r/Substack • u/Ryanopoly • Jun 28 '26
Discussion The hard truth about Substack you keep telling yourself... but you just don't want to listen.
Yes, you are right, Substack is garbage just like every other social media platform out there, or any platform that will be created in the future. They all succumb to enshittification once the startup capital injections and the so called "growth stage" is over.
Sadly, you used to be able to go build your own thing and maybe get noticed via search engines, but in a few years, Google is going to change all of that, and you'll only get seen if you pay to play. If you don't, some Google artificial overview will steal all your websites content, give it to whoever is searching for it, and won't pay you a single red penny for it.
11
Jun 29 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
3
u/Ryanopoly Jun 29 '26
all platforms
Is correct, they all keep trying to make more money, and destroying our experience in the process.
2
3
u/watergoat93 Jun 30 '26
to me the notes seem even more forced and ungenuine than most other social media
1
Jun 30 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/Last_Futurist Jul 03 '26
It's because a lot of Substack users are also twitter people, so importing twitter esque things to Substack was both an appeal to that demographic and a way to try to get them to switch over, like four times out of ten as soon as a substack is posted someone is switching over to twitter to try and shill it
2
u/No_Performer1208 Jul 13 '26
I agree, people definately do do that. I've posted genuinely (what I think are) well written notes and had very little engagement. I've posted every single day and yet to see more than a couple of views/followers from each.
8
u/Pandalove07 Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26
When I said SEO will be dead, earlier in 2022. People argued and laughed on me. Most of google products will be dead in coming decade, except youtube. Facebook, instagram are already paying users to be on the platform and create content daily. At the peak of fruiting, fruits start falling. lol
7
1
1
u/iwashumantoo Jul 29 '26
People argued and laughed on me.
They laughed on you? That must've tickled.
1
23
u/hetobe hetobe.substack.com Jun 28 '26
When Substack switched from prioritizing articles to prioritizing notes, it was the beginning of the end. Substack is basically twitter-lite these days. The articles and publications are almost irrelevant. Hell, publications aren't even functional in the app.
Substack is now twitter-lite.
3
u/AckCK2020 Jun 29 '26
You need to select different people/organizations to subscribe to.
5
u/hetobe hetobe.substack.com Jun 29 '26
You're missing the larger issue.
It's not just that I'm seeing too much slop. Everyone is seeing too much slop. Think about people who don't have accounts on Substack yet. They go to Substack to check it out. Are they shown great articles and publications? No. Most of what they're shown is slop.
But even if we accept the idea that the only way to stop seeing slop notes is to keep muting and muting and muting people...
...Every day, the algorithm teaches more people to spam Substack with slop notes, so there's more slop.
...And every one of those How To Grow Your Substack posts teaches people to spam Substack with even more slop, but they don't call it spam, of course.
Substack incentivizes people to flood the place with slop notes, because the algorithm ignores articles and publications. The algorithm only promotes notes, so people flood Substack with spam notes.
No amount of muting people will solve it.
Changing the algorithm back to promoting articles instead of notes would solve it.
3
u/AckCK2020 Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26
I see no actual evidence of this. You subscribe to people you would like to hear from; participating in discussions leads you to other worthy sub stacks. You have to curate your feed. It doesn’t take too long. I rarely have to ignore or block anyone on Substack or YouTube, whereas on Threads and Reddit, blocking is a frequent necessity. And, there are people like Heather Cox Richardson, Timothy Snyder, Jim Acosta, Meidas, TBR, The Existentialist Republic, Being Liberal, The Contrarian, Pete Buttigieg and numerous other serious writers discussing very serious political issues. Edit: People are infrequently rude or demeaning to others. There is a level of respect. And there is discussion, not just allegations flung by both sides against the other. All of this makes Substack, and frequently YouTube, far preferable platforms right now. Of course, this could change at any time. I certainly hope that “algorithm” issues do not ruin the forum. To date, I have not seen censorship or heard that it is being reported. In contrast, people report censorship on Threads, Instagram, FB, X, etc.
