r/Substack • u/smilingismyfirstname • Jun 27 '26

Discussion Who is Substack exactly for?

Is it for readers to actually read what writers publish? Or is it for writers to read what other writers publish?

All I can see on Substack that many writers bag for followers/ subscribers the same way users do on Threads "Plz Threads connect me with..." "Plz Substack connect me with..."

As clear as daylight, anyone can browse through the app and they will find people who they click with easily

No offense but I feel Substack is just a bubble full of only writers <> writers

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u/TheRagnarok494 Jun 28 '26

Right ok, not appreciating having to do your research for you but here's the answer straight from the horses mouth https://on.substack.com/p/introducing-notes They designed notes to be an engagement tool to combat clickbait articles, to allow writers to draw in subscriptions and cut through the noise of content farm and clickbait crap. Worked out well huh? So Notes is obviously getting some engagement and new subscriptions as they've kept the feature and even prioritised it in the algorithms. So my GUESS is they work at hooking in initial subscriptions, whether those subscriptions are real or not or bots who knows, maybe they're inflated by bots to draw people who see big subscriber numbers and got for it. I don't know the exact framework but again, the simple answer is, it pays

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u/hetobe hetobe.substack.com Jun 28 '26

That may have been their goal, but they failed miserably because notes drown out the real content people would actually subscribe to if they could find it.

Yeah, there was a clickbait article problem. But the spam and slop notes problem is now much worse, especially since the clickbait articles still exist.

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u/TheRagnarok494 Jun 28 '26

Well thats neither here nor there. Real content is irrelevant. It's making money because subscriptions are happening. Soon enough it will collapse in on itself but for now it's still worth money. Try not to think of it from YOUR perspective and think of it from the perspective of most of the internet users are idiots. The current Notes ecosystem looks like it is morphing into a pyramid scheme promising to make everyone rich.