to power was essentially adversarial. Instead, | they argued, the institutional structure of American media | -- its dependence on corporate advertising and sources in | the upper ranks of government and business -- created a | role for the press as creators of propaganda. Without any | direct press censorship, with full freedom of speech, the | media narrowed the political debate to exclude anything | that offended the interests of the market or the state._ | | https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/10/matt-taibbi-interview- | fai... | dragonwriter wrote: | > While Substack is portrayed as being a good move for | writers and journalists (and certainly it is, financially), I | don't think this is actually good for journalism | | And were neither objective nor neutral, just a close | alignment of elite interests reflected in homogeneity. | nickysielicki wrote: | That's a strawman and a half. | | World-improving journalism follows a Pareto distribution where | 90% of non-submarine hard-hitting journalism is done by 10% of | the journalists and the rest just exist to peddle influence. | The industry has been under pressure for a long time due to the | death of print media, and substack just represents the 10% | cutting the fat. | | Good riddance. Learn to code. | tablespoon wrote: | > I don't know about you, but I don't want the tactics of Kim | Kardashian to be the model of a future journalist. | | I don't think something like Substack could even support | journalism. Sure, it could support various kinds of punditry, | which is often confused for journalism, but beat journalism is | probably too boring and investigative journalism produces on | too irregular of a schedule. | pydry wrote: | >It often will just mean that successful writers are the most | celebrity-like ones: writing controversial things because it | gets more traffic | | The opposite seems more the case to me. Convincing readers to | get out their wallet encourages more thoughtful, longer form | writing. | | It's the larger media publications that are gradually getting | more clickbaity in a desperate bid to gain clicks and ad | revenue. | zpeti wrote: | My perception of old media is that they are doing exactly this, | writing click bait things to get clicks and subs. This is true | across the board from CNN to NYT to Fox. | | At least with substack the incentives are not there for daily | churn articles, the journalists have independence to publish | when they want to, how they want to, worst case they lost | subscribers. I think those incentives make them a lot less | likely to make everything about clicks and controversy | actually. | ceilingcorner wrote: | Agreed, old media already does this. The question is: does | switching to an individual-focused model actually address the | underlying issues? | carlineng wrote: | I would argue that yes, the fundamental incentives are | different. Traditional media relied on an advertising-based | revenue model, that needed to maximize eyeballs to be | attractive to advertisers. Substack relies on | subscriptions, which can operate at a much smaller scale. | Matthew Yglesias's 10k subscribers is not nearly enough to | be attractive for an advertiser, but more than enough to | support a single writer's subscription business. Through | Substack, writers are incentivized to write things they | think that _people will pay for_ , not just things they | think people will click on. | 762236 wrote: | You've described NY Times and Fox News in how they write | controversial things to get more traffic. They share the same | world, yet have quite dissimilar front pages, because they're | tailoring controversy for the value systems of their audiences. | The authors on Substack don't need to seek controversy: they | just need to point out the rules of the orthodoxy, and then the | controversy follows them. | ceilingcorner wrote: | Yes, so Substack is just kicking the bucket further down the | road. Just another game of musical chairs. | | I guess it's cool that writers make more money, but I'm not | sure this is as revolutionary as it seems. | snicksnak wrote: | > I don't want the tactics of Kim Kardashian to be the model of | a future journalist. | | Most mayor news outlets (including NYT) run branded/sponsored | content. I doubt that you will see that on substack. | meheleventyone wrote: | You absolutely will when people on the cusp of making a | living use them to push themselves over that edge. As is | pretty common on other content platforms. | | Here it's happening already: | https://medialyte.substack.com/p/the-curious-emergence-of- | th... | Dirlewanger wrote: | Old media and Buzzfeed-esque rags had their chance to write | quality journalism in the nascent Internet age. They've failed | spectacularly and are tearing society apart. If this is the way | forward for the time being, so be it. | slibhb wrote: | > writing controversial things because it gets more traffic and | therefore more income. | | This is a danger but I'd rather have "controversial" than "if | you deviate from the politics of the publication