Why Substack Sucks Less

A lens for making sense of social media

"To make money is not without use, but if it comes from wrong-doing, nothing is worse."
— Democritus, Fragment 78

Substack is no Shangri-La, but it consistently sucks less than its competitors.

But why is that? Are

Chris Best

,

Hamish McKenzie

, and

Jairaj Sethi

just savants? Do they have magic social media dust the other platforms lack?

The question is worth investigating. We need to equip ourselves with tools for making sense of our world and figuring out how to set up our lives, and one question-lens punches above its weight — “What’s being incentivized?”

I’ve written about its great utility before, and today I’d like to bring it to bear on the platform that distributes this newsletter.

We Can’t Understand the World Without These

Why is Substack better for both writers and readers? How did they staple on a new social-media appendage — Notes — and have it buck the trend of social media becoming engines for the lowest common denominator? Can we expect it to remain a sucking-less innovator?

Let’s see if we can find out.

What Drives You, Substack?

“Above all things, good Policie is to be used…Money is like Muck, not good except it be spread.” — Francis Bacon, Of Seditions and Troubles

Corporations are simpler to analyze than people and government programs because they’re ostensibly rational economic actors — only laws constrain their quest for profits.

Reality is messier, but corporations’ chosen profiting methods echo through their actions and outcomes. It incentivizes them to do what they otherwise might avoid. Is this going to make money or lose money? Follow this line backwards from outcomes and you’ll see how well it explains our digital world.

The economic model of X, Facebook, TikTok, or Reddit is different from Substack’s, and the user experience is the tell.

The former gets the lion’s share of revenue from ads. To earn more money, they must either attract more eyeballs or get existing eyeballs to focus longer. Some of both is best.

Substack takes a 10% cut of publications’ subscription revenue, so their priority is getting more people to subscribe to publications (not itself), and then upgrade to paid. Notes is oriented to serving that end.

It’s rational for the former to suppress nuanced, calm, and in-depth content and boost shallow hot takes likely to drive anger, anxiety, and engagement. More dopamine and more rage mean more eyeball time and profit. “If it bleeds, it leads” is an old newspaper adage that’s become more relevant in the algorithm era, since algorithms determine what’s actively bleeding and shovel more of it in front of users.

However, infinite doom scrolling on Notes would work against Substack’s interests. They’re incentivized to serve people previews of work they might be willing to pay for and then get out of the way. They want to quickly convey people off notes and into their publications’ long-form content.

Similarly, while Twitter incentivizes users to create shallow excitement through its revenue-sharing deals, Substack’s model compensates anyone who even a minority of people appreciate, even if their work is not a dopamine highway. It’s entirely possible to be a nuanced, deliberate thinker here and not be punished for it. You can make money by respecting your audience and thinking clearly.

Bailing Out the Boat

Many social media platforms proclaim a desire to be “the town square of the internet.”

But have you actually spent time in a southern European square? In one corner, the old men chat over chess and checkers. Teenagers gather around the fountain, flirting and joking. Couples dine with friends at the restaurants while their toddlers sleep in chairs and the older children chase each other down the cobblestones. It’s remarkable how many subgroups coexist in harmony.

And sure, some people gather around the “stone statue guy,” and the portrait painter busking for cash. But you won’t find anyone with a microphone shouting obscenities, apocalyptic predictions, and political diatribes. If there were, the square would quickly clear out and different users would move in.

Since ad-view-maximizing algorithms boost the most divisive and extreme hot takes, keeping dreck out is no easy task. It’s akin to a person with a spoon bailing out water rushing through fist-sized holes in their boat’s hull.

This can be managed to some extent. Reddit is a dumpster fire, but there are really great subreddits where dedicated volunteer moderators keep the flood of madness at bay through exhausting, Sisyphean effort. They bail hard. Similarly, well-moderated groups exist on Facebook.

But you can’t help noticing that there’s less nonsense on Notes. It’s not a perfect analogy, but it’s more like European town squares. It’s like a boat with a sound hull where — nonetheless — a bit of water gets in when the waves grow large. Different groups exist in each others’ orbit, with individuals moving between, but with harmony the rule and not the exception.

Notes

It’s funny how you can inhabit a curated bubble on Notes in a way you can’t on Twitter. Both have a “mute” button, but Notes’s actually works.

On Twitter, no amount of blocking will keep the conspiracy theories, racist hot takes, and political posturing at bay. It would hurt their bottom line too much if you could. If you mute one fool, Twitter quickly sends another to fill that void. They need you reacting and engaged.

