Why am I leaving? For a few important reasons which I'll share further down.
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Why I'm leaving Substack
Do you ever wonder how Substack became the beast it is today, in the oldest internet industry dominated by players like Wordpress, Medium, and others?
Understanding how Substack rocketed to this level reveals why Substack isn't actually for everyone.
Over the past few years, the platform's raison d'être has been fuelled by an exodus of journalists from legacy media and censorship-heavy social media platforms, joined by a new generation of independent writers.
The Substack platform is not a revolutionary technology. Substack's value comes primarily from a principled policy of free expression and network effects of writers and readers together in the same place.
For professional writers who want to publish without friction to an engaged audience of paid subscribers, Substack is a priceless solution.
But for other niches of writers, like software artisans (yes that's right) who can replicate Substack's main features and dump it on an AWS instance, investing in Substack is filled with risk.
Let me explain.
Substack risks
Take me as an example; a modest software creator with a blog. For me, Substack's direct monetisation, cross posting, and in-browser WYSIWYG editing are features I don’t need because I'm not in Substack's core user segment.
What I need are features like a great api, first-class template editing, embeddable components, MDX, and better typography. Flexibility over comfort.
Substack might never work on the features I need. If they do, it will either mean the team got distracted, or they've shipped the whole roadmap. Because users like me only make up a sliver of their user base.
Armed with the knowledge that Substack's roadmap is modelled on journalists as primary users allows us to predict how the platform will change over time, and the risks to users like me (and maybe you too).
Take Substack's less edgy big brother, Medium.
I'm old enough to remember the early 2010s when Medium grew famous as the next great publishing platform. It enjoyed this fame for a few years before it just as quickly became a running joke of popups, notifications, and annoying clickbait.
I believe the Medium team acted earnestly, thinking they were helping writers. They shipped features to drive more subscriptions and impressions to new readers. But they couldn't balance the needs of readers and writers. Medium’s reputation was tarnished to a point that multiple rebrands couldn't even fix.
I think there's a significant risk that Substack will push similar boundaries in pursuit of marginal gains for their main user segment. And users who aren't in the main segment will be effectively held hostage with no option but to hope and eventually leave.
I want to get ahead of this curve. For me, the safest and most fun way to share the content I want to make is through my own platform.
I hope you'll stick with me on this adventure :)
Thank you for supporting me and my writing. I hope to see you over on nosaj.io.
👋 ❤️