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What are some of the changes to substack that are annoying? The only thing I don't like is that banner to sign up but that's always been there. I think a lot o
by bko 3y ago
What are some of the changes to substack that are annoying? The only thing I don't like is that banner to sign up but that's always been there.
I think a lot of people are overthinking it. Substack wants to continue to be a dominant platform for publishing. Sure they want revenue but if you were to ask leadership whether they would trade 50% of traffic for some marginal increase in revenue they would prob say no. Companies aren't naive profit maximizing.
If you never heard of fast food chains and believed all the worse things about free markets you would certainly assume McDonald's charges for ketchup. Its insane of them not to! Leaving money on the table, plus allowing abuse. But they don't because customers would just think it's dick, at least in the US. And you see other trends over the years like giving free cups of water which def loses them revenue. That's all to say companies have economic incentives but not this naive short term view that critics accuse them of
- rchaud 3y ago> the only thing I don't like is that banner to sign but that's always been there. How about a popup that darkens the page and obscures the text to ask you to sign up? That's been on Substack for at least a year. All these startups work the exact same way: promise to offer something better than the enshittified incumbent (Medium), then take on many of the same enshittified attributes because they can't juice their KPIs without a bothersome UX.