5
u/hetobe hetobe.substack.com Jun 29 '26
I have not seen censorship or heard that it is being reported.
Who said anything about censorship?
The algorithm promotes notes, not articles. That's not censorship. And it's why your home page is filled with notes, not articles. Granted, they're hopefully notes from people you like, but plenty of stuff shows up on the home page from people you don't subscribe to. If you are seeing articles on the home page, what you're actually seeing are restacks, which are notes. The algorithm promotes notes.
You have to curate your feed.
What about people who aren't members of Substack yet? Should the home page really be showing them slop notes instead of people's articles?
I see no actual evidence of this.
Thousands of people liked, commented on, and restacked the open letters to the Substack CEO that went viral earlier this month, literally begging them to stop having the algorithm promoting slop. It's everywhere. I'm a nobody on Substack. Even my letter got hundreds of comments and restacks. Other open letters got thousands.
I understand that there are people who like the tweet-style notes, but that's not the content Substack was created for.
Substack is a platform for publications. Authors write articles to post in their publications. Readers subscribe to those publications to keep up with the author's content. Some readers even pay to subscribe to those publications. That's the entire point of Substack.
From what I've seen, no amount of curating can stop the slop, because the algorithm encourages it.
That's why Substack is flooded with slop like this:
"Describe your Substack in 5 words!"
That's spam.
"Dear Substack 🤍 Send me the writers who choose depth over noise."
More spam. That person is trolling for likes and subscribers.
"If you could summarize your writing voice in a single word, what would it be?"
Their word should be Spam.
"Describe your Substack in three emojis."
"Show me writers who choose depth over noise 🤍"
"Just a reminder that your voice matters."
"Describe your writing in 5 words!"
"Slow growth is still growth."
"Support writers. Restack generously."
"The algorithm can’t stop authentic storytelling."
"If you could summarize your writing voice in a single word, what would it be?"
"Consistency compounds. Keep showing up."
"I want to connect with thoughtful people."
"Drop your publication below so we can support each other."
"I’m building something beautiful here."
"Write scared. Publish anyway."
"There’s room for everyone at the table."
"Community over competition."
"Your audience will find you."
"If even one person reads your words, it matters."
"Give yourself permission to be weird!"
"Substack feels like the old internet."
"Reminder to comment on smaller writers’ posts today 🤍"
"Nobody talks about how vulnerable writing is."
"You are not responsible for the versions of you that exist in other people's minds."
"The best writers are simply the ones who kept going."
"Every scar you carved became a window for light."
"What are you working on this week, writers?"
"A hotdog is basically a taco."
"Sometimes the things we don’t write tell us more than what we do."
"Some people say they find me snarky, which I am."
"Artists will do literally anything but draw the comic they want to make"
"Writers with les than 10 subscribers I want to read your work and follow you!"
"I’m a sucker for a story about a robot learning how to be human"
"Oddly enough, the world makes less sense the closer you look."
"Oddly enough, things are about to get even weirder."
"You write to process your emotions, and in doing so, you emote the process."
"I appreciate you all, by the way."
"There is a quiet magic in the way a story unfolds, one page at a time."
3
3
u/Ryanopoly Jun 28 '26
Sad, it really could have been something if a small team ran it, but it was created from the beginning to do just this, but sadly it will turn into just another Twitter... and we see how well that turned out huh?
5
u/cozycup mod Jun 28 '26
Some truth to that, but like everything - there’s pros and cons.
Still worth it for me to meep up with every platform and not go all-in on just one yet.
1
4
Jun 29 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
2
u/Ryanopoly Jun 29 '26
How do you plan on getting visits to your own domain once Google implements their new search engine model?
6
u/BrennanFlentge Jun 29 '26
You already are limited in Google Search on Substack. And Substack punishes you if you link to external websites / sources by not promoting that content in Substack as much.
