Substack Isn't Interested in Internal Discovery

Let me just say a few things from the start:

Insincerely following other writers in hopes that they’ll reciprocate or that one of their readers will take notice is not a means of discovery.

Begging and flattering more popular writers in hopes that they’ll mention you is also not a means of discovery.

And crossing your fingers and hoping that someone with a lot of fans stumbles across you at random is definitely not a means of discovery.

All of which means that Substack Notes is not a means of discovery.

Smaller users of this platform - many of whom seem to have bought into their ridiculous corporate rhetoric about changing the internet for good - have been asking for some pretty basic discovery tools for ages now. I’m talking things like advanced search options for keywords, greater support for hashtags, and other features that have existed on other sites for years.

Instead, we get a little fake Twitter that Substack pretends is a discovery tool because a celebrity might shout you out in a Note. Bueno.

This is not the first time I’ve complained about Substack, their hyperbolic blue skies rhetoric and their general inattention to all but their largest users. But for the moment, I’d like to move past specific issues and into a broader critique. On a top level, Substack is never going to do anything for small creators because it’s not worth it for them.

I’m old enough to have remembered people talking about the idea of a “digital democracy.” The premise was that the internet had broken down so many walls that in the future, success and fame would be based purely on merit. Coarse things like money and connections would be meaningless in a world where anyone could create anything and be discovered. A million flowers would bloom, and everyone would have an audience.

As with most techno-optimistic predictions, not only did this fail to come to pass, the opposite has been true. A world where everyone has the means (and the desire) to be seen is so crowded that gimmicks are necessary to stand out. This means that money and connections are actually more important than they were 20 years ago. And as the network effect has taken hold, we’ve actually seen more and more money and fame concentrated in ever fewer hands.

A side effect of this is that as it has become possible to accrue a lot of fame in a relatively small amount of time, organizations have started dealing with clients and users in different ways. On a personal note, I can tell you that it’s next to impossible to get a book published these days because agents and editors increasingly expect that authors have a large audience even before they’ve published anything. It’s just a safer business decision - publishing an unknown is innately risky.

Simply put, it is easier to try and attract preexisting celebrities than it is to cultivate new talent. And this is where we return to Substack.

As with pretty much every internet-based service, Substack makes most of their money off of a very small portion of their user base. It is elite journalists and other celebrities (and - let’s face it even if Substack wants to hide it - conspiracy theorists) who are driving all the subscriptions. Those people are going to be more important than the rest of us, but so are celebrities who haven’t signed on yet. It is easier and safer to try and lure high-value clients away from other services than it is to find a rising star in the lower rungs of the site.

Given the state of our media environment, this is probably a very sensible approach if a bit shortsighted. It does, of course, clash with Substack’s rhetoric. Telling the world that you’re helping the powerful and famous further monetize their power and fame doesn’t have the same ring to it as “We’re destroying the attention economy” or whatever ludicrous bit of prose they dream up next.

Because as I’ve said before, as long as Substack is so dependent on external sources for traffic, it is nothing more than an extension of those sources. You can’t make big claims about derailing the Facebook train when you’re just another boxcar riding behind it.

I’m committed to ending this serial even though no one is reading it, but once it’s done I’ll probably just delete this account. This is the second time I’ve tried to use Substack as part of a media strategy, and it’s never been more obvious to me that this useless unless you’re a media insider and the bigwigs aren’t interested in changing that.

Then again, maybe I’ll hang around and make fun of Substack some more. It might be a nice change of pace from the parade of elite journalists licking their boots clean.