If there was a real journalist out there, after Chuck Schumer, on the floor of the senate, said President Trump actually pressured ABC to cancel Jimmy Kimball’s show, of which there is no evidence just speculation, they made it up, why was Chuck Schumer ok when then President Biden, certainly with mountains of paper trails and evidence to prove and corroborate it, coerced all social media to block remove and ban any mention of the dangers of the COVID experimental injections, or the veracity of Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop, the stolen 2020 election, or the governments involvement with January 6th. Why did Schumer not object then to the “behavior of a dictator”? As he called it. They have no evidence that Trump called anyone they just made it up. But Biden ordered social media to censor all information on the Covid jabs, H Biden’s laptop, the stolen election, and January 6th. Mountains of evidence, receipt after receipt, text message after text message, even staffers corroborating the story they ordered big tech to censor these stories. Schumer not only didn’t object he spread the lies and the censorship. This is why people no longer care about their lies and their cover ups. No one’s buying their bull shit any more. We don’t care what they have to say any more. Their days of political cultural power are over!
Why thank you kind, sir. For opening the floor to all of us, that is.
In my experience it’s been a disaster since Substack evolved into what appears to be Twitter 2.0.
the allure of being on Substack when we were all first publishing is we were not bound to an algorithm. Whoever we heard from was who we intentionally just decided to subscribe to.
We also came here because we were getting censored everywhere else. I came here for freedom of speech and freedom of reach bc it’s the same thing— algorithms prioritize brain rot content, and down rank anything that could be considered dissident, subversive or just not rage bait.
So since we have evolved into an algorithmic app, since everybody is now here to post 1 billion brain rot click bait notes per day, which is definitely the Twitter/X crowd, I think it’s a shit show and I personally am working on getting a Patreon set up so I can switch.
There is a lot of power and much less noise when we actually have the freedom to speak directly to one another, once that’s out the window there’s no point to any of this.
In regards to the leftists on here, they were already here. I think that’s also when the app went to shit is when so many of them protested Elon Musk taking over Twitter and most of them came here.
A lot of opportunists who just want attention came here as well - they saw it as a new frontier where they might have a shot at being some sort of online influencer, and that made interactions and content on this app incredibly disingenuous.
I don’t wanna waste time commenting on leftists being on this app or Jimmy Kimmel, I could give a fuck and they can all burn in hell.
Jimmy Kimmel was on his show saying that anybody who didn’t take the Covid jab should be denied healthcare in this country. The same left were calling for us to be put in concentration camps and now they’re all congregating talking about how people who vote conservatively or republican should all be murdered and in some places of the Internet, they’re planning these things. There’s a difference between freedom of speech and criminal behavior.
One note of caution: Patreon censors, so be wary of that.
Also, for all the weirdness here, we have still been managing to communicate and collaborate, so that is wonderful. And I have also made some great new friends. So I think this place may still be worth fighting for.
It's tough on my end because I want to publish multi media content (BTS video, audio transmissions, photography from photo shoots, music videos, BTS sound clips and freestyle sessions, etc) and substack is not friendly toward all that media into a post - it will have your email go into the spam or promotions folders of readers -- plus, this is mainly an audience (and platform) for writing, so that's what ppl expect.
I will still leave my substack up, but for wanting to transition into sharing a multi-media journey that gives space for others to ignite their own creative work, Patreon is better suited. It's really disheartening to put your heart and soul into works here on the 'stack only to have them drowned out by the Notes feed. I'm not willing to play the algorithm game, i already have to play it on instagram and youtube lol.
But yes, you are right, great connections have been made here, like with yourself.
I wont be gone gone, but I won't be here nearly as much. With the health issues I'm having, I can't afford to go back into another soulless sales boiler room. I want to earn a sustainable, modest living on my art, so Patreon wins in that category too.
My mom stopped receiving emails from my Substack, and she was previously my biggest fan, always leaving a like and a comment on all my posts. Then, all of a sudden, after publishing a post on June 17 this year, 211 of my subscribers stopped receiving emails from my Substack, including many who were opening my emails—my mother and I included.