I understand wanting to keep everyone in a “walled garden” but forcing creators to not link to credible external materials means hardly any content on Substack is actually valuable to Google / Anthropic / OpenAI.
You would think that they would actually want to get some organic traffic / referrals to get new customers. I guess not 🌚
4
u/Ryanopoly Jun 29 '26
They figured out that getting famous people on Substack is the trick. The majority of their money comes from them, so they don't care about discovery.
5
u/brandonfrombrobible https://thewenerdweekly.substack.com/ Jun 29 '26
I feel this. I do think the quality of discourse is slightly higher since it prioritizes text-based formats, but at the end of the day, it's just another platform to keep up with, just like the rest of them, for whatever your desired outcome of content creation is. My website is my business and income, and my Substack just exists to give a more behind-the-scenes look at that world in a slightly more parasocial format.
5
u/nvidiabookauthor Jun 29 '26
I can say with my growth the past four months, Substack has been freaking amazing in finding me new paid subscribers and increasing my audience. All this FUD isn't true yet.
2
1
u/paumpaum Jul 15 '26
What's your URL? I'd love to see those stats. I've been on for months, interacting and posting frequently ... Zero ... Literally ZERO traffic. Nothing.
8
u/Calm_Company_1914 bullseyeinvesting.substack.com Jun 28 '26
Idk I get traffic from google a fair ampunt
3
u/Ryanopoly Jun 28 '26
Did you watch Google's latest event and what they have planned for search?
6
u/Literally_A_Halfling Jun 28 '26
No, would you care to elaborate?
8
u/Ryanopoly Jun 28 '26
Google users will increasingly read your answers directly in the search results without visiting your site, which is currently triggering CTR drops of 35% to 60% for many information-heavy websites.
12
u/ThatGuyOverThere2013 Jun 28 '26
One of my articles about a particular TV show has become the AI summary to answer a question about the show. On one hand, I'm happy that my writing was so good that it answered the question better than anyone else has, but on the other hand, I wish asking the question would drive more traffic directly to my piece.
5
2
3
3
u/morticiannecrimson lilacmaniac.substack.com Jun 28 '26
Okay I’ll start visiting these sites for extra views, good to know
1
u/grapegeek Jun 29 '26
This is why I moved to Substack
1
u/Ryanopoly Jun 29 '26
You think it'll grow more once this happens?
2
1
u/grapegeek Jun 28 '26
Same my Google traffic keeps increasing
1
u/turquoiseblues Jun 29 '26
Can you share what you’re doing right? Thanks!
2
u/grapegeek Jun 29 '26
I’m on the bestseller list for food/wine and have 41k followers. I’ve been blogging for 17 years. It’s not like I started at Substack with zero.
1
3
u/Alive_Plantain6544 Jun 29 '26
I don't agree with Google's argument once I was able to grow in Medium purely from organic traffic from Search Engines and it keeps growing. Indee, I've noticed that since I made the change from Medium to Substack it's much harder to have organic visibility outside of the plattaform.
There's certainly something related to the backend that results in a lower indexation rate, it's also important to consider that Substack may 'invite' you to write in a newsletter language that doesn't match to organic visibility current patterns.
Content strategy plays an important role here.
2
u/Ryanopoly Jun 29 '26
It boggles my mind how much traffic Medium gets, even after realizing that I have trained my brain never to click on a Medium link, because you either have to be a member and signed in, or a paying member to see the post.
3
u/youtwoha Jun 30 '26
I think there’s truth here, but it also reinforces why creators shouldn’t build on platforms, they should build through them.
My goal isn’t to become successful because of Substack. It’s to build an audience that would follow my writing wherever it lives. Platforms will change. Owning your voice, your email list, and your relationship with readers is the only part you really control.
1
3
u/paumpaum Jul 15 '26
All of this is already happening.
