Substack is the only one to fix that particular problem. Their terms of service explicitly says that credentials cannot be shared with any 3rd party, like a cloud based scheduling service.
I understand how notes can be used to talk about and promote authors. But I don’t see how it won’t turn into a twitter shit show. Your algorithm seems to already recommend the most “engaging” content, the most pithy, thoughtless, clickbait, anger-inducing notes, just like twitter, and the quality keeps dropping month over month. I see terrible notes from people who have never written an article suggested over notes from people I actually follow and who create content. How is that promoting authors? You have no moderation, which is fine, but you also have no karma system, no way to truly prevent people being an abusive and threatening to others or incentivise them to not ruin the place for everyone else.
I want to believe in your strategy but every time I hear you talk about it, I think you’re just being incredibly naive. I think much of the reason notes isn’t as bad as twitter yet is that there’s not a big enough network effect here yet. But people are increasingly coming here not to create content but just to spread low-quality hateful blather that makes it an increasingly unpleasant place to be.
You need a strategy to make notes actually get better instead of increasingly worse, which I’m shocked you don’t see is happening. It’s obvious to your users, which is why you keep having to defend notes. Perhaps the decay is slow enough that you’re just not noticing.
What’s your strategy? I don’t buy your explanation here. I want to but I don’t. :)
I've given this absolutely 0 thought, but spontaneously, the idea that the Notes algorithm should promote Notes from users who also create Posts, seems like a great way to mitigate against the risk of Notes becoming Twitter. You have to "earn" the right to show up in the feed, and you earn that right by posting longer-form writing.
Ok since no one replied to this, here is a great tip I learned from another Substacker. If you mute or block (I forget) the kinds of Notes that you don’t like, eg “drop me a line about your ‘stack and I will follow you” or “I have unsavoury opinion about subject X” then the algo never shows you that kind of stuff again. Or very rarely does. I still get the occasional “drop me” ones. Also if you get nasty comments in your Substack posts you can simply delete them. I also like the idea suggested elsewhere here of rewarding with more visibility people who actually produce posts. It helps to keep out the trolls.
Thanks, I will try that. I would love for Substack to use some sort of karma system or make the ability to write notes a reward for positive engagement in the community. I know I can delete comments but I get some really abusive replies to comments I’ve made on other people’s substacks. I think technology can solve some of these anti-social behaviours without having to resort to moderation or censorship. We can create a space where people feel safe to contribute to the dialog here.
It does seem reasonable, and protective to the ethos of Substack, to "reward" those who post long form content. I have always thought that the very controversial idea of a "social credit score" could be useful if it were applied to social media. In a real world situation assholes are not included in the next gathering... I think that would be a useful rule of thumb in these discussion. If you are not contributing positively to the utility of the platform you should not be promoted. This does not mean you are not free to express yourself. it simply means the way you do so matters and is noted by the algorithm. We all know poorly conceived incentive structures can do immense damage (good people following bad incentives can do horrible things). "Bad incentives" create problematic outcomes. Take capitalism as an example. ..one potential "fix" for the shortcomings of capitalism would be to prioritize human thriving alongside profit and growth. I would love to see someone build a social media that puts that idea front and center with attention and profit. Deprioritizing shitty people and clickbait content should not be that hard with the tech we have.
Even a capitalist company like Substack could embrace a social credit system because in the long-term it creates a better environment that would attract more users. But companies tend to think about how they can get subscriber growth in the next 3 months and don’t care as much about the lower quality, which is a harder metric to measure. Substack should understand this because they seem to understand the importance of high quality authors being more important than the number of authors. They just need to extend that thought process to attracting high quality readers and commenters.
I absolutely love this. I'm so glad that I came back here in February after leaving my Substack dormant for 8 years (whoops). What you've built is beautiful. The user experience is fantastic. The vibes are so chill, and the conversation is so elevated. I really do appreciate your dedication to being a creator-first platform, and I look forward to seeing how you evolve it. I also hope to one day visit your office for an event like this, but first, i've got work to do!
Explain why I keep getting recommended garbage notes from people that have written no articles and are not subscribers of any authors here. People that have had accounts for 2 days. People that aren’t linking to author content. How is that promoting authors?
I’m being harsh because I love and adore substack. I hate launching the app and having to scramble to tap Following before being reminded how it’s getting worse just like twitter did back when it had only a few million users.
Really enjoyed this piece and the linked article! It's helping me understand how I went from 136 subscribers (after two years) to 2,090 seemingly overnight. (It's never overnight LOL) But I never really had an answer, until I read the piece you linked by Jason Chatfield. I love this analogy: “Think of Notes as the town square where writers, readers, and ideas mingle.”
I can actually feel that. When one of my Notes went viral three weeks ago, I replied to nearly 662 comments, and had some of the most heartwarming conversations since starting my Substack.
I treat Substack like a university. On my way to the library to write my essay, I wave to a few familiar faces, stop to chat about ideas, maybe share a coffee or a meme…and that’s what keeps me inspired to show up and write.
Well said McKenzie - Great work starting notes. I wish there was a way for new companies to get discovered in the same way vs being raped and pillaged by Meta/Google ad's for discovery.