I asked Substack why my newsletter would land in my mother’s spam box suddenly after she had been so engaged, but they have not responded to that. My mom is supposed to enter some code, but she never gets the email for that code, meaning she cannot like or comment on any of my posts anymore.
I am not here to make money; I just want to communicate. People can pay if they want to. I have 2 paid subscribers, and that is how I got the green check mark.
I only read what I want to read. Had not even noticed the garbage writers on Substack. I f someone starts smearing me, or someone I like, they get blocked immediately. Same with doctors who say I can not write about medical problems and how I solved them because I am not a doctor. All other blasting people fare the same way.
I'm pretty sure my 'stack has grown since then, but only some. The people who run substack are lefties, so now that they're fairly well established, have more and more famous lefties setting up shop here, and have received investment monies, I don't see things improving for us little guys.
Well, it only happened because bigger ‘stacks than mine* were so gracious to help promote me. If I had to soley rely on the algorithm I'd probably still have 3 subscribers.
I learned promotion from the best - @The Starfire Codes @Charlotte Pendragon @Mickey Z. @Wendy Elizabeth Williams @Stone Bryson @Cameron M. Bailey @Deborah T. Hewitt @Michael Newberry @The Black Knight @Jenn @Michael B. Morgan @Ken Macko @Kent Peterson @Kristi Keller 🇨🇦 and so many more. The deliberate hand up they offer is beyond generous.
I think something has been changing as it has felt different to me for some reason. My blog has stayed fairly steady...but hasn't grown recently. And I have been dragging my feet to write weekly at times. So what you say resonates. I think when they quit offering phone support, things felt a lot different. There was a lot of personal care I felt from the platform and enthusiasm from other writers here when I first started almost two years ago now. Sometimes it is seemingly small things that give me a bad feeling. The loss of phone support was one of them. I am starting to choose places intentionally that have it now over companies that don't. And I don't like that my readers and I can't call to ask a question if we need to.
The algorithms haven't bothered me as a reader/subscriber. I don't think I have enough data to do a comparison on how it has affected me as a content creator. Last summer, I hadn't yet started my weekly podcast nor my weekly audio guided meditations for premium subscribers. My content offerings have grown so much that I'd be comparing apples to apples, oranges and bananas.
I have noticed way more people opting to "Follow" me on Notes while not subscribing to my stack. I don't know if that's a good thing. It might mean that lots of people use Notes even if they don't want to subscribe to stacks for long-form content. It might mean that some people who would've subscribed in the past are choosing merely to follow any Notes posts.
That would be good to know. I basically post excerpts and links to my long-form content to the Notes feed, along with the occasional restack of someone else's longform content. I think the only thing I post to Notes that isn't linking to Substack longform content is the weekly Reason crossword puzzle (if I remember to post it).
That's a longer way of saying, I might not be the kind of Notes user whose posting behavior gets followers to add a subscription.
Over the past year, my growth hasn't reversed, but it hasn't increased either. It remains the same as it was before. While in previous years, it did slowly but steadily grow.
As someone who also reads a great deal here, I think that the quality of the platform has declined. I view this as a result of the company's almost entire focus on Notes. It seems that the newsletter features, what Substack began with, are taking a backseat to the social media platform of Notes.
I won't do fortune telling here, but I imagine, and my hope, is that the yellow journalists who come to Substack after crashing and burning in traditional media crash and burn here once their followers figure out that they aren't the wonders that they were perceived to be.
“The yellow journalists who come to Substack after crashing and burning in traditional media crash and burn here once their followers figure out that they aren't the wonders that they were perceived to be.”
Lot's of trolls, getting hammered with unsolicited leftist Substacks on my feed.
My favorite stacks...Jennas's Side (girl has a serious sense of humor and writing skills)...Coffee & Covid (Jeff Childers-need I say more?)...Unbecoming (great listening on long drives)...
