I have been a big champion for Substack and what they were trying to enable — an opportunity for independent writers to make a living from their work. I even considered setting up an email newsletter on their platform. It has a nice interface, a nice editor, and the price — it is free versus the exorbitant prices charged by Mailchimp and its peers. I am not so sure anymore — for the company searching for growth seems to have transformed into a quasi-spammer.
Anyone can add my email address to their newsletter list without my permission. Whether I want it or not, I get a pitch for their newsletter, and I have to go to their website and unsubscribe to opt out of the service. Now imagine this happening half a dozen times a day — it is not the best use of my time. In the pre-digital days, this would be as annoying as door-to-door salespeople knocking on your door and trying to sell you schlock by entering your home, and you have to shove them out of your living room. Or those annoying phone calls that used to come at dinnertime.
I can’t think of Substack as something other than a spam enabler.
When viewed with a broader lens, Substack isn’t alone. “Opt out” is a growth hacking tactic that has become commonplace online and a time stealer, penalizing all Internet users. Online marketers are just a different version of spammers who annoy us on our mobile phones. And it is so because no one speaks on behalf of the people. If we had some laws protecting us, we wouldn’t have to pay $5 a month to phone companies for doing their job — aka prevent those spam calls. There are no laws to prevent companies like Substack from offering simple ways to enable intrusions. In a tweet, I pointed out that when growth trumps everything, companies conveniently forget about the first principles and the idea of building a better place for content creators.
I am glad I didn’t shift my newsletter to Substack!
May 14, 2023. San Francisco.
So true about Substack, sadly. I had some hopes for Substack Notes initially, but it seems to have quickly evolved to be a promotional tool, where writers advertise their own blog postings to drum up subscriptions. Not much real discussion happening there other than reactions to said blog posts. Substack Chat, on the other hand, has basically gone nowhere.
As always, the tool and its functionalities are excellent. The Achilles heel is in the misuse of the platform by users.