On the other hand, Substack’s Notes is surprisingly good. I use the mute feature liberally and see a lot of what I’m interested in and not much I want to avoid.

If Notes sucks for you, you are to blame. You’re subscribed to or following purveyors of dreck. Mute the discordant voices, the alarmists, and the doomsayers, and ye shall find peace.

Know What We Are:

“Say to yourself in the early morning: I shall meet today ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, uncharitable men.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 2.1

Good incentives won’t change mankind’s fundamental nature. Thats why I wrote, “Why Substack Sucks Less,” and not “How Substack Created An Online Utopia.”

A tiny, disagreeable, and vocal part of humanity gets off on sowing discord, and as Notes has grown and user reach has increased, they’ve arrived to have fun in their divisive style. I’m pretty sure there’s no way to keep them out entirely.

But I still see radically less of them than on other platforms. I love that I can not only ban these people from commenting on my articles and Notes, but that I don’t have to see what they post either. They’re around, but I barely notice. The mute button works.

I hope Substack continues to roll out feed-curation tools so more of us can exist in each other’s orbit without stepping on each others’ toes. It shouldn’t be hard to keep video off our feeds, for instance. Though I suspect that if we’re self-curating, short-form video posts might be worthwhile for a change.

It’s unrealistic to think a site with a significant political junkie userbase won’t attract people flipping out over politics. Yes, stupid memes and weird short video trends are unavoidable. But those things don’t need to overwhelm users looking for a calmer, more nuanced experience.

The only question is how well Substack ratchets up its self-curation game.

Going Forward:

"First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.”
— Epictetus, Enchiridion, 49

I’m pleased with Substack as a writer and a reader. My life has been enriched by what I’ve found here.

But I’m far from certain it will remain a haven for good things. Growth, success, and new feature rollouts bring new challenges.

Think back to 2010-2012 or so, when the legacy platforms were better places. Once VC money dried up and profit became a big push, the platforms got worse; they were incentivized by their business model to be worse.

Substack lacks many of those incentives, which is reason for optimism. But there are still hurdles to navigate and unknowns to explore:

• Will investors accept the organic growth of the paid subscription base, or will they demand other moneymakers be tacked on? Many of those could create malincentives for the platform.

• Integrating video into Substack without it turning into TikTok is probably doable, but still a question mark. If short-form video drives paid subscriptions, there shouldn’t be a problem. If it can’t, Substack may try to offer other incentives to short-form creators, which could have deleterious effects across the platform.

Warnings Signs To Watch For:

• If Substack adds friction or a solid brick wall limiting creators’ ability to take their subscribers to another platform. This will mean they’re preparing to profit at the expense of their creators and can’t have them fleeing to greener pastures.

• They implement ads and take a piece of the pie. This will shift their incentives dramatically, and we’ll see Notes – at the very least — begin to go downhill.

Non-Shitty Growth:

Substack is a small company with limited ability to do more, but its reasonable “10% off the top,” model and creative userbase seems primed for expansion.

Could we see…

• A better model for digital and print-on-demand books, magazines, and art projects?

• Well-thought-out bundle options so writers can team up without undermining their economic independence?

• The equivalent of WeFunder, but more impactful because Substack already has a massive and proven userbase of fans who are financially supporting creators? It has to be done in a way in which paying subscribers don’t feel like they’re being charged twice for what they once would have gotten from just subscribing.

The options for increasing profitability without veering into malincentive territory are pretty wide, and given that Substack previously navigated censorship pressure with surprising aplomb, I’m hopeful they’ll make smart moves.

Time will tell.

Incentivize Yourself:

It’s not that Substack’s creators are moral giants. They just set up a company that incentivizes better things. People have qualms, of course, since no platform can be all things to all people and its users are humans. But for what it is, it creates a remarkable amount of public good.

And when you recognize this and see the much worse experiences elsewhere on the internet, its clear how many of the world’s bad things result from poor incentives.

Strong individuals can buck incentives, but most won’t. They’ll go where incentives bias, and pleasure lead them, which is why we’ve lost so many automatic wins over the years.

How They Took Our Automatic Wins

The results of our lives, of businesses, and our government are often just the downstream effects of the incentives we’ve set up. Since incentives often result from our execution of virtue, the incentives we create and perpetuate have moral implications.

Take a look at your life, your businesses, and your government, and ask — what’s being incentivized?

I think you’ll enjoy the clarity it brings.

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You may also like: My short list of recommended books for April.

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