13 Comments

Thanks for putting words to the way so many of us feel right now, Kyle. You are so good at that.

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I love Notes so far. You're right that it's pretty demographically limited, but as it turns out, "people who read and write newsletters" are the kind of people I want to be hanging out with online.

I do wonder whether our children will look back on the Twitters and Facebooks and Instagrams and say, "Yeah, we tried that and it wasn't great." I suspect the dominant apps of the future will be built on a paradigm of niches -- geographically or culturally limited groups leveraging digital technologies to connect in useful and pleasing ways.

Jobs was right: virality should be deliberate, not algorithmic.

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This resonates! I think we've all been feeling a little unmoored with all the changes happening on social media. I wrote about it this week too. https://naomikrueger.substack.com/p/when-digital-seas-get-choppy

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Loved this and would add, I think a key piece of all internet properties are their business model. Substack notes may be leading the way as the first paid “subscription network”, versus ad networks like Twitter and Tiktok. I’m curious and excited to see the next gen of these subscription networks across all content types.

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You hit the target “bulls-eye” with this piece. We are in a social age of what we don’t know that we don’t know. Personally, I love the mystery of paradoxical times.

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" I go to the NYmag.com homepage, because I like its editorial tone " Yeah, NY Magazine is good. I noticed that too.

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You mentioned that "We have so little control over them that when we lose them we can’t be too upset." Why does this lack of control have to be something we resign ourselves to? Decentralized systems like Mastadon are cool, but ultimately they're just a fractured version of a centralized ecosystem. True decentralization where you own your own content and your own feed opens up a world of possibilities where moderation isn't even required! Haven (https://havenweb.org - disclosure, my project) is focused on this direction. Happy to chat more if you want to reach out!

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YES. Thanks for the cogent and eloquent analysis.

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I feel like I’ve lost my social proprioception, as Clive Thompson described this in 2007. You never wanted to be the main character but now I don’t know who the main character even is.

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Ironically (given its toxic reputation) I think Reddit is the only place getting it right at the moment. Social platforms all tried to build one big city, but Reddit has developed a series of co-existing villages. Each one has its own culture, its own mood, and--crucially--its own approach to content moderation. None of these communities are perfect, but most of them manage to find some kind of equilibrium. Users are then free to move around and go to the places they feel most comfortable.

Substack is kind of like that, in a way. Everyone is free to subscribe to any newsletter they want and build their own experience. Meanwhile, each newsletter publisher can have their own culture and their own rules. It seems to work pretty well.

Which is why I think Substack Notes is ultimately a bad idea. It's a step backwards, trying to build that One Big City model again from scratch. The fact they're trying to do this without any kind of content moderation is absolutely bananas.

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ALL OF THIS! Thank you. I think as Millennials grow older and age out of the current social media landscape it is becoming even more of a conundrum for us.

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