that pays your | salary, you get fired". | | Personally, I like Sullivan, Greenwald, Yglesias, Taibbi, etc. | | I think Sullivan and Yglesias are not drama queens and that | Geenwald and Tiabbi are. But I like all 4, I just think the | latter two need a responsible editor to rein them in a bit. | ceilingcorner wrote: | I don't dislike them, I just dislike the idea that becoming a | successful journalist will now mean you must also be | charismatic, good at attracting attention to yourself, etc. | x0x0 wrote: | The word "now" is doing a lot of work there :) So also | successful. | | Do you think there was really a time that being a really | successful journalist didn't require some charisma and a | talent for publicity? Maybe the publication handled some of | those things, but it doesn't change that they were | required. | ceilingcorner wrote: | Of course. Investigative journalism has little to do with | building an audience of paying subscribers. When the | newspaper handled the business end, the journalists could | focus on the journalism. | | It wasn't called "loss leader" for nothing. | ghaff wrote: | Newspapers were historically a bundle of only somewhat | tangentially related things that you had to take, if not | actually read, all together. The foreign bureaus and | investigative journalism provided the prestige, sports a | lot of readership, and classified ads the money. Of | course, the Internet broke that bundle apart to a large | degree. | inglor_cz wrote: | To be honest, writing is a kind of art and what you | describe has always been important among artistically | gifted people. | | Introverted and shy geniuses tend to be discovered after | their deaths, if ever. | ceilingcorner wrote: | No, that really isn't true at all. Some of the most | famous writers and artists throughout history were | terrible at self-promotion. | inglor_cz wrote: | Well we are talking more about financial success, right? | Or that was my impression from the debate. Even the | original article revolves around $$$. | ceilingcorner wrote: | I'm just concerned that _journalists_ will become more | like _celebrities_. Less concerned with the cold facts | and more with giving their take. | | Frankly a similar thing has already happened in the art | world. Banksy, Jeff Koons, and Damien Hirst are fantastic | marketers, not artists. | x0x0 wrote: | Was Ted Koppel really a great journalist? | ceilingcorner wrote: | Not the example I'd use. Kronkite is a better one, IMO. | That level of straightforwardness is sorely lacking | today. | BurningFrog wrote: | Journalism has always been a business that sells on sensation | and controversy. | | The people who tell you otherwise tend to be journalists. | | That said, sensation driven journalism can be pretty good at | checking the powerful, since it's sensational when they do bad | things. | dragonwriter wrote: | > While Substack is portrayed as being a good move for writers | and journalists (and certainly it is, financially), I don't | think this is actually good for journalism | | Certainly what I've seen from writers on substack is much worse | than what I've seen from the same writers in traditional | publications. It seems to be a great way of catapulting anyone | who has achieved even a bit of name recognition into that | "doesn't have to deal with editors/publishers/etc." phase of | their career that's often the quality downfall as ego takes | over for many writers, but which has historically been more | available to writers doing long-form work. | smoldesu wrote: | I don't think I'll ever end up using Substack. In a world where | information is virtually worthless, why should I pay you for your | opinion? | coldtea wrote: | It might be worthless to you. Depends on what you can take out | of it, or do with it. | | Well formed opinions, ideas, curation, and coverage, and | priceless to others. To some because they operate in fields | where they can put to use such information, to others because | they want to understand the world they live in better (even if | they don't get something out of it). | | Even more so "in a world where information is virtually | worthless", in other words, in a world where good stuff is lost | in the noise / signal ratio. | | In any case, I'd rather pay for a few great newsletters than | for wasting my time with the nth BS Netflix show. | | (I pay for a couple of Substack subscriptions) | [deleted] | zpeti wrote: | A very elegant non-political article getting to the core of the | issue - that yet again old business models are being disrupted | and this pisses people off. | | Shame these pissed off people have to get political though. | naringas wrote: | The Yglesias deal seems more like a marketing and promotion | expense from the perspective that substack is a tool for writers | to work with. not too different from a typewritter or a word | processor. | pavlov wrote: | There seems to be a backlash in progress against Substack's | publishing policies. | | Last week I finally subscribed on Substack to an art-related list | where I had been enjoying the free edition