I think it's important to separate certain things about substack.
I worked out a way to use substack to disproportionate advantage in that substack actually fulfills all the basic functions of any website, so "how you use substack" isn't necessarily so well defined as to "be using it all wrong". There's a way to use substack that almost isn't how substack was intended to be used, but I shall spare you the details.
Fundamentally, as Chris Best acknowledges, substack is a business. When I listened to him talk at little more than high level, then I thought about the mechanics of the platform from my perspective and a business perspective, then factored in 4IR, Great Reset, and my own understanding of internet business models, substack can be viewed in a whole other light, and honestly, in some respects, there are aspects which embody 4IR perfectly. What substack is doing to the publishing industry is both disruptive and destructive from both the user side and the author side. But also, there are good things as well. I am not castigating the platform. This article was a focussed critique in the context of 4IR to demonstrate something that may be intended or unintended, which highlights the idea of "all tech is neutral until someone puts it to a use that is not".
Just imagine if your favourite newspaper moved entirely on to substack. Here's how it might work:
Model 1
NYT on substack. Every day, an index post is published with each story headline and byline that links to the article author's sub-substack. You click on what you are interested in. That is one click for NYT and one click for the article's author. You're subscribing to NYT at, say, $300 a year. NYT gives a certain amount to the authors that you click on. The game is for NYT to balance how much they give in micropayments to the authors. If they get the sums wrong, they might lose money and become indebted to their authors. Meanwhile, the authors are hoping that there's enough users driving enough micropayments their way on a daily etc basis to make enough of a living.
Model 2
NYT doesn't even exist. You simply subscribe to the specific writers who operate as individual agents in their field of reportage and you engage with their payment model.
Both of these models destroy huge amounts of jobs in NYT. Both are totally conceivable now. Online publishing of newspapers already does some of the above in some respects. Journalism has been radically changed and decimated as a result. You can see this in the garbage that is the mainstream media in every channel. Little more than orchestrated propaganda engines.
At the moment, substack doesn't "replace books", but when you step back and look at what it is doing, I don't see anything new that doesn't already exist. In fact, centralisation is key to substack, which is somewhat antithetical to the notion of the alternative future paradigms which argue that it is decentralisation that is empowering to the masses and threatening to the establishment..
Jul 26, 2023·edited Jul 26, 2023Liked by Ignasz Semmelweisz
People need to be free to decide for themselves, and learn discernment. All this "quality control" you talk about is actually censorship. You want to control doctors who speak out about covid to be only proven correct doctors? How? By the same consensus that brought us the mess? Smart and discerning people will research Dr. Robert Malone's substack and his credentials and decide for themselves. Readers should be able to equally do for Dr. Bob's substack, who runs a clinic in a small sleepy town and thinks covid vaccines are wonderful. Or, is everything I am writing here "misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theory, hate speech, incitement to violence, terrorism" etc... that you want to censor by quality control measures of a trusted inner communist core that is qualified to delete this comment????
Jul 26, 2023·edited Jul 26, 2023Liked by Ignasz Semmelweisz
I disagree. Business objectives are all about making money, which is censorship itself, because we all feel forced to "prostitute" ourselves for the ugly green stuff, including self censoring our opinions, lest the boss get upset, or co-workers, or a customer, etc.... and we justify it with the need to make money and pay the bills. If we didn't have to slave away for money, how many would have bowed to pressure to take a jab when they didn't want to? Some censored themselves right out of existence. Business objectives drive any platform, but I like the relative freedom of substack so far.
Yes, substack will become communist censorship types in time, assuming the majority of the world's population makes it through another 10 years, and people will start getting kicked off, youtube style. The centralized client server model of the internet itself makes this possible. The decentralized peer to peer model of qortal.org is the future. That internet infrastructure replacement platform is 100% decentralized and technically impossible to censor. I wonder if substack will port over there??? doubt it........
I agree with your views and some of this is intimated by the article. I fully agree with you. I believe two primary things are in the pipeline. substack:
- will already be penetrated by the surveillance censorship complex e.g. CIA, NSA & FBI plus others, á la all social media and comms tech. We just don't know it yet because corporate secrecy etc.
