Thanks, guys! Yesterday I had actually put all my subscriptions back onto Visible because you have to go in and manually update them as you subscribe to new stuff. I was all..."Well...why wouldn't I show them all? More kudos to my favorite writers, right? I don't have any subscriptions that I don't want people to know about." But you brought up a super good reason to hide them - potential targeted marketing. With the addition of Follow (My C3PO is showing - I have a bad feeling about this...) and how easily that Notes could become Tweety, I reversed my decision and re-hid most of them. (Not Fictionistas.) 🤓😈🤓 Thanks for helping me housekeep, y'all!
Aug 28, 2023Liked by Jackie Dana, Alex S. Garcia, Meg Oolders
It was very disappointing to learn that Substack, the corporate PR of which constantly says how it is better and different than other social media companies, is acting even worse, when it comes to openly displaying private subscriber lists. This was so inconceivable that I had never imagined it.
There is a fundamental difference between followers/casual users and subscribers, the latter of which are ideally going to become paid customers.
Did anyone ask them whether they want their personal subscriptions listed?
It is not really about which writers subscribe to other writers, and at least (for now, it looks) people who are not signed up for Substack or its damned app do not appear in such searches.
But I know great writers who already refuse to join Substack because of the perceived risk factor (as we learned in the meeting) of it violating EU privacy rules. There IS a market out of America, you know, and many of us have to engage with it.
What Corporate Substack must understand is that we the ordinary, unsalaried writers are on the front lines of their reckless and unannounced policies. The suits are not going to be blamed for implementation, but we writers will take it on the shins from readers every time something like this is implemented, without us even knowing anything about it.
At very least, there should be a very clear opt in/opt out feature for both writers and readers on joining and in managing settings for whether they want membership diplayed. Ideally with the disclaimer that 'we cannot guarantee that any personal information you provide will not be aggregated by third-party marketers and other internet entities,'
I do not want to ever hear another piece of glossy PR about Substacks utopian revolutionary vision for tech. Thank you.
Is Notes turning into Twitter and do we want that? It’s a question I’ve been mulling over so good to see others have been too! The time to join is sometimes challenging (I'm in NZ) but just to say thank you for making the thinking available - really helpful.
Thanks for the perfect recap, Meg! And thanks to everyone who participated.
I had also noticed that the subscribers list is public. I honestly don’t like that.
I am also quite sure that Notes is competing with the Comments section in our newsletters. Was this also a topic in your meeting?
Great discussion, thank you for the recap!
Thanks, guys! Yesterday I had actually put all my subscriptions back onto Visible because you have to go in and manually update them as you subscribe to new stuff. I was all..."Well...why wouldn't I show them all? More kudos to my favorite writers, right? I don't have any subscriptions that I don't want people to know about." But you brought up a super good reason to hide them - potential targeted marketing. With the addition of Follow (My C3PO is showing - I have a bad feeling about this...) and how easily that Notes could become Tweety, I reversed my decision and re-hid most of them. (Not Fictionistas.) 🤓😈🤓 Thanks for helping me housekeep, y'all!
Thanks for sharing. Great to know.
It was very disappointing to learn that Substack, the corporate PR of which constantly says how it is better and different than other social media companies, is acting even worse, when it comes to openly displaying private subscriber lists. This was so inconceivable that I had never imagined it.
There is a fundamental difference between followers/casual users and subscribers, the latter of which are ideally going to become paid customers.
Did anyone ask them whether they want their personal subscriptions listed?
It is not really about which writers subscribe to other writers, and at least (for now, it looks) people who are not signed up for Substack or its damned app do not appear in such searches.
But I know great writers who already refuse to join Substack because of the perceived risk factor (as we learned in the meeting) of it violating EU privacy rules. There IS a market out of America, you know, and many of us have to engage with it.
What Corporate Substack must understand is that we the ordinary, unsalaried writers are on the front lines of their reckless and unannounced policies. The suits are not going to be blamed for implementation, but we writers will take it on the shins from readers every time something like this is implemented, without us even knowing anything about it.
At very least, there should be a very clear opt in/opt out feature for both writers and readers on joining and in managing settings for whether they want membership diplayed. Ideally with the disclaimer that 'we cannot guarantee that any personal information you provide will not be aggregated by third-party marketers and other internet entities,'
I do not want to ever hear another piece of glossy PR about Substacks utopian revolutionary vision for tech. Thank you.
Is Notes turning into Twitter and do we want that? It’s a question I’ve been mulling over so good to see others have been too! The time to join is sometimes challenging (I'm in NZ) but just to say thank you for making the thinking available - really helpful.
Great summary, thanks for writing that up! Appreciate it.