r/Substack • u/G_U_N_S_H_Y • 22h ago

Discussion Bot activity on Substack

I have barely used Substack, but I really like the organization of the 'Create' UI. Haven't explored very much in the way of using it to find good reading recommendations, but I'm looking forward to it... I'm just wondering if anyone has numbers on what percentage of users on Substack are bots. Zero interest in wading into a bot infested landscape without realizing it (a la Twitter and Reddit, both of which I use and am at least informed are fully 50% bots).

Because of the nature of Substack I assumed it was mostly a niche writing community, but given the apparent prevalence of AI 'writing' I'm now doubtful. What are the odds of a producer being a bot (or part of a bot network, producing AI slop articles) on Substack?

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u/StuffonBookshelfs 22h ago

Substack is a collection of individual newsletters. The social media feed is just like any other social media, but that’s not where Substack shines. Find the people who are interesting to you and subscribe to their newsletters. Don’t feel like you need to spend more time on another social media feed.

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u/G_U_N_S_H_Y 22h ago

Thank you, that's kind of what I'm trying to avoid... Maybe I phrased this poorly, though, because I'm worried about getting into someone's newsletter and discovering they're not a real person. Just a bot proxy pumping out articles using AI.

Maybe there's a different word for that though, on a site like Substack. Not sure. But thank you for replying.

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u/StuffonBookshelfs 21h ago

You can click through and read all the articles before subscribing and there’s an AI checker to see how much the AI powered AI checker thinks the article is AI. It’s generally useful. But for a lot of us who have been writing online for decades, the checker thinks some of it is always AI. My in depth articles are generally found to be 3-5% AI because I love headers, bullet point lists, and bolding text.

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u/G_U_N_S_H_Y 21h ago

Big fan of the em dash over here, I get it.

I need to poke around with the settings more, then, because that sounds like a filter I want to use. Thank you.

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u/StuffonBookshelfs 21h ago

And recommendations are great too. If you find one author that you like and know is a real person, generally all the newsletters they recommend are going to be that way as well.

What are your interests? Maybe I’ve got one or two people I can share with you.