- the standard platform growth and agglomeration rules apply. You keep people stuck to the platform through cash and critical mass compared to the competition. This is exactly the underpin of Musk's purchase and development of Twitter. This means that one day, substack will be used to control and censor its writers' output in various ways eventually. Even if it doesn't change the outputted content, if it just lets the security services in and gives them access to all their anonymous writer's identities and IP logs etc, that will be as bad as actively censoring the content.
Where we disagree is on your point that if you want to make money, you automatically drive towards censorship. The worst aspects of substack as I see them are all to do with being cheap. This is most apparent in its lack of quality support and care about some issues VST has tested it on, and on a lack of quality control or improvement tools that it could make available to writers on an optional basis that could help quality improve without forms of censorship. "Editing" is not automatically synonymous with censorship. Every writer must self-edit effectively else everyone's output would be unreadable. Any good writer will tell you that their ability to self-edit is as important as the will to write anything down in the first place. Third party editing is valuable in many ways and does not imply censorship by design. There's a lot of scope for substack to blend writing services with the platform that up writers' overall quality and thereby up everyone's experience. This is not a cynical thing. It al depends how it's done and how transparent it is. The reality is that AI is being used to provide this kind of service and it's not being done transparently. There is a way to intelligently, sensitively and transparently blend human and AI editing services together to increase quality in a genuine way that everyone sees and understands.
I suspect substack is behind this curve, given that it doesn't care about phishing attempts on its user base.
Thanks for the engagement, it is genuinely appreciated. I'll take a look at qortal.org
Welcome, but I still believe censorship of ANY type is THE major problem in the world at this time. Assistance with editing is fine, to tighten up the clarity of writing, but editing content almost always accompanies any type of editing, especially when the person paying for the editing wants to make money off your writing. They have their own ideas of what the content needs to be to make money, and they use their influence to pressure the writer. Once a writer invests years in ANY centralized platform (which they all are on the traditional internet), they become vulnerable to changing policies, youtube style. And so they get censored eventually. qortal.org is technically impossible to censor there, so better to spend years there instead, to build your audience. It simply CANNOT be taken away with the click of a button.
I think it's important to separate certain things about substack.
I worked out a way to use substack to disproportionate advantage in that substack actually fulfills all the basic functions of any website, so "how you use substack" isn't necessarily so well defined as to "be using it all wrong". There's a way to use substack that almost isn't how substack was intended to be used, but I shall spare you the details.
Fundamentally, as Chris Best acknowledges, substack is a business. When I listened to him talk at little more than high level, then I thought about the mechanics of the platform from my perspective and a business perspective, then factored in 4IR, Great Reset, and my own understanding of internet business models, substack can be viewed in a whole other light, and honestly, in some respects, there are aspects which embody 4IR perfectly. What substack is doing to the publishing industry is both disruptive and destructive from both the user side and the author side. But also, there are good things as well. I am not castigating the platform. This article was a focussed critique in the context of 4IR to demonstrate something that may be intended or unintended, which highlights the idea of "all tech is neutral until someone puts it to a use that is not".
Just imagine if your favourite newspaper moved entirely on to substack. Here's how it might work:
Model 1
NYT on substack. Every day, an index post is published with each story headline and byline that links to the article author's sub-substack. You click on what you are interested in. That is one click for NYT and one click for the article's author. You're subscribing to NYT at, say, $300 a year. NYT gives a certain amount to the authors that you click on. The game is for NYT to balance how much they give in micropayments to the authors. If they get the sums wrong, they might lose money and become indebted to their authors. Meanwhile, the authors are hoping that there's enough users driving enough micropayments their way on a daily etc basis to make enough of a living.
Model 2
NYT doesn't even exist. You simply subscribe to the specific writers who operate as individual agents in their field of reportage and you engage with their payment model.
Both of these models destroy huge amounts of jobs in NYT. Both are totally conceivable now. Online publishing of newspapers already does some of the above in some respects. Journalism has been radically changed and decimated as a result. You can see this in the garbage that is the mainstream media in every channel. Little more than orchestrated propaganda engines.
