<story><title>Ask HN: Why is Substack so popular?</title><text>So, let me preface this by saying that I think it&amp;#x27;s possible to have a healthy discussion on this topic, and I am not trying to be overly judgmental of Substack.&lt;p&gt;But, I am genuinely curious why is it getting so popular and particularly here on Hacker News. Does it have some kind of a hidden feature that makes it very appealing?&lt;p&gt;My number one assumption would be that it uses a global userbase, so people who write on Substack can collect subscribers&amp;#x2F;readers much faster. Is that all there is to it?&lt;p&gt;I also know that Substack prefetches an email address (once you enter it on any Substack-based site) and then plasters it on all their other customer sites, which I _really_ &lt;i&gt;hate&lt;/i&gt; about their platform.&lt;p&gt;But I can see the appeal in that, I guess.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>slg</author><text>&amp;gt;It&amp;#x27;s unpopular with left-leaning mainstream audiences&lt;p&gt;It is truly wild how HN often frames censorship as something coming purely from the left while ignoring the laws coming out of conservative state legislatures across the country.  There is a wide spectrum of people both pushing for censorship and pushing against it.</text></item><item><author>nokcha</author><text>&amp;gt; &amp;quot;Anti-censorship&amp;quot; is hugely unpopular with the mainstream intellectual community these days.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d disagree.  It&amp;#x27;s unpopular with left-leaning mainstream &lt;i&gt;audiences&lt;/i&gt;, but among intellectuals who write for a living, I imagine that extra assurances of not getting kicked off the platform are rather attractive.</text></item><item><author>dmurray</author><text>&amp;gt; they say they are &amp;quot;anti-censorship&amp;quot; and won&amp;#x27;t evict writers from their &amp;quot;private platform&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Anti-censorship&amp;quot; is hugely unpopular with the mainstream intellectual community these days. It&amp;#x27;s close to being a dog whistle for the alt-right. I&amp;#x27;m surprised this is a stance that would attract more &amp;quot;excellent writers&amp;quot;.</text></item><item><author>lhnz</author><text>Many writers like them because they seem to have made both costly and cheap signals to show that they are on the side of writers:&lt;p&gt;(1) they say they are &amp;quot;anti-censorship&amp;quot; and won&amp;#x27;t evict writers from their &amp;quot;private platform&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;(2) they let the writer own their audience &amp;#x2F; mailing list (so they can leave with their audience, if they want to)&lt;p&gt;(3) they advanced money to popular writers&lt;p&gt;These things with the addition of a simple writing&amp;#x2F;reading&amp;#x2F;subscription platform that isn&amp;#x27;t overrun with adverts gives writers confidence that substack is aligned with their interests and will make money while being on their side (this is true at least for now).&lt;p&gt;Additionally, the financial success of many writers on the platform has raised the status of creating a substack. I think this is an important secondary effect -- you can disparage this as &amp;quot;pseudo-intellectual&amp;quot; but there are people that are winning from it and doing well is always cool.&lt;p&gt;---&lt;p&gt;*Edit*: Put another way, Substack&amp;#x27;s success is due to realism. They&amp;#x27;ve made a realistic attempt to incentivize &lt;i&gt;excellent&lt;/i&gt; writers to writing on their platform. They incentivize even those that are already very popular, by not locking them in and by giving them control of their audience. They have even gone as far as giving very significant upfront financial incentives to get the most famous writers on the internet onto their platform.&lt;p&gt;Other platforms try to own their writers and treat them like commodities producing SEO content. This was obviously not an attractive offer to talented or independent writers, let alone writers that have already grown huge audiences.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>eterevsky</author><text>Left and right censorship are applied to very different media. In the case of online platforms, the most visible attempts of censorship are coming from the left. At least I haven&amp;#x27;t heard of any opposite examples.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: Why is Substack so popular?</title><text>So, let me preface this by saying that I think it&amp;#x27;s possible to have a healthy discussion on this topic, and I am not trying to be overly judgmental of Substack.&lt;p&gt;But, I am genuinely curious why is it getting so popular and particularly here on Hacker News. Does it have some kind of a hidden feature that makes it very appealing?&lt;p&gt;My number one assumption would be that it uses a global userbase, so people who write on Substack can collect subscribers&amp;#x2F;readers much faster. Is that all there is to it?&lt;p&gt;I also know that Substack prefetches an email address (once you enter it on any Substack-based site) and then plasters it on all their other customer sites, which I _really_ &lt;i&gt;hate&lt;/i&gt; about their platform.&lt;p&gt;But I can see the appeal in that, I guess.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>slg</author><text>&amp;gt;It&amp;#x27;s unpopular with left-leaning mainstream audiences&lt;p&gt;It is truly wild how HN often frames censorship as something coming purely from the left while ignoring the laws coming out of conservative state legislatures across the country.  There is a wide spectrum of people both pushing for censorship and pushing against it.</text></item><item><author>nokcha</author><text>&amp;gt; &amp;quot;Anti-censorship&amp;quot; is hugely unpopular with the mainstream intellectual community these days.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d disagree.  It&amp;#x27;s unpopular with left-leaning mainstream &lt;i&gt;audiences&lt;/i&gt;, but among intellectuals who write for a living, I imagine that extra assurances of not getting kicked off the platform are rather attractive.</text></item><item><author>dmurray</author><text>&amp;gt; they say they are &amp;quot;anti-censorship&amp;quot; and won&amp;#x27;t evict writers from their &amp;quot;private platform&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Anti-censorship&amp;quot; is hugely unpopular with the mainstream intellectual community these days. It&amp;#x27;s close to being a dog whistle for the alt-right. I&amp;#x27;m surprised this is a stance that would attract more &amp;quot;excellent writers&amp;quot;.</text></item><item><author>lhnz</author><text>Many writers like them because they seem to have made both costly and cheap signals to show that they are on the side of writers:&lt;p&gt;(1) they say they are &amp;quot;anti-censorship&amp;quot; and won&amp;#x27;t evict writers from their &amp;quot;private platform&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;(2) they let the writer own their audience &amp;#x2F; mailing list (so they can leave with their audience, if they want to)&lt;p&gt;(3) they advanced money to popular writers&lt;p&gt;These things with the addition of a simple writing&amp;#x2F;reading&amp;#x2F;subscription platform that isn&amp;#x27;t overrun with adverts gives writers confidence that substack is aligned with their interests and will make money while being on their side (this is true at least for now).&lt;p&gt;Additionally, the financial success of many writers on the platform has raised the status of creating a substack. I think this is an important secondary effect -- you can disparage this as &amp;quot;pseudo-intellectual&amp;quot; but there are people that are winning from it and doing well is always cool.&lt;p&gt;---&lt;p&gt;*Edit*: Put another way, Substack&amp;#x27;s success is due to realism. They&amp;#x27;ve made a realistic attempt to incentivize &lt;i&gt;excellent&lt;/i&gt; writers to writing on their platform. They incentivize even those that are already very popular, by not locking them in and by giving them control of their audience. They have even gone as far as giving very significant upfront financial incentives to get the most famous writers on the internet onto their platform.&lt;p&gt;Other platforms try to own their writers and treat them like commodities producing SEO content. This was obviously not an attractive offer to talented or independent writers, let alone writers that have already grown huge audiences.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>edmundsauto</author><text>Not to mention the censorship pressure exerted by family values groups’ complaints to the FCC. Those are generally very conservative groups who want to protect children from seeing a breast.</text></comment>