I respectfully disagree with this column. Notes encourages use of the app. The app encourages use of the phone. We Americans now spend an estimated 10 years of our lives, staring at our phone. That’s 10 years not spent doing the work of creating. I challenge you and your team to come up with ways to improve discovery of newsletters that don’t encourage people to stare at their phones and waste their lives.
I 100% agree Substack should be a social network. But I would have loved to see that social network pop up around posts, rather than independent “notes.”
For example: Notes could have been a place where we see what the people we subscribe to “like” and “comment on”—so that inherently every “note” is tied to a post (what people subscribe to and pay for).
Robust comment sections have always been the best place for discourse, and we should definitely surface what happens there, but I don’t love that now people are moving away from commenting to publish on notes instead. And that behavior is distracting readers from participating in posts. (At least as far as the Elysian community is concerned!)
Great info! Thank you. How does Substack define and track deep engagement? I’m curious because without visibility no one can engage with your content regardless of how much depth and value it offers and the algorithm seems to be in control of that visibility so it feels like a catch 22 in order to get visibility you need engagement, but you need engagement to get visibility. Am I wrong? Not a complaint. Just a question.
Still no reference to the need to protect the free expression character of Substack, which seems in peril given the censorious character of the whole Bari Weiss, Larry Ellison, CBS, Free Speech tranaction currently underway? Was the sudden elevation of the The Free Press to Substack's most favoured blog category, part of a deal? The people running Substack granted the Weiss/Free Press complex weekly access to every Substack subscribers' mailbox? Why? What value does Substack afford to protecting and defending Substack's Free Press character which will definitely come under attack given the priorities of the people Bari Weiss is working with? What will be the relationship between Substack and CBS?
Can we please have Notes scheduling?
Search Google "Substack Notes Scheduler" - plenty of options available until Substack provides their own.
Oh, I've experimented, but something that doesn't require having my computer open all the time would be ideal. Have I missed something?
Substack is the only one to fix that particular problem. Their terms of service explicitly says that credentials cannot be shared with any 3rd party, like a cloud based scheduling service.
Yes pretty please! It is costing us hundreds of dollars to get developers to do this for us!
You can do that with writestack.io
Yes, it’s a viable solution, but you have to keep your computer open all the time.
Yes, I know, currently testing it. Substack does not even provide a draft option for notes.
Never even thought of that!
Most social networks have this, hopefully Substack Notes soon too!
How do you like the new native scheduling tool, Daniel?
It's pretty decent, but some calendaring bugs have yet to be sorted.
You mean when you pick a date and time from the calendar?
Yes, in some views it’s still Sunday the first day or a day ahead.
I understand how notes can be used to talk about and promote authors. But I don’t see how it won’t turn into a twitter shit show. Your algorithm seems to already recommend the most “engaging” content, the most pithy, thoughtless, clickbait, anger-inducing notes, just like twitter, and the quality keeps dropping month over month. I see terrible notes from people who have never written an article suggested over notes from people I actually follow and who create content. How is that promoting authors? You have no moderation, which is fine, but you also have no karma system, no way to truly prevent people being an abusive and threatening to others or incentivise them to not ruin the place for everyone else.
I want to believe in your strategy but every time I hear you talk about it, I think you’re just being incredibly naive. I think much of the reason notes isn’t as bad as twitter yet is that there’s not a big enough network effect here yet. But people are increasingly coming here not to create content but just to spread low-quality hateful blather that makes it an increasingly unpleasant place to be.
You need a strategy to make notes actually get better instead of increasingly worse, which I’m shocked you don’t see is happening. It’s obvious to your users, which is why you keep having to defend notes. Perhaps the decay is slow enough that you’re just not noticing.
What’s your strategy? I don’t buy your explanation here. I want to but I don’t. :)
I've given this absolutely 0 thought, but spontaneously, the idea that the Notes algorithm should promote Notes from users who also create Posts, seems like a great way to mitigate against the risk of Notes becoming Twitter. You have to "earn" the right to show up in the feed, and you earn that right by posting longer-form writing.
Ok since no one replied to this, here is a great tip I learned from another Substacker. If you mute or block (I forget) the kinds of Notes that you don’t like, eg “drop me a line about your ‘stack and I will follow you” or “I have unsavoury opinion about subject X” then the algo never shows you that kind of stuff again. Or very rarely does. I still get the occasional “drop me” ones. Also if you get nasty comments in your Substack posts you can simply delete them. I also like the idea suggested elsewhere here of rewarding with more visibility people who actually produce posts. It helps to keep out the trolls.
Thanks, I will try that. I would love for Substack to use some sort of karma system or make the ability to write notes a reward for positive engagement in the community. I know I can delete comments but I get some really abusive replies to comments I’ve made on other people’s substacks. I think technology can solve some of these anti-social behaviours without having to resort to moderation or censorship. We can create a space where people feel safe to contribute to the dialog here.
