Why Substack's scam worked so well | Hacker News Reader

Why Substack's scam worked so well

thehypothesis.substack.com

36 pointsrodgerd16 comments

This is a very silly article. Writers like Matt Yglesias have been upfront that Substack paid him an upfront salary to hedge his payment in the first year. And, it is pretty clear if you look at the subscriber numbers he is bringing in way more revenue than he is being paid.

The author is arguing against a straw man that doesn't really exist.

For instance the author says "That’s right -- Substack is taking an editorial stance, paying writers who fit that stance" as some sort of gotcha. However, literally anyone can sign up for a Substack so while they do perhaps promote certain authors it is hardly an editorial stance. It is like comparing the editorial decisions of Netflix (a closed environment - where they greenlight/buy all productions) to YouTube (where they sponsor some videos - but largely depend on independent creators). There is a real distinction from the two - which the author ignores - and also assumes the Netflix/newspaper model is inherently insidious without any justification.

"An elite group of Substack Pro staffers, handpicked by editors, have been given the resources to write full time."

This seems pretty disingenuous. AFAICT, everyone who was given an advance by Substack was already famous enough to basically be guaranteed to get a lot of subscribers the instant they signed up. (And some of them regretted taking the advance, since they could have made more by just using the regular deal.) I haven't heard of any unknowns, or even lesser-knowns, who got such a deal, which fits with the obvious business incentives where you only give advances when they're positive expected-value for the company. You aren't "picking" who makes it when you cut a deal with someone like Andrew Sullivan; Sullivan has already made it because he's been nationally famous for decades.

Can you provide the list of everyone who was given an advance, which you say contains only famous people? The lack of such a list seems like one of the core complaints of the OP, so providing one would probably go a long way toward resolving the concerns.

I certainly can't, I don't work for Substack, but I've met a number of people who write using their platform and so far getting an advance seems 100% predicted by how famous you already were for everyone that I've heard about (either personally or secondhand). Which matches the obvious business incentives - if you're a writing platform, the main thing you care about is getting lots of well-known writers. If there's an obvious theory that explains all the data you have right now, we should probably assume it's true until shown otherwise.

OP isn't complaining about the lack of an audience at Substack. OP is complaining about the huge amount of support (aka cash payments) given to already established players to join Substack (via pro) while giving no support of the sort to independent writers. OP also comments that this kind of support ($100kish) is what allows big writers to move to Substack as an independent instead of being tied to a job. While I don't support OP's premise of Substack pushing an agenda through Pro, I'm also not supportive of what essentially are the platform's bribes to famous writers, which the platform uses to market to independent writers as a way to make more money. But I believe that's standard practice anyways everywhere - YouTube Creators get paid to host on YouTube, while smaller creators aren't even paid until they hit thousand subs. But AFAIK, YouTube didn't pay any creators to join the platform outright like Substack does.

Edit:- didn't know Substack was a HN pet company

Bribes?

I can't think of any professional UGC platform that hasn't developed some version of a preferred partner program at some point. Microsoft paid app developers to develop Windows Phone apps, YouTube was paying creators to onboard onto their platform, Mixer famously paid Ninja a ridiculous amount of money to defect from Twitch etc. It's an absolutely standard growth tactic.

Different partner programs differ in the degree that they're open about the details of the program but, in general, they almost never list who the exact recipients are and quite often come with quite onerous NDA requirements even to be considered. I know for a fact that there was at least 1 YouTube program that was handing out check sizes up to $100K USD that I've never seen any reporting about in public sources but was quite well known within a specific YT vertical.

How unethical this is is up to you to personally determine but I don't think substack has done anything that is outside the norm of pretty much every other company of that plays in this same space.

Obviously I can’t stay here. I’m still trying to figure out what I’m going to about running a free newsletter because all the best options like Ghost require a pretty steep monthly payment -- essentially, they expect me to charge my subscribers, which I don’t want to do.

Somebody wants something for free, doesn't like other things about that something. Will do "research" on this and publish said research using other methods that person wants to promote.

Running a free newsletter has been an easy thing to do for decades.

The only reason to use substack is name recognition and maybe payments are slightly easier.

Those are good reasons.

"growth hacking"

Of course there's unaccountable and possibly foreign money bankrolling a bunch of rightwing writers. That's what 21st century media is these days.

>Of course there's unaccountable and possibly foreign money bankrolling a bunch of rightwing writers.

Companies raising "foreign" venture capital isn't totally unheard of. If "unaccountable and possibly foreign" money bankrolled a bunch of leftwing writers, would that be unnacceptable for you too?

I can guarantee that the rightwing press would run articles about it declaring it "unacceptable" if they found out.

> It’s become the preferred platform for men who can’t work in diverse environments without getting calls from HR.

Something seemed weird about Substack from the get go. This seems to explain a lot.

>It’s become the preferred platform for men who can’t work in diverse environments without getting calls from HR.

Nice subtle slander. I think it's not so much about "diverse environments" than about the forced politicization and thought-policing of the work-environment and higher valuation of some "correct" skin-tone and gender over merits.

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