Comment by wkat4242 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wkat4242 | Hacker News Reader

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Interesting article. I had no idea of this phenomenon. It's very well explained too.

Tangential remark: substack is becoming as annoying as medium now. Especially on mobile. One big popup asking to register. One constant toolbar asking to register. One constant toolbar asking to install the app. Many interruptions in the main text for subscribe and share reminders.

That didn't take long for it to go bad :( I only heard about substack about a year ago when Snowden's blog was in the news and they were still saying they'd keep it clean (like medium promised initially as well). And it was pretty clean then.

I was even thinking of putting my own blog there (which is free and unmonetized) but no.

On medium it's become so bad now that I don't even open their links anymore unless it's really something I am so curious about I'm willing to put up with the experience. I really hope substack doesn't go the same way.

Sure they have to make money but alienating your userbase doesn't seem a great way to do so in the long term.

It's not a "Tangential remark" if your tangent is 10 times longer than your commentary on the article!

> Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.

> Tangential remark: substack is becoming as annoying as medium now. [...] On medium it's become so bad now that I don't even open their links anymore.

FWIW I find that Reader Mode works fine for making posts on substack and medium interruption-free, both on desktop (Firefox) and mobile (Safari).

I realise it's possible that either of them might try some Reader Mode defeating hijinks in the future, so you still might want to avoid putting your blog there if you don't want that possibility looming beyond the horizon. But when it comes to reading existing stuff that other people have written, an accessible version should be just one or two clicks away.

I've definitely been on Medium pages where Reader Mode only shows one paragraph of the article... it doesn't happen all the time though. They may be intentionally trying to defeat Reader Mode, or it may have just been an accident, I'm not sure.

I have found that for many websites, putting it into Reader Mode and then refreshing the page gives a better result.

Not sure if it works 100% of the time but if you can't get it to display in Reader mode or find some other way, sometimes refreshing and hitting the "x" in the address bar at the right moment will allow the content to populate before you cancel the rendering of the paywall/signup crap.

Given the recent public disclosures of their finances through 2021, I would expect the experience to continue to deteriorate.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/7/23674178/substack-burn-202...

Yeah, I think they had the right idea at the start: a simple, minimal, low-burn platform. Once they took VC money the only plausible fate was Doctorow's "enshittification". They had no moat and low network effects. If they'd followed the frugal path they could have held on to the user focus. But once you borrow money from Fat Tony, your primary job is making sure Fat Tony gets paid.

I guess BeeHiv took their lunch? Also isn’t the network effects the notes app and referrals to other newsletters?

Jesus how can a blog platform burn so much money? Where do they go? Wages? What do those people do?

As you can see, "Partnership expenses" increased almost 20 fold. They paid people to write on substack.

That's just the negative revenue side. They also spent another $16 million beyond that, primarily on salaries ($10mm).

Is this really necessary? Competing on merit no longer works?

I see platforms burning money left and right and can't really understand how is this "the new norm". Especially with something simple like a blog platform.

> Is this really necessary? Competing on merit no longer works?

No longer?

Not trying to say no one has ever competed on merit along, but I don’t think there exists a bygone era where people didn’t use $$$ to gain leverage in a market.

Yeah sure, with all the advertising madness going on merit is something that will get you a polite smile at most.

But why even bother with something like a blog platform? You're not even innovative (looks like substack is simpler than medium so... cutting back on features?) so why pour all that money into it? Just to have yet another shitty platform and take investors money while trying to grow it?

Disable JS and refresh for no crap viewing.

So, just like every other site?

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