I haven't written anything here, but I read a lot of authors here. And I usually find new stacks from someone I'm reading mentioning others they read. I do think the notes feature is starting to be like social media feeds. Which I'm on the fence about. On one hand, it's how I've found some excellent writers that I wouldn't have searched out. On the other hand, I find myself scrolling through echo chamber posts frequently. It looks a lot like my X feed did before I deleted the app. I'm not deleting this one though. I appreciate being able to interact directly with writers whom I enjoy. And maybe one day I might write my own stack.
I hope you do write. And your nuanced view of Notes is quite reasonable. I believe I've gotten many more people from it than I would have without its existence. But it has problems, and the algo seems to have changed for the worse.
Speaking as more of a reader than a writer, having only written about 4 articles so far, I was getting so many emails from Substack that it just got to be too much. So, I unsubscribed from a bunch and kept the ones I was most engaged with and the ones that are for free. I just can't afford to subscribe to dozens of substacks as much as I'd like to.
It kind of makes me mad if I start reading and then get through several pages and it stops and says "only for paid subscribers." I get it, this is the actual job for many substack writers, but since I am limited to the time I have to read I have to choose how to spend my time.
Also, this is the only platform where my comments get liked by many people whom I don't even know and I have gotten followers too. And writers respond back to me! I will look at a potential followers page and decide to accept him or her or block them.
Lastly, the chat feature seems to have trolls, especially fake "Gaza fund raising" people and that is annoying. I report and block every one of them.
Helpful, and entirely reasonable. It is hard to keep up with lots of different stacks (unless one has a ton of time) and hard to paid-sub all of them (unless one has a ton of money). So we pick and choose.
I do find that there is a lot of great engagement and great people here, in spite of the problems.
I am not sure when the change happened but I now immediately go to the subscriptions box. If I spend any time at all on the home page I am inclined to log off immediatley. There are definitely fewer like minds popping up on the home page. Makes me wonder about the algorithms Substack uses.
Not related to content, but I have aggressively pared down the number of stacks I read/subscribe to and I am spending less time staring at a screen. I am chasing a bright sparkling fantasy where I completely disconnect.
I am seeing continued growth... But as for change, the only thing I noticed was a difference when the ai took over. And the look of the stack in "Activities" - which is annoying but not greatly so.
That’s around when I started - interesting that our experiences are so different.
I don’t have my subscriber number public but its 1200- was higher but I removed people who hadn’t opened anything in the last six months because that can get email clients to filter your emails into spam.
My issue is the engagement of actual posts is way down & happened sharply (at the influx time). But posting a meme on notes and it’s 100x.
Did you do anything to adjust for the changes or have you done everything exactly the same since you’ve been here?
"I removed people who hadn’t opened anything in the last six months because that can get email clients to filter your emails into spam. "
Whoa ... This seems really problematic on multiple fronts.
As a writer, I want my posts to be read. I know that many of my regular readers (who are friends of mine) don't come to Substack often if at all, and only read my posts because they arrive in their email inboxes -- so I'd had to see the email feature taken away.
As a reader, on the other hand, I come to Substack regularly -- usually at least once a day -- and check out my subscriptions directly from the site. At this point, I almost never ever open an emailed Substack article. They actually get aggregated into a "Daily Digest" email by my email provider and deleted automatically. I'm sure that tells the algo that they're spam.
Exactly. So I personally turned off all my emails from Substack because I was literally getting hundreds of them a day aand I couldn't take it anymore - too overwhelming. I still get too many emails for various reasons. But yes, I was told that if you have people on your email list who do not open the emails, it will flag your substack's newsletter as spam, so that's why I deleted a bunch of people. If they followed me on the app they could find it there but I just didn't want to be publishing into a black hole. Yet again - i understand how hard it is to be subscribed to "all the substacks" so it is a conundrum.
> My issue is the engagement of actual posts is way down & happened sharply (at the influx time). But posting a meme on notes and it’s 100x.