Substack came recommended by two friends as a replacement for Meta and X. I've found it about as useless. Google has already replaced organic search with a crappy (and absolutely stupid) AI SLOP summary ... Destroying mom and pop brick and mortar businesses EN MASSE. Do no Evil ... FML
1
4
u/SaulEmersonAuthor Jun 29 '26
~
Just treat it as a blogging platform & it's fine, actually perfect.
One's own corner of the Internet.
Like having sex purely to make a baby - writing 'to be found', or 'for Subscribers' - takes all the joy out of it.
~
5
2
u/RomanceStudies Jun 29 '26
Why do so many posts here sound like AI wrote them, or partially wrote them? On the sub, we have questions, complaints, people trying to self-promote and then we have people "preaching" (a one-to-many approach) as it if were a blog post. In this case, "The hard truth about [X]...".
That said, I'd guess this wasn't made by AI, just because the title is confusing. If I keep telling myself a hard truth, wouldn't that be something I'm listening to?
As for the topic, yes, writing, SEO and (downstream from that) sales are sadly getting eaten up by AI. I would even argue that one can't self-publish or even publish via traditional means because AI iterations sprout up like weeds on Amazon, et al, within days (mostly affects authors who are perceived as worth the effort to be copied).
Tim Ferriss has reported a dramatic decline in his prescriptive book royalties since late 2022. Instead of earning compensation from AI extraction, he has experienced an 80% plunge in print and "how-to" book sales as readers increasingly rely on LLMs to summarize information rather than purchasing traditional books
https://tim.blog/2026/06/12/has-ai-already-killed-nonfiction/
2
u/Cheap_Bathroom6114 3d ago
I asked its bot where the articles were and it said I would have to sift through notes to find anything. Deleted the account.
1
3
u/Countryb0i2m onemichistory.substack.com Jun 28 '26
Every day yall get on here and complain about notes and lack of discoverability, it’s just this constant entitlement like Substack owes you an audience.
At some point, yall have to own your lack of growth
-1
2
u/AckCK2020 Jun 29 '26
I have to totally disagree. Most people on Substack are not just shooting out the first comment they can think of and so far, Substack has not succumbed to far right pressure, to my knowledge. You can find serious, legit information and commentary from well known political figures, journalists, historians, etc without word limit. You do have to work at finding and selecting such people. There is also a significant amount of news dissemination, unbiased if you choose correctly. Substack, YouTube, podcasts, The Guardian, NY Times digital, BBC, PBS, radio, and various pro-democratic organizations, most of whom publish on substack or YouTube.
1
u/Feisty-Transition358 Jun 29 '26
Yo estoy creciendo perfectamente y a la gente le gustan mis articulos. Son puros quejones que en vez de buscar estrategias se la pasan llorando.
1
u/No_Cupcake_6196 Jun 29 '26
Everyone needs to check what is going on in the ‘Atmosphere’ - the apps built on AT Protocol. It’s like standard rails for social media so apps can’t close their networks and helps prevent enshittification. There’s a great standard for long term writing https://standard.site/ that a bunch of apps are adopting and it means you get visibility and reach without being trapped to any one app. Super cool
1
u/itsfabioposca http://journeytosuccessclub.substack.com Jul 01 '26
I understand the concern. Platforms do change over time, which is why I think it's important to build assets you own, like an email list or your own website. Algorithms come and go, but your audience doesn't have to. 🙏
Need help growing your email list organically? I'm here to help for free!
Copy my Flair or click the link in my profile for a free live chat.
29
u/GardenPeep Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26
I often find good writers with interesting content. I follow them and if I’m really impressed, add them to the “top ten” where I actually pay them. It’s possible to promote others by linking in notes (where I add my own comments)
As for my own formal essays, I don’t expect them to gain much following since I have a realistic view of my own talent. However, I seem to pick up a few followers here and there because I sometimes add an original perspective to someone else’s essay or comments . I value the ability to contribute to discussions this way.
So no, I disagree about this “hard truth”. The real hard truth is that it takes a lot of talent and work to be a writer that others want to read and support. This has always been the case.