Substack is not a suitable alternative to Twitter.
If Elon Musk can buy Twitter, he can buy Substack.
However, Elon Musk cannot buy the Fediverse. No one company owns it. It is not for sale.
At this point, if a social network refuses to join the Fediverse, I’m not interested.
Anyone trying to build yet another proprietary walled garden is just a mini-Musk.
You do not need a billionaire or a VC fund to use social media.
They are just middlemen opportunists trying to insert themselves between you and your friends.
The Internet was built to make it easy for you to connect with others, and that is getting easier with protocols like ActivityPub.
You don’t need Elon Musk. You don’t need Mark Zuckerberg. You certainly don’t need any Silicon Valley tech bro to let you use social media.
To people who say that Elon Musk won't buy Substack because he could "barely afford" to buy Twitter: Substack is no unicorn.
Substack's current valuation sits at $585 million.
That might be an over-estimation because its revenue for the entirety of 2022 was probably $18.6 million.
Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion. He can assuredly buy Substack if he wanted it.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/28/23660473/substack-retail-investors-revenue-profit
I've worked for a social media start-up before. In fact, I was an early employee at a well known one. I know how this goes.
Founders start with the best of intentions.
But then VCs start making demands. And at that point, startups go for the fastest, easiest method to acquire revenue growth. That is, if they want to stay on board.
A good many of them take their exit as soon as it becomes available. Just look at Instagram and WhatsApp.
If Elon Musk walked into Substack's office right now (probably with a sink) and offered them $585 million to buy it, do you think their shareholders would say "No"?
Not on their life.
They would be skipping for joy. Everyone who owns equity in Substack would be popping open bottles of champagne.
Meanwhile, all those writers that Substack is paying will now be under Musk's thumb -- yet again.
This is why the Fediverse is the better choice compared to Substack.
Some folks might be thinking, “Unlike the Fediverse, Substack gives writers an opportunity to get paid.”
Not so fast.
When @TexasObserver was nearly shut down because they lacked funding for operations, they turned to the Fediverse for help.
Within 48 hours, we helped them raise $250,000 in funding—and now that 70-year-old newspaper still lives.
As a result, 17 journalists still have their jobs.
“But Elon Musk could buy all 23,000 Fediverse servers and do the same thing here!”
I assure you that my servers are not up for sale. And from speaking to numerous other admins, they won’t be selling either.
You see, for the same reason people play basketball because it’s fun—not because they want a $50 million NBA contract—many of us run and operate Fediverse servers.
But it’s amazing that some people can’t imagine doing things without a profit motive.
Imagine if people asked the silly “How do you make money?” question about other hobbies.
“You play chess. How do you make money from it?”
“You eat cheese. How do you make money from it?”
“You own a cat. How do you make money from it?”
Maybe I do these things for their own sake—because they give me joy.
The difference between Substack and my Fediverse servers is that Substack has a fiduciary duty to shareholders to generate profit.
I do not.
@atomicpoet On a less financial point, the issue I have with it is that it's not really comparable to #twitter , it's more like a blogging platform. Which isn't, in itself, a bad thing, but it's not a twitter replacement.
Please don't follow me and "Like" my server. It's for my code backup, not your pleasure, but if there are links you like, please follow the link. I'm sure the artist would appreciate it.
Tim
tecreations.ca
@atomicpoet The other name for "shareholders" is parasites…
@lucywildboots Parasites' role is to make as much as possible from other people's work and from the planet resources. It's litteraly their main, if not the only, reason to live·
There's no way they're going to actively make sure to "sacrifice" their profit for ethical reasons…
Being an activist and being a capitalist are mutually exclusive…
@atomicpoet And this is the bottom line. You just summed up everything that's wrong with the model of capitalism that America follows, in one thread.
Imagine if instead of having an IPO to get their payday after building a business, the founders instead sold the company to the workers or customers, and it was converted to a co-op. Suddenly the motive from start to finish becomes building value for the community, period. No more shady manipulations, where customers are frogs in a warming pot, becoming nothing more than resources to mine.
Imagine if all businesses either stayed privately owned or went this route. No more swinging, crashing stock markets. No more billionaire oligarchs living on financial rent. No more treating human beings like livestock milked for their money by strangers so far removed that they can't remember the humanity of those they are exploiting.
You just described capitalism.
No money, you die isn't a system. It's murder. It's also the base of the capitalism pyramid scheme. Oligarchs pay us to do labor they won't then LITERALLY CHARGE US just to be ALIVE. All that "pay" just gets channelled right back to them.
@MysticaRose @atomicpoet That's exactly my point! But it's not all forms of capitalism. It's capitalism as we practice it. We can do better!
@MysticaRose @atomicpoet Your words remind me very pointedly of the "company store" and that old song, "Sixteen Tons," btw.
No. It's CAPITALISM. No money, you die is the core of it. The next level in the pyramid scheme is "war is good for business". Read, death = profits.
The oligarchs "pay" you to do the work they don't want to and the CHARGE you for your very SURVIVAL. That "pay" gets channelled back up to those very same oligarchs.
@hosford42 What you are describing can be referred to as #ExitToCommunity ! Perhaps you are already aware of it, perhaps others aren't. It's a cool concept!
/cc @Marc
@clacke @atomicpoet @Marc No, I wasn't aware of the term. Thanks for bringing it to my attention!
@hosford42 There is a series blog.opencollective.com/exit-t… by @opencollective , several others have written about it too (follow the hashtags), and there's a website e2c.how/ .
@clacke is right to bring up E2C. It's an interesting attempt to align incentives in a more broadly rewarding way. If an E2C isn't valuable for its workers, it isn't valuable financially for the founder of the E2C.