I've also noticed that engagement with my longform content hasn't kept pace with my subscriber and follower counts. Are more and more users becoming less enthused about Substack?
And I'm anti-meme, so I don't post memes, but I do see (way too much) of that kind of X/Facebook/Instagram/etc. dull, shallow, social-media content here on Substack, too, unfortunately.
Memes are definitely popular! They can be a powerful form of communication, but they are overused. And they get tons of traffic, I guess, because they are low-commitment and easy fun for the reader.
I wonder if a Notes feed where you could only restack longform content from Substack publications would be feasible. I admit, I've found some stacks to subscribe to after seeing someone else restack an article on Notes.
If there was a real journalist out there, after Chuck Schumer, on the floor of the senate, said President Trump actually pressured ABC to cancel Jimmy Kimball’s show, of which there is no evidence just speculation, they made it up, why was Chuck Schumer ok when then President Biden, certainly with mountains of paper trails and evidence to prove and corroborate it, coerced all social media to block remove and ban any mention of the dangers of the COVID experimental injections, or the veracity of Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop, the stolen 2020 election, or the governments involvement with January 6th. Why did Schumer not object then to the “behavior of a dictator”? As he called it. They have no evidence that Trump called anyone they just made it up. But Biden ordered social media to censor all information on the Covid jabs, H Biden’s laptop, the stolen election, and January 6th. Mountains of evidence, receipt after receipt, text message after text message, even staffers corroborating the story they ordered big tech to censor these stories. Schumer not only didn’t object he spread the lies and the censorship. This is why people no longer care about their lies and their cover ups. No one’s buying their bull shit any more. We don’t care what they have to say any more. Their days of political cultural power are over!
Why?
Because they’re all raging hypocrites, that’s why.
My late friend Sam always used to say, “What do you expect from a dog but a bark?”
From hypocrites, you may fully expect to receive an unending supply of hypocrisy.
Why thank you kind, sir. For opening the floor to all of us, that is.
In my experience it’s been a disaster since Substack evolved into what appears to be Twitter 2.0.
the allure of being on Substack when we were all first publishing is we were not bound to an algorithm. Whoever we heard from was who we intentionally just decided to subscribe to.
We also came here because we were getting censored everywhere else. I came here for freedom of speech and freedom of reach bc it’s the same thing— algorithms prioritize brain rot content, and down rank anything that could be considered dissident, subversive or just not rage bait.
So since we have evolved into an algorithmic app, since everybody is now here to post 1 billion brain rot click bait notes per day, which is definitely the Twitter/X crowd, I think it’s a shit show and I personally am working on getting a Patreon set up so I can switch.
There is a lot of power and much less noise when we actually have the freedom to speak directly to one another, once that’s out the window there’s no point to any of this.
In regards to the leftists on here, they were already here. I think that’s also when the app went to shit is when so many of them protested Elon Musk taking over Twitter and most of them came here.
A lot of opportunists who just want attention came here as well - they saw it as a new frontier where they might have a shot at being some sort of online influencer, and that made interactions and content on this app incredibly disingenuous.
I don’t wanna waste time commenting on leftists being on this app or Jimmy Kimmel, I could give a fuck and they can all burn in hell.
Jimmy Kimmel was on his show saying that anybody who didn’t take the Covid jab should be denied healthcare in this country. The same left were calling for us to be put in concentration camps and now they’re all congregating talking about how people who vote conservatively or republican should all be murdered and in some places of the Internet, they’re planning these things. There’s a difference between freedom of speech and criminal behavior.
Yes to all of that.
One note of caution: Patreon censors, so be wary of that.
Also, for all the weirdness here, we have still been managing to communicate and collaborate, so that is wonderful. And I have also made some great new friends. So I think this place may still be worth fighting for.
