This is common for Substack articles recently: It delivers a conclusion readers want to hear (Facebook bad! Zuckerberg going to lose a lot of money! Business model destroyed!) but the reality doesn’t quite match the pitch once you decipher the underlying facts.
It feels like Substack authors got started in an ultra-competitive world where they knew clickbait journalism was the norm, so they’ve gone all-in on saying whatever they think it takes to grow their subscriber base. I’ve tried subscribing to many smaller Substacks in the past year but the majority of them feel similar to this: A lot of exaggerated sensationalism and recycled material, but little actual analysis. The exceptions have been professional journalists who were already good at writing before joining Substack.
The sensational articles with exaggerated headlines do play well on places like HN where headlines get upvotes before many read the article, so the trend will continue.