Annalee Newitz 🍜Way back in 2021, I called out #Substack as a scam because it was masquerading as a service provider when it fact it was paying certain writers (often secretly) to create content for them. (https://buttondown.email/thehypothesis/archive/heres-why-substacks-scam-worked-so-well/) They had an editorial mission and a paid writing staff, but claimed to be a neutral service provider like Etsy for authors. Here's how that story is going ...
Thanks to @nilaypatel's interview with CEO Chris Best about Substack Notes (https://www.tiktok.com/@decoderpod/video/7221602731998498094), the company's questionable ethics are in the headlines again. Nilay points out that Substack needs to prioritize content moderation because Substack Notes are a consumer-facing social media offering. But I would argue that they were social media all along.
Not only that, but they were arguably an actual publication, with a staff of paid writers. I got a lot of pushback on this idea, for reasons I'm still perplexed by. We rail against the Twitter and FB algorithm for shaping content. But Substack was shaping content by paying actual people to write for them. They were creating a content ecosystem. And now, they are selling this ecosystem back to writers -- touting the way paid subscribers come largely from the Substack network.
Steven Smith@annaleen do you have any concrete examples of Substack exerting editorial influence over their “staff of paid writers”?
@stevens they fired a Substack editor who worked on a post that portrayed the company negatively (also pay attention: they had EDITORS for their authors) https://observer.com/2022/08/substacks-clumsy-firing-of-editor-sam-thielman-is-just-the-latest-controversy-for-the-platform/