It's tough on my end because I want to publish multi media content (BTS video, audio transmissions, photography from photo shoots, music videos, BTS sound clips and freestyle sessions, etc) and substack is not friendly toward all that media into a post - it will have your email go into the spam or promotions folders of readers -- plus, this is mainly an audience (and platform) for writing, so that's what ppl expect.
I will still leave my substack up, but for wanting to transition into sharing a multi-media journey that gives space for others to ignite their own creative work, Patreon is better suited. It's really disheartening to put your heart and soul into works here on the 'stack only to have them drowned out by the Notes feed. I'm not willing to play the algorithm game, i already have to play it on instagram and youtube lol.
But yes, you are right, great connections have been made here, like with yourself.
I wont be gone gone, but I won't be here nearly as much. With the health issues I'm having, I can't afford to go back into another soulless sales boiler room. I want to earn a sustainable, modest living on my art, so Patreon wins in that category too.
“ it will have your email go into the spam or promotions folders of readers”
—Too bad more people don’t use Proton or other things that don’t baby you the way mainstream email platforms do
“ Patreon is better suited.”
—I always thought that Patreon was just a link to support someone. I did not know it had its own communication platform.
I hope it works great for you!
“ But yes, you are right, great connections have been made here, like with yourself.”
—🧡🔥🍄🔥🧡
“With the health issues I'm having,”
—I guess I don’t know much about those, but I am sorry. I know how that makes everything else harder. I wish I could help.
My mom stopped receiving emails from my Substack, and she was previously my biggest fan, always leaving a like and a comment on all my posts. Then, all of a sudden, after publishing a post on June 17 this year, 211 of my subscribers stopped receiving emails from my Substack, including many who were opening my emails—my mother and I included.
I asked Substack why my newsletter would land in my mother’s spam box suddenly after she had been so engaged, but they have not responded to that. My mom is supposed to enter some code, but she never gets the email for that code, meaning she cannot like or comment on any of my posts anymore.
I am not here to make money; I just want to communicate. People can pay if they want to. I have 2 paid subscribers, and that is how I got the green check mark.
When you talked with Support about this, to you have an email exchange with a real person, or did you just deal with the automated system?
I only read what I want to read. Had not even noticed the garbage writers on Substack. I f someone starts smearing me, or someone I like, they get blocked immediately. Same with doctors who say I can not write about medical problems and how I solved them because I am not a doctor. All other blasting people fare the same way.
Every single one of them!
I'm pretty sure my 'stack has grown since then, but only some. The people who run substack are lefties, so now that they're fairly well established, have more and more famous lefties setting up shop here, and have received investment monies, I don't see things improving for us little guys.
We shall see. I hope not, but given our experiences elsewhere and the nature of the left, nothing would surprise me.
I am glad you are having success and some growth.
Well, it only happened because bigger ‘stacks than mine* were so gracious to help promote me. If I had to soley rely on the algorithm I'd probably still have 3 subscribers.
*@Stone Bryson, @Cori Bren, @Rat, @Craving Ratio
Same here. Starfire Codes and Charlotte Pendragon for me!
I help where I can. I promote the stacks I like.
🔥❤️
I learned promotion from the best - @The Starfire Codes @Charlotte Pendragon @Mickey Z. @Wendy Elizabeth Williams @Stone Bryson @Cameron M. Bailey @Deborah T. Hewitt @Michael Newberry @The Black Knight @Jenn @Michael B. Morgan @Ken Macko @Kent Peterson @Kristi Keller 🇨🇦 and so many more. The deliberate hand up they offer is beyond generous.
🧡🧡🧡
There are a lot more trolls on here lately...
That is maybe not so much of a surprise, though: whenever something grows, the common denominator lowers.
I think something has been changing as it has felt different to me for some reason. My blog has stayed fairly steady...but hasn't grown recently. And I have been dragging my feet to write weekly at times. So what you say resonates. I think when they quit offering phone support, things felt a lot different. There was a lot of personal care I felt from the platform and enthusiasm from other writers here when I first started almost two years ago now. Sometimes it is seemingly small things that give me a bad feeling. The loss of phone support was one of them. I am starting to choose places intentionally that have it now over companies that don't. And I don't like that my readers and I can't call to ask a question if we need to.