for a while. ($55 / | year felt like a pretty good deal for access to more of this | interesting content.) | | A few days later, the writer announced that they're moving off | Substack. I'll just quote their message verbatim: | | _" I'm planning to switch to my newsletter provider from | Substack to Ghost in the near future -- if I understand it right, | the paid subscriptions can all be migrated, so I don't think | it'll be a big hiccup on the subscriber end. I'll let you know | when I actually make the switch._ | | _" It's because I'm concerned with Substack's marketing plan of | subsidizing controversial authors (discourse here: Annaleen | Newitz, Emily VanDerWerff, Jude Ellison S. Doyle, Metafilter | thread), particularly a weirdly large number that can be | reasonably construed as anti-trans. Plus, Graham Linehan still | uses the service, despite being kicked off plenty of other | platforms for documented anti-trans abuse._ | | _" The media profiting off of platforming anti-trans views was a | major impetus behind the rise of anti-trans sentiment in the UK | in 2016, and the same seems to be happening in the US (broadly, | not just on Substack). Yet Substack's response seems to pretty | bluntly reject the idea that they need to reconsider anything. | Even if they ban Linehan in the future, I've lost faith in the | leadership."_ | | Personally I feel this author is doing the right thing by getting | off a platform whose policies they can't support. And it makes me | wonder about Substack's stickiness, because as a consumer I | certainly don't care one bit which company processes my annual | payment and delivers the emails. | michaelt wrote: | _> [...] writers who can command a paying audience have | heretofore been significantly underpaid._ | | I don't know for sure, but I _suspect_ the writer-paid-monthly | model is straight up more effective at pulling money from readers | ' pockets than the magazine subscription model. | | I mean, I can pay PS34 a year for a fortnightly magazine with | quite a few writers doing quite a lot of investigative | journalism, and even mailing a paper copy to me. I can pay PS10 | for a novel by a bestselling author who takes several years to | write each novel. | | But with the market positioning of "$10 per month" it turns out | you can sell one person's writing for PS86 ($120) per year. | | Strange that the output of one full time human writer could be | priced so differently, even when every example is award-winning | and well known. Perhaps the future of writing is a return to | Dickens-era serialisation, and the next J. K. Rowling will be | posting two chapters a week on Patreon. | ghaff wrote: | How many people will actually pay $120/year though. I pay in | that ballpark for the NYT and The Economist. But it seems | borderline nuts to pay that for a single author's newsletter | unless they're delivering unique insights that I can turn into | a lot more money than that. Or _maybe_ is they do a really good | job of covering a niche hobby although that 's still almost | certainly more than a niche hobby magazine would charge. | abhinav22 wrote: | I think once the novelty wears off and people start seeing how | many subscriptions they are on, they will move to consolidated | packages covering multiple writers, like Netflix for writing. | Which already exists in the sense of Medium.com | | Everything reverts to the mean and your point is valid - we | shouldn't expect one form of writing to have abnormally high | returns to effort ratio for too long, unless there is a general | shift in the value of writing by the population at large. Which | given current trends towards video and higher stimulation, I | would assume is less likely? | | Unless one could argue there's a huge untapped latent market of | bookworms. I think there is some market to a degree as people | get burned out on other forms of media, but I'm not sure if | it's large enough for substacks model to work for a significant | period in the future | ghaff wrote: | I could absolutely see an aggregator model, where the quasi- | publisher maybe even provides some degree of editorial | support at the copyediting level. The question then becomes | though if the $100 or so/year which still seems to me to be | the ceiling for something like this is sufficient to support | a stable of writers. | abhinav22 wrote: | I guess how different will that be to the current | subscription model for premium newspapers like WSJ, NYT, FT | etc? | | Perhaps it could result in the rise of "micro magazines" | where a few writers combine and create their own joined | content vs being forced to being part of a larger | bureaucratic organization. | | Or readers could pick and choose a selection for their | bundle. | | Definitely can expect to see some disruption in the market! | ghaff wrote: | It's different in that there's a different level of | editorial control--though it's not _that_ different from | the op-ed page. | | There are other examples, albeit ad-supported ones. One | of the tech pubs used to have a blog network of outside | writers. (They