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Interesting to speculate on the “extremely generous” offer from Substack. They’re obviously willing to devote a decent amount of dev time to making Scott comfo

Interesting to speculate on the “extremely generous” offer from Substack. They’re obviously willing to devote a decent amount of dev time to making Scott comfortable, and I’m sure they have a good idea of how having SSC on board would promote their platform on its take-over-the-blog-market mission, so it could be generous indeed.

peteretep 6y ago
It’ll probably get me to sign up for a Substack account and enter my cc details, at which point they can work out how to get me to pay for more shit. If they’re smart, there have to be some other “loss leader” authors who they can basically salary at $200,000 a year and it’s worth it
frank2 6y ago
All we know is that Substack is willing to make a lot of promises to Scott. Scott probably lacks (as I do) the expertise to negotiate a contract that would actually hold Substack to those promises. But maybe I am being too cynical.
- mpalmer 6y ago
  Hard to believe Scott Alexander doesn't have the wherewithal to find the right representation for something like this.
  - maxander 6y ago
    I also don’t believe that a blogging platform like Substack would do anything to actively antagonize a superstar blogger like Scott, who obviously has a significant following of blog-readers independent of them.
- pas 6y ago
  It's not the promises that are problematic. The long term plans and interests of Substack are not so well aligned with Scott's. Every future development has to either treat him as a special snowflake (so they have to implement a VIP tier) or eventually bulldoze every perk of his blog back into uniformity. I don't understand why doesn't he goes full patreon.
  - edbob 6y ago
    If cancel culture is causing him problems, then Patreon is the last place he wants to be.
    - gdevenyi 6y ago
      There is SubscribeStar instead.
    - edanm 6y ago
      Just to be clarify, he wasn't a victim of cancel culture, he voluntarily took his blog offline to avoid his real name being punished in the New York Times.
      - edbob 6y ago
        He had to leave his job due to the politically motivated attack, which the Times said they would continue even after he told them that it would screw up his job. Doxxing is definitely a part of cancel culture.
        edanm 6y ago
        I mean, Scott himself says that there was no ill intent on NYT's part. I don't consider this a part of cancel culture because there was no specific attempt to cancel him.
        edbob 6y ago
        From the original article, "NYT Is Threatening My Safety By Revealing My Real Name, So I Am Deleting The Blog" "Unfortunately, he told me he had discovered my real name and would reveal it in the article, ie doxx me." "I’m not sure what happens next. In my ideal world, the New York Times realizes they screwed up, promises not to use my real name in the article, and promises to rethink their strategy of doxxing random bloggers for clicks." So maybe he's saying that the Times doesn't realize they screwed up, so there's no "ill intent". But in my moral system, if you know you are causing serious harm to an innocent person for no good reason but are so callous that you don't even care, you are still responsible for that harm. I don't want to split hairs over cultural terms. I will accept your definitions for you.

peteretep 6y ago

It’ll probably get me to sign up for a Substack account and enter my cc details, at which point they can work out how to get me to pay for more shit. If they’re smart, there have to be some other “loss leader” authors who they can basically salary at $200,000 a year and it’s worth it

frank2 6y ago

All we know is that Substack is willing to make a lot of promises to Scott. Scott probably lacks (as I do) the expertise to negotiate a contract that would actually hold Substack to those promises. But maybe I am being too cynical.

mpalmer 6y ago
Hard to believe Scott Alexander doesn't have the wherewithal to find the right representation for something like this.
- maxander 6y ago
  I also don’t believe that a blogging platform like Substack would do anything to actively antagonize a superstar blogger like Scott, who obviously has a significant following of blog-readers independent of them.
pas 6y ago
It's not the promises that are problematic. The long term plans and interests of Substack are not so well aligned with Scott's. Every future development has to either treat him as a special snowflake (so they have to implement a VIP tier) or eventually bulldoze every perk of his blog back into uniformity. I don't understand why doesn't he goes full patreon.
- edbob 6y ago
  If cancel culture is causing him problems, then Patreon is the last place he wants to be.
  - gdevenyi 6y ago
    There is SubscribeStar instead.
  - edanm 6y ago
    Just to be clarify, he wasn't a victim of cancel culture, he voluntarily took his blog offline to avoid his real name being punished in the New York Times.
    - edbob 6y ago
      He had to leave his job due to the politically motivated attack, which the Times said they would continue even after he told them that it would screw up his job. Doxxing is definitely a part of cancel culture.
      - edanm 6y ago
        I mean, Scott himself says that there was no ill intent on NYT's part. I don't consider this a part of cancel culture because there was no specific attempt to cancel him.
        edbob 6y ago
        From the original article, "NYT Is Threatening My Safety By Revealing My Real Name, So I Am Deleting The Blog" "Unfortunately, he told me he had discovered my real name and would reveal it in the article, ie doxx me." "I’m not sure what happens next. In my ideal world, the New York Times realizes they screwed up, promises not to use my real name in the article, and promises to rethink their strategy of doxxing random bloggers for clicks." So maybe he's saying that the Times doesn't realize they screwed up, so there's no "ill intent". But in my moral system, if you know you are causing serious harm to an innocent person for no good reason but are so callous that you don't even care, you are still responsible for that harm. I don't want to split hairs over cultural terms. I will accept your definitions for you.