I wonder if they grew in users faster than they grew in revenue, and thus could not afford the phone support anymore??
I don’t know…just wish they had kept it
The algorithms haven't bothered me as a reader/subscriber. I don't think I have enough data to do a comparison on how it has affected me as a content creator. Last summer, I hadn't yet started my weekly podcast nor my weekly audio guided meditations for premium subscribers. My content offerings have grown so much that I'd be comparing apples to apples, oranges and bananas.
I have noticed way more people opting to "Follow" me on Notes while not subscribing to my stack. I don't know if that's a good thing. It might mean that lots of people use Notes even if they don't want to subscribe to stacks for long-form content. It might mean that some people who would've subscribed in the past are choosing merely to follow any Notes posts.
I wonder if they have any data on how many followers convert to subs…
That would be good to know. I basically post excerpts and links to my long-form content to the Notes feed, along with the occasional restack of someone else's longform content. I think the only thing I post to Notes that isn't linking to Substack longform content is the weekly Reason crossword puzzle (if I remember to post it).
That's a longer way of saying, I might not be the kind of Notes user whose posting behavior gets followers to add a subscription.
I haven’t seen Reason’s crossword puzzle. Is it liberty-themed?
Yep! It's not a large grid, but it's always got some liberty-minded quirks to the clues and answers. Publishes on Fridays.
Reason.com?
To answer your questions:
Over the past year, my growth hasn't reversed, but it hasn't increased either. It remains the same as it was before. While in previous years, it did slowly but steadily grow.
As someone who also reads a great deal here, I think that the quality of the platform has declined. I view this as a result of the company's almost entire focus on Notes. It seems that the newsletter features, what Substack began with, are taking a backseat to the social media platform of Notes.
I won't do fortune telling here, but I imagine, and my hope, is that the yellow journalists who come to Substack after crashing and burning in traditional media crash and burn here once their followers figure out that they aren't the wonders that they were perceived to be.
“The yellow journalists who come to Substack after crashing and burning in traditional media crash and burn here once their followers figure out that they aren't the wonders that they were perceived to be.”
—I love that!
Lot's of trolls, getting hammered with unsolicited leftist Substacks on my feed.
My favorite stacks...Jennas's Side (girl has a serious sense of humor and writing skills)...Coffee & Covid (Jeff Childers-need I say more?)...Unbecoming (great listening on long drives)...
“getting hammered with unsolicited leftist Substacks on my feed.”
—Yeah, at some point, I started getting more of that, but seemingly fewer referrals to my own Stack. Weird.
Jeff Childers C&C brought me here to begin with. Love that guy.
I haven't written anything here, but I read a lot of authors here. And I usually find new stacks from someone I'm reading mentioning others they read. I do think the notes feature is starting to be like social media feeds. Which I'm on the fence about. On one hand, it's how I've found some excellent writers that I wouldn't have searched out. On the other hand, I find myself scrolling through echo chamber posts frequently. It looks a lot like my X feed did before I deleted the app. I'm not deleting this one though. I appreciate being able to interact directly with writers whom I enjoy. And maybe one day I might write my own stack.
I hope you do write. And your nuanced view of Notes is quite reasonable. I believe I've gotten many more people from it than I would have without its existence. But it has problems, and the algo seems to have changed for the worse.
Speaking as more of a reader than a writer, having only written about 4 articles so far, I was getting so many emails from Substack that it just got to be too much. So, I unsubscribed from a bunch and kept the ones I was most engaged with and the ones that are for free. I just can't afford to subscribe to dozens of substacks as much as I'd like to.
It kind of makes me mad if I start reading and then get through several pages and it stops and says "only for paid subscribers." I get it, this is the actual job for many substack writers, but since I am limited to the time I have to read I have to choose how to spend my time.
