Subsocial

Substack: social media by another name.

I prefer to avoid discussing particular technologies or brands but this is a bit of meta introspection and some concrete terms are unavoidable.

This substack was started November last year, making it week six or so. While I have had a slew of self hosted blogs for over twenty years, they inevitably faltered. I joined substack to share some of my latest ramblings, as well as my daily photo project, thinking the built in audience and some feedback would help the habit stick. The period overlapped with kids being on summer holidays (southern hemisphere) for four of those weeks, which kept me out of my normal office routine.

Over the past six weeks, I have discovered some excellent writing, from authors new and old. It’s been a delight to have such a range of high quality prose at my beck and call. And the extra time away from the 9-5 permitted an exuberant indulgence. What others might rightly refer to as, doom scrolling.

Getting a tad more meta, several articles delved into life offline, a topic I have also touched on. Coinciding with new years, many claiming 2026 the year of analogue, the year without screens, the year offline. At times recognizing the irony of this theme being heavily discussed, online. One sub genre I can’t quite understand though, are posts on the benefits of quitting social media, little tidbits about finding bliss, on substack, a social media platform.

It boils down to two culprits, as to why substack is no different from all other social media platforms.

1. Short form content

2. The algorithm

Short form content

Some have suggested it was the notes feature that spelled the end of substack being an oasis of calm. Though youtube fell firmly into the social media cesspit long before the addition of shorts. Substack already had clickbait titles, “Stop doing X, instead do this.”, “What I was wrong about” etc. The same comment game, in which a large chunk are there only to drive attention to the commenter, instead of participating in meaningful conversation. And the same plethora of “creators” who’s sole contribution to the human condition is trying to convince people to pay them to teach you, how to make money on substack.

That said, I do think the addition of notes has accelerated the decline. All existing issues aside, short form content fuels mediocrity. Instead of a short list of exceptionally crafted essays, I am now daily confronted with a deluge of hot takes, memorable quotes and inspirational words rarely surpassing the wisdom of “Live Love Laugh”. In addition to plagiarized words and art, posted to boost the posters popularity. Not to mention, an explosion of one liners, lacking any clarity or context, which exist entirely to feed the monster, the algorithm.

The algorithm

A foundational problem of the digital age, is the obsession with one metric, one that has been monopolizing our attention since it was first measured, time on site. True, substack doesn’t make money through third party advertising, like most of the commercial internet. Yet they still want you on site as much as possible, the more you use substack, the more likely you are to pay for subscriptions, and substack will get its ten percent. You might think of this as first party advertising. They want to advertise the writers on platform, hoping you support them. While I am not privy to the exact working of the substack algorithm, it is safe to assume it relies on “engagement” and being able to recommend more of the same.

Engagement is generally some mix of time on content, number of likes and number of replies. Which explains the barrage of notes from well seeming individuals, claiming to want to read people like you, asking for a link to your substack. Knowing that any post with a large number of comments looks like it has high engagement and will be boosted to more people. Fundamentally the platform wants viralitiy, as brain rot leads to time on site, which leads to subscriptions, and an increase in revenue.

Its hard enough to convey a complex idea in 140 characters, even harder to do so in a balanced way which examines the greyer sides of existence. While there is no explicit upper limit on length of notes, years of experience has taught people how to juice engagement through short form. How a divisive statement, or a banal one, induces a flood of replies and re posting. All done in service of the mighty algorithm.

The interim

For now my solution is to be decidedly anti-social, whilst retaining the media platform. With my return to office hours, I don’t have the time to be sucked into an endless feed. Yet, I wish to keep reading the excellent long form content I’ve discovered. Luckily there is a middle ground; by using a foundational technology of the open internet, RSS, I am able to read articles on my e-reader. It’s not widely advertised but all substacks have a feed, generally at subname.substack.com/feed or customdomain/feed eg. reflections.8by3.net/feed.

The future

The world needs a public square for thoughtful, considered conversations. One free of any algorithmic feed, which will inevitably be gamed.

A key driving force behind the unhealthy norms of social media platforms, is venture capital. Platforms can’t help but enshitify themselves, in pursuit of the constant growth their financial backers require. This is what leads to the obsession with time on site, and other metrics which demand growth at all costs. Any true public square, would require a different financial foundation. Likely that of a non profit.

This is a project I am working on.

Social marketing