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Comment by coldpie | Hacker News Reader

For me, it's just an empty login form, and I'm not going to register an account just to see what's there.

I'm sympathetic to the idea of paying for content directly (I spend over $100/mo on Patreon), but I feel like Substack has cultivated a nasty branding issue for themselves. To me, and I know I'm not alone, Substack is where you go when you want to hear some 17-year-old who got high for the first time tell you what THE MANNNN doesn't want you to know, duuude. Greenwald and Taibbi and the like. I guess there's probably other types of content on there, but that's all I ever see from the domain.

Anyway I'm not going to register an account to see whatever's going on with Notes. Good luck, guys.

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On the hand I know exactly what you mean about Greenwald and Taibbi (and so many other neoreactionary media folks), but it's also where I get great content from economists (Noah Smith, Claudia Sahm, Doomberg) and technologists (our own Simon Willison, Gergely Orosz, Molly White).

The media folks are clearly escaping scrutiny and playing to their base, but there are many excellent Substackers in other fields!

A branding problem doesn't mean all of the content is bad, no?

Simon willison is on substack? Doesn't he have his own blog?

He does, his substack is a weekly collation of his blog posts.

>Greenwald and Taibbi (and so many other neoreactionary media folks)

I intensely dislike both of them, but are they really considered NRx?

lol just go along with it, we need to label them something, and "non-partisan" just doesn't give anyone a self-righteous dopamine hit

How are they escaping scrutiny? They hardly seem interested in hiding what they believe seeing as how they are both very active on Twitter. And whose scrutiny do you consider them anxious to avoid? Their opponents know very well what they are saying. This whole framing reeks of the kind of censoriousness which they both spend a lot of time railing against.

I believe you, but Substack is clearly trying to appeal to that same base[1]. I'm sure there's fine content on there somewhere, but Substack's brand is so unappealing to me I'm just not interested in supporting the company.

[1] https://twitter.com/lulumeservey/status/1511376638487019524

On the other hand, I have a quite positive opinion of Substack given the articles I read there, and I know I'm not alone.

I don't like Twitter though, so I don't really care about Notes

Personally I've always disliked Substack because their links used to only show a newsletter sign up form and a button that said "Let me read it first". I'm sure everyone who works at Substack knows no one wants to sign up for a newsletter before "reading it first" but they still put that form there in hopes some small percentage of people type their email not realizing they don't need to.

You're not alone. Substack is also where former journalists publish when those pesky editors decide to fact check them and find them wanting.

Especially when they're factchecking for partisan narrative compliance

Just wait for Reddit screenshot reposts.

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