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wombatlife's avatar

I think Substack is still in a post 2020 media-embarrassing-itself-as-lockstep-ideological-cum-establishment-sycophants bubble. You can subscribe to top magazines or newspapers for less than it costs to get the much lower writing output of a single author. Not only is the value proposition low in terms of articles per dollar of subscription, but you're stuck with a single person's perspective. And authors are subject to audience capture.

Substack will eventually have to switch to a pay to read model, where you pay authors based on the articles you actually read. The failure to come up with a workable micropayments system has been the tech worlds biggest failure. It has led to the user being the product, with massive troves of data collected on us. It has also led to audience capture and ideological siloing, with newspapers reluctant to print articles that would upset their audiences (and their advertisers).

Substack has the potential to change this with so much written content published through one platform. I should be able to buy a 50 dollar subscription, which gives me access to say 30 articles from any authors I choose. I understand this reduces financial stability for authors, but I think it is inevitable once the excitement over being able to read heterodox takes wears off.

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Razib Khan's avatar

i bet you are right that it's the length that matters

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