I kinda agree, but I want to point that this is only true right now because substack is agressively subsidising those creators in order to create a captive audience (I would say to check the article I linked on the previous post, but probably you know way better than me how it works right now ).
Same with the hate speech, it can exist for free because there are interests subsidizing it.
And I do agree with the need for a paywall, is an unfortunate result of the more and more intrusive and sucky ads: I cannot simply imagine these days navigating without an ad blocker, every time I disable it I can see the pages double or triple in size.
What we disagree is on the need of using yet another social network, specially one that is essentially a walled garden waiting to be further enshittified. I would have been perfectly happy to pay for boingboing blog, given the use I was getting out of it, and I am not the only one. Just not on substack, sorry.
I draw the line at Patreon, and Iām already seeing the clear signs of decay ā a direct consequence of all those successful rounds of funding they got: any VC funding comes with strings attached Ā”dance puppet, dance!
I know is purely arbitrary but at least I can seldom engage with patreon directly; for me is more like a payment processor that simplifies the sending of tips to my favourite creators. Most of them have alternate platforms: telegram or youtube channels, some even are moving to alternate platforms like Peertube instance, and Iām happy to watch the content there. I certainly avoid the patreon chats, they seem like the worst idea ever.
Am I a bit radicalized? Well yes, thank you for noticing I hope we can still be friends
Very likely true! But in the meantime creators still need to make a living and nowhere else is offering that. Thatās the whole point of course, and why we so desperately need one of the initiatives like the attempt to make Bluesky permanently protected from enshittification to work - because that protocol could be extended to something like a newsletter platform, that a collective could monetize.
BTW as a random aside, does everyone know about Nebula? Itās exactly the kind of collective Iām talking about - a platform by creators for creators sans billionaires and focused on content and letting creators make money.
Believe me I know. And weād have done anything to find a way to offer useful memberships but trying to create and manage an ad-free, tracker-free BB on our own that would work for people was not going g to happen. I killed the idea multiple times over the years because what we could have made would be buggy and broken and shitty and people deserved better for their money. Substack provided a way to make that happen, and Iām happy that a ton of people did make the jump to ad free, tracker-free (except for Substack itself) BB. Hopefully something even better will come along, weāll see.
I do and I am suscribed! I took one of those subscription offers (the ones that threw also the documentaries) a couple years ago and many of my favourite creators are there so it was a no brainer for me. I also really recommend Dropout, made by the old cast of collegeHumor. The Game Show is one of the best comedy shows Iāve seen lately
Yeah no, as I pointed in a couple posts in this thread, I understand the conundrum. My main peeved with the situation was the tight deadline for the eviction and I can imagine it was a technical nightmare too.
Nebula has the ābundlingā problem that Iāve talked about before, that is endemic to the newspaper/cable sort of model. You pay for access to the bundle as a whole, which means that itās not worth it if you like a single creator. Unless your tastes line up with their creators perfectly, youāre paying for a lot of filler. This is what the Patreon/Substack model avoids, but then you still have the problem of discovery, and the fact that free to access is full of propaganda or clickbait chum.
I, too, am subscribed! I mostly watch stuff that I would have watched on YouTube, but thereās a few original things I watch as well. Lindsay Ellis is there!
Partially the reason I stayed, but also Adam Neely and The Great War post extra content on nebula not available in public. Paper Skies, F.D the Signifier, and Extra Credits are the ones that come to mind too, when it comes to suggestions
FWIW, I also got the SuS subscription and did not get that email, nor do I get any other SuS emails. So there is a way to turn it off completely. Itās possible the sp*m came to you from some other source.
Was curious on the content of the article, so I googled it. Itās covered VERY broadly, on pretty much any platform you care to look.
The article is all opinion, including a very generous misreading of things it quotes. For example, it claims that a person who quit the FDA then exposed all sorts of wrongdoing, which isnāt mentioned at all in his given links, and the claims on how COVID boosters isnāt supported by, again, the links in the documents he givesā¦unless you read your own bias into out-of-context quotes. And the only real thing the expert he points to complains about is that he feels we demanded boosters too often, without enough science. Which is true, and was stated at the time, but the small evidence we had showed promise and world was fucking dying.
Heās also wildly against how we test drugs here in the US, which, having been in the drug making industry for a few decades, is considering pretty much the gold standard. Thereās certainly ways to improve, but many first world countries follow our lead, or used our program as a springboard and went further. To rail against double blind tests as fake science is something I just cannot even comprehend.
Social media and the internet is just leading to brain drain. People no longer want to spend time to critically think. They take written opinion as fact, and everyone is given a megaphone to scream their opinions out.
How does he suggest we guard against bias in testing, then? Is there any other approach that works? āOh, everyone will understand how important it is, so nobody will cheatā seems a bit naive, I think.
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