eventually dropped this as they became | less and less comfortable with outside people writing | under their brand; this was also a period when orgs were | pulling back from their own people having strong personal | brands on their sites.) Back to the print days, many tech | pubs had a stable of regular columnists. A lot of Forbes | blogs are third-parties. | | It's not an unreasonable model. The question, as with | many things, is what the economics look like. | rahimnathwani wrote: | "Perhaps the future of writing is a return to Dickens-era | serialisation, and the next J. K. Rowling will be posting two | chapters a week on Patreon." | | This is how online literature works in China: | https://archive.is/uoOXS | autarch wrote: | As a further data point, Freddie deBoer just published a post | with details about his Substack Pro deal - | https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/financial-transparency | danpalmer wrote: | I find the current criticism of Substack quite interesting. It | seems to be on the assumption that they are a publisher, or at | least a visible brand in the publishing process, and they do | indeed appear to be in the middle unlike most companies. | | It's obvious that the NYT are responsible for what's published on | their site, after all it says NYT across the top, NYT on the | subscription fee, and they (theoretically) have editorial | control. | | On the other hand it's obvious that Stripe (for example) are not | responsible for what's published on Stratechery, they are | invisible to the customer, and I think most reasonable people | would not suggest that Stripe exercise moral judgement on | Stratechery and decline the business unless Ben Thompson crossed | a line that is very far from acceptable (likely bordering on | illegality). | | But Substack is both. Their name is in the URL, writers are found | via Substack, articles say "published on Substack" on them. They | are trying to claim that they are just a backend and that it's up | to writers what they publish, but they are in fact a frontend at | least in part for the customer, and therefore any decision or | lack thereof is taking a moral standpoint. | | I think Substack are going to have to decide whether they want to | own that responsibility, and become known for a certain "type" of | content, or whether they want to fade into the background and let | the writers' brands take over. | SpicyLemonZest wrote: | What do you think about Wordpress as a counterexample? There | was a time a decade ago when lots of blogs under the | wordpress.com domain; I don't remember anyone being confused or | arguing that Wordpress the company was responsible for their | content. | ceilingcorner wrote: | Blogspot is a weird example too, because there are some very | fringe, extremist people using that domain. | danpalmer wrote: | That's a good counter example. | | I wonder if it has something to do with the discovery flow | and perhaps even the theming? | | Did Wordpress provide an index of all the websites? They | don't appear to now? Also the fact that every site could be | themed meant that many sites looked really quite different | and so the website brand was stronger than the Wordpress | brand. | | Just hypothesising. I feel like it is quite different but I'm | not entirely sure why as, you're right, Wordpress worked in a | similar way. | bko wrote: | The publisher model gets thrown around a lot in regards to | social media companies like substack. The basic line of | reasoning is that, as a publisher, substack would be | "responsible" for its content. | | But what ways are traditional publishers "responsible" for | their content? There's some internal self-imposed | responsibility (e.g. someone will be fired due to insensitive | tweet), but that's more politics than anything else. Large | publishers regularly print patently incorrect data and | narratives with no consequences. So maybe this | publisher/platform distinction isn't all that meaningful | naringas wrote: | > most reasonable people would not suggest that Stripe exercise | moral judgement on Stratechery and decline the business unless | Ben Thompson crossed a line that is very far from acceptable | (likely bordering on illegality). | | this is wrong in principle. Stripe should not excercise moral | judgement "when bordering on illegality". That's a job for | courts and judges. | | Judgement is supposed to be passed once there's proof of guilt; | not when bordering near it. | | The current contemporary climate seems to be letting go of | these kinds of crucial principles of society. | | But these exist for a reason, if we get rid of them we will | find out why there were there in the first place, possibly | after some social readjustment. | | the fact that this opinion is now 'reasonable' is worries me | personally. | ceilingcorner wrote: | They are just using the same playbook as the rest of Silicon | Valley. Twitter and Facebook manage to never be considered a | platform or a publisher, and they won't be until legislation | requires it. | danpalmer wrote: | People view things like