How Substack's follow feature betrays its original mission

Elite capture is the “presence of unequal access to power...and consequently the ability to influence the transfer of funds/resources disproportionately” toward outcomes that benefit those with access.

Here, funds/resources mean currency, so in some situations they can refer to things like housing and healthcare but they can also refer to “knowledge... See more

What Substack is doing is taking the power away from readers and themselves, and giving it to authors. What does that mean? They are betting that in the market of long-form articles, the player with the most power is the author, not the reader. It’s the supply that matters, not the demand.

You might not “own” your Twitter followers (you can’t take them if you leave), but you get to leverage the platform for distribution. You could theoretically launch your own version of Twitter if you want more ownership - but it’s practically useless if there’s no one there to read your tweets.

The introduction of the “feed” in modern social media has been controversial. At its core, “algorithmic curation is ultimately about power — about who controls what we see and how we see it.” As our lawmakers now discuss this question on Capitol Hill, most of the discussion is centered around how we can “fix” the feed. However, our political and te... See more