At the moment, substack doesn't "replace books", but when you step back and look at what it is doing, I don't see anything new that doesn't already exist. In fact, centralisation is key to substack, which is somewhat antithetical to the notion of the alternative future paradigms which argue that it is decentralisation that is empowering to the masses and threatening to the establishment..
People need to be free to decide for themselves, and learn discernment. All this "quality control" you talk about is actually censorship. You want to control doctors who speak out about covid to be only proven correct doctors? How? By the same consensus that brought us the mess? Smart and discerning people will research Dr. Robert Malone's substack and his credentials and decide for themselves. Readers should be able to equally do for Dr. Bob's substack, who runs a clinic in a small sleepy town and thinks covid vaccines are wonderful. Or, is everything I am writing here "misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theory, hate speech, incitement to violence, terrorism" etc... that you want to censor by quality control measures of a trusted inner communist core that is qualified to delete this comment????
You've missed the point entirely, which is about the nature and business objectives of this platform.
This article isn't about censorship or the support of it.
I disagree. Business objectives are all about making money, which is censorship itself, because we all feel forced to "prostitute" ourselves for the ugly green stuff, including self censoring our opinions, lest the boss get upset, or co-workers, or a customer, etc.... and we justify it with the need to make money and pay the bills. If we didn't have to slave away for money, how many would have bowed to pressure to take a jab when they didn't want to? Some censored themselves right out of existence. Business objectives drive any platform, but I like the relative freedom of substack so far.
Yes, substack will become communist censorship types in time, assuming the majority of the world's population makes it through another 10 years, and people will start getting kicked off, youtube style. The centralized client server model of the internet itself makes this possible. The decentralized peer to peer model of qortal.org is the future. That internet infrastructure replacement platform is 100% decentralized and technically impossible to censor. I wonder if substack will port over there??? doubt it........
I agree with your views and some of this is intimated by the article. I fully agree with you. I believe two primary things are in the pipeline. substack:
- will already be penetrated by the surveillance censorship complex e.g. CIA, NSA & FBI plus others, á la all social media and comms tech. We just don't know it yet because corporate secrecy etc.
- the standard platform growth and agglomeration rules apply. You keep people stuck to the platform through cash and critical mass compared to the competition. This is exactly the underpin of Musk's purchase and development of Twitter. This means that one day, substack will be used to control and censor its writers' output in various ways eventually. Even if it doesn't change the outputted content, if it just lets the security services in and gives them access to all their anonymous writer's identities and IP logs etc, that will be as bad as actively censoring the content.
Where we disagree is on your point that if you want to make money, you automatically drive towards censorship. The worst aspects of substack as I see them are all to do with being cheap. This is most apparent in its lack of quality support and care about some issues VST has tested it on, and on a lack of quality control or improvement tools that it could make available to writers on an optional basis that could help quality improve without forms of censorship. "Editing" is not automatically synonymous with censorship. Every writer must self-edit effectively else everyone's output would be unreadable. Any good writer will tell you that their ability to self-edit is as important as the will to write anything down in the first place. Third party editing is valuable in many ways and does not imply censorship by design. There's a lot of scope for substack to blend writing services with the platform that up writers' overall quality and thereby up everyone's experience. This is not a cynical thing. It al depends how it's done and how transparent it is. The reality is that AI is being used to provide this kind of service and it's not being done transparently. There is a way to intelligently, sensitively and transparently blend human and AI editing services together to increase quality in a genuine way that everyone sees and understands.
I suspect substack is behind this curve, given that it doesn't care about phishing attempts on its user base.
Thanks for the engagement, it is genuinely appreciated. I'll take a look at qortal.org
Best.
Welcome, but I still believe censorship of ANY type is THE major problem in the world at this time. Assistance with editing is fine, to tighten up the clarity of writing, but editing content almost always accompanies any type of editing, especially when the person paying for the editing wants to make money off your writing. They have their own ideas of what the content needs to be to make money, and they use their influence to pressure the writer. Once a writer invests years in ANY centralized platform (which they all are on the traditional internet), they become vulnerable to changing policies, youtube style. And so they get censored eventually. qortal.org is technically impossible to censor there, so better to spend years there instead, to build your audience. It simply CANNOT be taken away with the click of a button.