Also, this is the only platform where my comments get liked by many people whom I don't even know and I have gotten followers too. And writers respond back to me! I will look at a potential followers page and decide to accept him or her or block them.
Lastly, the chat feature seems to have trolls, especially fake "Gaza fund raising" people and that is annoying. I report and block every one of them.
I hope this is helpful.
Helpful, and entirely reasonable. It is hard to keep up with lots of different stacks (unless one has a ton of time) and hard to paid-sub all of them (unless one has a ton of money). So we pick and choose.
I do find that there is a lot of great engagement and great people here, in spite of the problems.
Interesting survey/post.
I am not sure when the change happened but I now immediately go to the subscriptions box. If I spend any time at all on the home page I am inclined to log off immediatley. There are definitely fewer like minds popping up on the home page. Makes me wonder about the algorithms Substack uses.
Not related to content, but I have aggressively pared down the number of stacks I read/subscribe to and I am spending less time staring at a screen. I am chasing a bright sparkling fantasy where I completely disconnect.
I wish they didn’t use algorithms at all. Or at least the simplest possible algorithms.
And I respect your disconnection fantasy!
I am seeing continued growth... But as for change, the only thing I noticed was a difference when the ai took over. And the look of the stack in "Activities" - which is annoying but not greatly so.
When did you start writing here?
Oh, I don’t remember… Lessee… August 9, 2023.
That’s around when I started - interesting that our experiences are so different.
I don’t have my subscriber number public but its 1200- was higher but I removed people who hadn’t opened anything in the last six months because that can get email clients to filter your emails into spam.
My issue is the engagement of actual posts is way down & happened sharply (at the influx time). But posting a meme on notes and it’s 100x.
Did you do anything to adjust for the changes or have you done everything exactly the same since you’ve been here?
I’m not much of a savvy One when it comes to platform tweaking. LOL! I have just published and not worried about it.
I dig it :-)
"I removed people who hadn’t opened anything in the last six months because that can get email clients to filter your emails into spam. "
Whoa ... This seems really problematic on multiple fronts.
As a writer, I want my posts to be read. I know that many of my regular readers (who are friends of mine) don't come to Substack often if at all, and only read my posts because they arrive in their email inboxes -- so I'd had to see the email feature taken away.
As a reader, on the other hand, I come to Substack regularly -- usually at least once a day -- and check out my subscriptions directly from the site. At this point, I almost never ever open an emailed Substack article. They actually get aggregated into a "Daily Digest" email by my email provider and deleted automatically. I'm sure that tells the algo that they're spam.
That's a conundrum.
Exactly. So I personally turned off all my emails from Substack because I was literally getting hundreds of them a day aand I couldn't take it anymore - too overwhelming. I still get too many emails for various reasons. But yes, I was told that if you have people on your email list who do not open the emails, it will flag your substack's newsletter as spam, so that's why I deleted a bunch of people. If they followed me on the app they could find it there but I just didn't want to be publishing into a black hole. Yet again - i understand how hard it is to be subscribed to "all the substacks" so it is a conundrum.
> My issue is the engagement of actual posts is way down & happened sharply (at the influx time). But posting a meme on notes and it’s 100x.
I've also noticed that engagement with my longform content hasn't kept pace with my subscriber and follower counts. Are more and more users becoming less enthused about Substack?
And I'm anti-meme, so I don't post memes, but I do see (way too much) of that kind of X/Facebook/Instagram/etc. dull, shallow, social-media content here on Substack, too, unfortunately.
Memes are definitely popular! They can be a powerful form of communication, but they are overused. And they get tons of traffic, I guess, because they are low-commitment and easy fun for the reader.
Yeah i have noticed that a lot of the "feed" is reposts from the other social platforms like X and tiktok - i think notes was a bad idea tbh
I wonder if a Notes feed where you could only restack longform content from Substack publications would be feasible. I admit, I've found some stacks to subscribe to after seeing someone else restack an article on Notes.