Substack as closer to traditional | news publishing/writing and quite differently to social media | so I think they're starting from a position of far higher | expectations. | | But regardless, Twitter and Facebook are becoming more well | known for their positions on these issues. Twitter is known | for having a "lefty bubble" and taking a long time to "ban | nazis". Facebook is known for having everyone's conspiracy | theory loving Uncle. | analyte123 wrote: | The writers aren't completely "sovereign" as long as they are | using Stripe (and Visa and Mastercard) to process payments. It is | basically inevitable that some entity in the payment system will | eventually interfere with Substack even if Substack themselves | hold the line. | inglor_cz wrote: | True, but messing with people like Greenwald, Tufekci, Taibbi, | Yglesias, Sullivan etc. _at the same time_ is bound to get | Stripe into a world of hurt. | | These are names with a following and they have strong incentive | to stick together if anyone on Substack is threatened with | financial cancellation. | criddell wrote: | Substack themselves have a ToS. In theory Substack could always | switch payment processors or allow crypto currency payment, but | you can never get out from under their ToS. | | For example, you couldn't publish something like 2600 there | because they discuss illegal activities like blue boxing. | redisman wrote: | I guess we're waiting to find out if Trump or someone will | start writing there. The current big boys are all non-woke | center left/right so they're not actually at all outrageous to | the general public. | gfosco wrote: | They are however outrageous to the far-left journos at | mainstream publications, which is why there's so much | attention focused on Substack right now. Trump won't go | anywhere that he doesn't get to own a significant portion of | the business, so he'll have to build his own site (which it | is already reported that he is doing.) | ceilingcorner wrote: | This is kind of a use-case for Bitcoin, no? | capableweb wrote: | It's the planned/future use-case for Bitcoin, yes. As of now, | you cannot pay a lot of your daily expenses with Bitcoin so | you still need a way of going from Bitcoin to | USD/EUR/$LOCAL_CURRENCY so instead of Visa and Mastercard | being the gatekeepers, the centralized exchange facilitating | the fiat-trade is now the gatekeeper instead. | [deleted] | pydry wrote: | Not exactly future. It happened in 2014 when MasterCard and | visa banned payments to wikileaks. Wikileaks continued to | take Bitcoin. | abhinav22 wrote: | Substack's business model doesn't make sense. They are just using | VC money to try and build social platform, but it's a flawed one | at best: | | - MOST people will not want to pay for articles. Especially in an | ever increasing world of subscription payments across tv, music, | SaaS, I really don't see how email newsletters will be high on | people's lists | | - for the quality writers that people do want to pay, they will | eventually move off the platform if it makes sense to do so (ie | they get their brand recognition and followers and then jump ship | to their own website). For the smaller ones, patreon onlyfans or | some other direct contribution model would make more sense IMO | | So I really don't get Substack's model and how it can be | successful long term unless it truly becomes the landing page / | YouTube of articles. Which I can't imagine it will with all the | competition | | More generally I'm looking forward to the day where the SaaS | bubble bursts a bit or at least pricing consolidates - every Tom, | Dick and Harry is taking a crud app and adding a few features and | trying to create a b2c or b2b business | | It works to some degree, but I'm looking forward to the day that | there are enough programming specialists that many solutions are | done in house | | As to substack, it's a very simple technology stack; really the | play with it and all other vc funded startups is to spend big, | grab marketplace / users and exit. Then the buyer needs to | monetize or is left holding the bag | | I'm much more of a fan of the Medium model, and even there it's | very hard for writers and for the platform to make reasonable | money. | | It's interesting how substack is asking everyone to bring their | own mailing list with them, it's a very smart way to build out | their users / network, I give them that. | bhupy wrote: | I guess my questions are: | | - Does it have to appeal to "MOST" people for it to be a viable | dividends-paying business? | | - Does it have to be the "landing page / YouTube of articles" | in order to be a viable dividends-paying business? | abhinav22 wrote: | Both these questions are related in the sense it reflects how | large the audience needs to be to a viable business. | | Question is how much VC money has been burnt on it - perhaps | it's bootstrapped well and it can succeed at a much smaller | scale; it's definitely possible. | | However in the long run, it's somewhat of an easily | replicable stack / feature set, particularly as I assume that | most highly successful writers would want to control their | branding and prefer not to be on substack if they could reach | the same audience. | | Which they likely can't. Substack'a SEO abilities will be key | to its success as that is in many ways it's main feature | (everything else can be replicated by any one of the millions | of web developers out there). | | In that sense, becoming the landing page of bookworms would | be a significant achievement and to answer your question an | important goal for any considerable success. | | I base this on the fact that it seems like they have spent a | fair bit in building the platform and it's not as | bootstrapped / low in capital as it may need to be to be | viable as a smaller entity. But I'm guessing very much here! | | Is it really that different to hosting blogs, personal | websites or to Medium.com? They just have the mailing list | feature, but for most that doesn't work because it takes a | long time to build your own mailing list, so the target | audience of writers is small. | | My 2c | bhupy wrote: | > Both these questions are related in the sense it reflects | how large the audience needs to be to a viable business. | | But as long as the unit economics are positive, why does | the audience size matter? AFAIK, Substack's OPEX looks a | lot more like traditional software/SaaS businesses and a | lot less like Uber's or Amazon's. | | You're right that Substack's functionality can be | commoditized, but loads of successful dividends-paying | businesses operate in commoditized spaces. | fra wrote: | > More generally I'm looking forward to the day where the SaaS | bubble bursts a bit or at least pricing consolidates - every | Tom, Dick and Harry is taking a crud app and adding a few | features and trying to create a b2c or b2b business | | I see these "I could build this in a weekend" type responses | regularly on HN, and in my opinion it could not be more wrong. | Substack isn't a CRUD app with a few features, it is man-years | of work on the technical side. More importantly, they've had | amazing execution on the business and product side. Building a | business is really hard, and because you could replicate | substack-the-app does not mean you would can build substack- | the-business. | | > It works to some degree, but I'm looking forward to the day | that there are enough programming specialists that many | solutions are done in house | | What a waste this would be! Starting a business today is | tractable because we build on the shoulders of giants. Tools | like JIRA, Github, Sentry, Salesforce, Hubspot, Zoom, Slack, | Notion, Stripe, GSuite, ... and many more are so much better | and cheaper than anything you'd build in house. | abhinav22 wrote: | The business side of things - very difficult to pull off, I | agree. The pure technical side of things? I honestly could | replicate within 3 months of full time work and I'm sure a | fair few others could. | | Thing is in theory, SaaS / Cloud should be win-win due to | specialization. However the pricing I have seen is anything | but - they need to charge that to support the sky high | valuations and funding rounds. Which is why most scramble to | do vendor lock in because without a barrier to entry they | will need to keep reducing their prices down the equilibrium | level that others can charge and have normal (but not | abnormally high) economic profits. | | To give you an example, I was quoted 12,000$ per year for an | enterprise b2b database solution to record questionnaire | answers. Great software, meeting a need we have. But I'm | building a basic postgresql database and a very basic web | front end for free in its place. 80% of the functionality, 0% | of the cost. | | I admit the remaining last 20% is the most complex and | hardest part; also marketing and all the business aspect is a | whole another game. So I have no intentions trying to compete | with them, I respect them but at the same time I can't | justify to my company to spend 12,000$ per year for something | that an in-house solution can cover most of. Even my CEO said | - isn't that just a database? | | This case doesn't apply generally, but there should be enough | examples of SaaS that can be replicated and we don't need to | pay an inordinate fee to use. I would place substack firmly | in this list - it is a mailing list software with a text | editor (I wouldn't be surprised if they just reused TinyMCE | for this). | fra wrote: | > To give you an example, I was quoted 12,000$ per year for | an enterprise b2b database solution to record questionnaire | answers. Great software, meeting a need we have. But I'm | building a basic postgresql database and a very basic web | front end for free in its place. 