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Chris's avatar

After 2020, I struggle to believe anyone is an "adult in the room."

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agnt RogerW, on Holy Night's avatar

Does substack count as "social media"?

I don't want a logomachia here. I will simply make the case that substack is not very "social" and not quite a "media" (medium?)

Take twitter, for example. I don't go there. It's one horror after another. No control over what you can filter in or out. They push all the crap on the user optic nerves.

But in twitter, users often abuse one another with their little wars. It's a bridge for sociopaths to abuse honest people.

In substack, there is something of all that, but the user has a lot of control. Substack is mostly textual. Sociopaths seek fast thrills. The textuality of substack is very unappealing to sociopaths. This changed when video and audio was introduced on substack. Many sociopaths suddenly showed up, like bugs in May. That's when substack became more social, more like twitter. But still, it allowed more control. Substack users are less passive, in general, than social media users.

About media, there is an approximate idea of what one can find on twitter, facebook, instagram, etc. There is censorship, editorializing and an covert editorial line. Add to that the obvious two-way contact with political and financial power. That's media.

But substack is not that, for now. There is a bit of censorship, but not a lot. Perhaps the glitches are a weird new form of censorship? Who knows. And there is not yet much editorializing and terrorizing users about the horrible opinions of a substack user and why they should not read that and read the CDC instead or the Cleveland Clinic instead.

Also, there is no obvious bidirectional communication with the commies in charge everywhere. Although, the guys who run substack are kinda commies. Hmmmm.

Malone has attempted again to bad jacket substack and stripe. Which is a very risky business for many publishers. Malone is not very much of an empath here. Of course, I would prefer other payment processors, free of deals with mass-murdering bastards. But there is no such payment processor in this galaxy. It's all controlled, so it doesn't really matter that much, I think. Any thing one tries to do to favor the people you love, the bad guys will get a little money from you. It sucks a lot.

But I see the signs that substack is becoming more like media. And even more social than before. Users are losing a bit of control with software updates. Fabian style.

For me, substack is the place for real people to talk about serious things, with less interference from activists and double agents than in other websites.

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