It does seem reasonable, and protective to the ethos of Substack, to "reward" those who post long form content. I have always thought that the very controversial idea of a "social credit score" could be useful if it were applied to social media. In a real world situation assholes are not included in the next gathering... I think that would be a useful rule of thumb in these discussion. If you are not contributing positively to the utility of the platform you should not be promoted. This does not mean you are not free to express yourself. it simply means the way you do so matters and is noted by the algorithm. We all know poorly conceived incentive structures can do immense damage (good people following bad incentives can do horrible things). "Bad incentives" create problematic outcomes. Take capitalism as an example. ..one potential "fix" for the shortcomings of capitalism would be to prioritize human thriving alongside profit and growth. I would love to see someone build a social media that puts that idea front and center with attention and profit. Deprioritizing shitty people and clickbait content should not be that hard with the tech we have.
Even a capitalist company like Substack could embrace a social credit system because in the long-term it creates a better environment that would attract more users. But companies tend to think about how they can get subscriber growth in the next 3 months and don’t care as much about the lower quality, which is a harder metric to measure. Substack should understand this because they seem to understand the importance of high quality authors being more important than the number of authors. They just need to extend that thought process to attracting high quality readers and commenters.
Agreed my friend
That photo was waaaay too sexy to only send to one person. The world needs more anti-gurning.
Thanks for the shout out. Glad the transcription was of some use.
I absolutely love this. I'm so glad that I came back here in February after leaving my Substack dormant for 8 years (whoops). What you've built is beautiful. The user experience is fantastic. The vibes are so chill, and the conversation is so elevated. I really do appreciate your dedication to being a creator-first platform, and I look forward to seeing how you evolve it. I also hope to one day visit your office for an event like this, but first, i've got work to do!
The notable, notorious, and noble network of NoMad.
I wrote a longer comment but here’s a short one.
Explain why I keep getting recommended garbage notes from people that have written no articles and are not subscribers of any authors here. People that have had accounts for 2 days. People that aren’t linking to author content. How is that promoting authors?
I’m being harsh because I love and adore substack. I hate launching the app and having to scramble to tap Following before being reminded how it’s getting worse just like twitter did back when it had only a few million users.
Likewise--my notes feed is suddenly tuned to the recreational political outrage channel, something I came here to avoid.
Really enjoyed this piece and the linked article! It's helping me understand how I went from 136 subscribers (after two years) to 2,090 seemingly overnight. (It's never overnight LOL) But I never really had an answer, until I read the piece you linked by Jason Chatfield. I love this analogy: “Think of Notes as the town square where writers, readers, and ideas mingle.”
I can actually feel that. When one of my Notes went viral three weeks ago, I replied to nearly 662 comments, and had some of the most heartwarming conversations since starting my Substack.
I treat Substack like a university. On my way to the library to write my essay, I wave to a few familiar faces, stop to chat about ideas, maybe share a coffee or a meme…and that’s what keeps me inspired to show up and write.
Connection first and the the rest will follow.
Well said McKenzie - Great work starting notes. I wish there was a way for new companies to get discovered in the same way vs being raped and pillaged by Meta/Google ad's for discovery.
the human chariot part was the highlight of the night
Oh look, there’s the back of my head in one of those pictures. Thanks for a cool event on Wednesday, Hamish. May Notes flourish as the anti-X!
Can something be done to give people a better method to filter Notes? What's available isn't up to the task.
What would you like to filter? What are you looking for, Ronald? Thanks
I would use notes if it actually worked. I had a photo that got thousands of hits and now I send out note after note to crickets.
I respectfully disagree with this column. Notes encourages use of the app. The app encourages use of the phone. We Americans now spend an estimated 10 years of our lives, staring at our phone. That’s 10 years not spent doing the work of creating. I challenge you and your team to come up with ways to improve discovery of newsletters that don’t encourage people to stare at their phones and waste their lives.
THIS. Most of us came to this space to escape from algorithms and doomscroll, and I don't see how focusing on the Substack app is a good thing.
I 100% agree Substack should be a social network. But I would have loved to see that social network pop up around posts, rather than independent “notes.”
For example: Notes could have been a place where we see what the people we subscribe to “like” and “comment on”—so that inherently every “note” is tied to a post (what people subscribe to and pay for).
Robust comment sections have always been the best place for discourse, and we should definitely surface what happens there, but I don’t love that now people are moving away from commenting to publish on notes instead. And that behavior is distracting readers from participating in posts. (At least as far as the Elysian community is concerned!)
Great info! Thank you. How does Substack define and track deep engagement? I’m curious because without visibility no one can engage with your content regardless of how much depth and value it offers and the algorithm seems to be in control of that visibility so it feels like a catch 22 in order to get visibility you need engagement, but you need engagement to get visibility. Am I wrong? Not a complaint. Just a question.
Still no reference to the need to protect the free expression character of Substack, which seems in peril given the censorious character of the whole Bari Weiss, Larry Ellison, CBS, Free Speech tranaction currently underway? Was the sudden elevation of the The Free Press to Substack's most favoured blog category, part of a deal? The people running Substack granted the Weiss/Free Press complex weekly access to every Substack subscribers' mailbox? Why? What value does Substack afford to protecting and defending Substack's Free Press character which will definitely come under attack given the priorities of the people Bari Weiss is working with? What will be the relationship between Substack and CBS?