80% of the functionality, | 0% of the cost. | | Your ROI calculation is wrong. Your homegrown solution | costs you [your hourly wage] x [hours spent working on it] | + infrastructure costs. If you have an engineer who spends | 3 or more weeks a year on this (incl. initial development | cost amortized over # of years), then you lost money. | | Worst, you spent time building a commoditized solution | which you could have spent improving your own product! | [deleted] | jger15 wrote: | "...it's not that Substack will compete with existing | publications for their best writers, but rather that Substack | makes it easy for the best writers to discover their actual | market value." | | Thompson on point per usual | purple_ferret wrote: | IMO it should read more: | | "...it's not that Substack will compete with existing | publications for their *popular* writers, but rather that | Substack makes it easy for the *popular* writers to discover | their actual market value." | | I've yet to read what I would consider high quality journalism | on Substack. It's a lot of quick take opinion pieces. | | On top of that, some may consider journalistic good writing a | collective effort, in which an editor is usually necessary. | coldtea wrote: | > _I 've yet to read what I would consider high quality | journalism on Substack. It's a lot of quick take opinion | pieces._ | | Most of what passes for "high quality journalism" in "high | quality outlets" are fluff pieces and government/corporate PR | masquerading as facts. | | And as Alan Kay said: "a point of view is worth 80 IQ | points". I'd rather read the opinion of people with well | honed points of view than what passes as news in mainstream | media. | glennismyfren wrote: | Glenn Greenwald has written a number of very good pieces on | his Substack that I would in no way describe as quick take | opinion pieces and Matt Taibbi has the best reporting on | the journalism industry itself going around. These guys are | "well honed" because they're well read on the activities of | the media and they think and communicate clearly | | Maybe you're not reading the right posts or you just agree | with the prevailing narrative in the traditional outlets? | | Usually I find the people who don't see value in Substack | also want the news to be reported with "moral clarity" and | to eschew objectivity as a valuable aim entirely. | | And besides, the mainstream outlets are barely reporting on | anything anyway (where's the national news coverage of the | George Floyd Autonomous Zone in Minneapolis? For the second | time an American city has lost sovereignty over several | blocks and the mainstream media is ignoring it) and if you | do real investigative journalism into the wrong group, like | Andy Ngo has (thank God for Quillette) you are branded a | fascist | [deleted] | mc32 wrote: | And that raises a question. What will readers value? Will they | value rigorous writers who may provide discomfort or engaging | writers who write to choirs? | WJW wrote: | Presumably different audiences will prefer different writers, | as they always have. | jameshart wrote: | One of the dangers is that it turns out audiences actually | prefer writers constrained and filtered and checked by | editors. | | But by the time they realize that, editors won't exist any | more. | 1123581321 wrote: | Do we know how many writers on | Substack/Medium/independent blogs employ an editor or | researcher in some capacity? I've only seen occasional | mention, e.g., Kevin Kelly has said that he employs a | librarian as a full time researcher. But the absence of | mention isn't necessarily a strong indicator to the | negative. | browningstreet wrote: | Let's hear it for the NYTs! | soneca wrote: | Very unlikely that they won't exist anymore. | | And whichever low number they are reduced to, they will | start to grow again because there will be people willing | to pay for their services. | Meekro wrote: | I'd like my journalists to be constrained by the truth, | and paid editors in the context of a "traditional" | newspaper are one possible way to achieve that. However, | if you believe the stats on this, trust for traditional | news sources is at record lows. | | I personally don't trust traditional news sources very | much. Therefore, I'm open to trying something different. | I've been a happy subscriber to a handful of Substack | journalists for a few months now. It's too soon to say | whether this will be a lasting improvement, but it's hard | to do worse than the mainstream media. | jimkleiber wrote: | I'm curious, as I tend to trust many of the large media | outlets, especially the NYT and WaPo. | | 1) Which outlets do you consider to be the "mainstream | media" or "traditional media"? | | And 2) why don't you trust them? | mc32 wrote: | Yes but like food diet, is junk food more profitable or are | staples more profitable? | | What should we aim for? | | If junk is more profitable, is that okay? Do we all jump on | that wagon while the going is good, or do we think a minute | about what is more fulfilling? | pessimizer wrote: | Media outlets other than substack are also hiring | terrible people, and optimizing for trash. | | To me the largest difference between large corporate | outlets and substack (and other reader-financed | journalists) is that large corporate outlets will keep | people employed for years that nobody wants to read and | could never support themselves independently - | journalists who are only important and interesting | _because of_ their access to the outlet. The outlets | themselves keep those journalists around as pure vehicles | for the opinions of their owners. | | At least with these outlets, the owners are the readers. | If the readers like trash, they'll pay for trash. If the | owners like quality, they'll demand it. I don't have to | worry about how the subject of the article will affect | Bezos's net worth, or wonder how David Brooks, Maureen | Dowd, or Thomas Friedman are still employed. | mc32 wrote: | But still, we're not sure that the content will be free | of external influence taking advantage of the writer's | reputation. | | Obviously if they peddle too many interested articles | they'll likely get caught, but if they do it once in a | while or take payment from opposing interests, etc., | who'll know the difference? | jeffreyrogers wrote: | Obviously trash sells and it always has ("The person who | writes for fools is always sure of a large audience"), | but some people care more about things like truth and | style than they do about money. | madmadjo wrote: | This is the world we're living in. Unfortunately, I can | give you only one upvote... | WJW wrote: | There is no "we" here, certainly not in the sense that | "do we think a minute". People can choose for themselves | just fine, and they'll do so whether I wring my hands | about it or not. If you want to be worried about other | people, go ahead but leave me out of it. :) | tarkin2 wrote: | Vaguely off topic, but why do so many programmers use substack | and medium to write about programming? Why not use their own | programming skills to create their own website, rather than | consume a service? | | I used to love visiting programmers' websites, where programmer's | would use their skills to not only write, but create. Now it's | largely a drab stream of medium posts. | renewiltord wrote: | You can still go to programmers' sites where the software is | written by the programmer as well as the content. | | The answer to your question is the same as the one to "Why do | software engineers use libraries?" | Traster wrote: | Well there's two reasons. Firstly, you're not producing a | competitive advantage by writing your own site. Unless you have | some specific purpose, why would you waste your time. Let's | assume it takes you a couple of weeks, that's probably | thousands of dollars of lost wages when you can use substack, | medium or even wordpress for basically free. | | Secondly, whilst these companies are _trying_ to claim the | responsibility of a peice of infrastructure, they 're actually | trying to be publishers, they control discoverability. You go | to substack because you want to scoop of some of that substack | readership, you want to be part of their "webring" and hope | that you get more readership whilst they monetize your activity | by telling VCs they have their boot on your neck. | organsnyder wrote: | Only so many hours in a day. Perhaps setting up and operating a | blogging platform isn't how they'd prefer to use their time. | | When I ran my own business, I had the skills to do everything | myself: accounting, order fulfillment, _everything_. I created | a kick-ass system that saved me hours of work for things like | calculating and disbursing royalty checks (it was a publishing | business). Sure, it was better than off-the-shelf software, but | I would have been able to dedicate a lot more time to the core | of my business--the part where I was creating truly unique | value--if I had hired an accountant, or at least used off-the- | shelf software. | drcode wrote: | LOL I built my own blogging platform for my personal site, but | I get constant nagging for not handling permalinks in the | expected way and for never implementing RSS. (lisperati.com) | oh_sigh wrote: | I host my content on other services because I have a full time | job, a family, and interests outside of tech. Even though I can | do it all myself, what's the point? I get paid well into 6 | figures for my tech job. What are the odds my blog will start | generating that kind of revenue? Basically zero. And I can talk | about things I actually do create on my blog, even if my blog | is hosted on substack or medium. I just can't point to my | actual blog hosting itself as something I created. But that's | fine, because it isn't even a particularly interesting problem | to solve. I'd be fairly unimpressed if someone was doing | general purpose programming for a couple of years and couldn't | throw together a barebones blog. | tarboreus wrote: | Network effects. Medium and Substack help discoverability. It's | trivial to geta site online, but difficult to have people come | across it. | pier25 wrote: | I don't know about Substack, but when I wrote on Medium the | vast majority of readers came from outside of Medium. | | I don't remember the exact numbers, but I had a popular | article with something like 170k reads of which only 15% came | from Medium itself. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-03-22 23:01 UTC)