About this Notes thing...

And why I'm a bit apprehensive of this direction towards social media gaming of Substack.

So Substack’s new feature Notes, which serves as Substack’s own form of Twitter, has been out for a few days now.

People have taken to utilizing Notes to grow their reader base. It does appear that many people have gained more subscribers through Notes, although these posts tend to lack any quantification by lack of posting the y-axis for their subscriber numbers (I personally don’t blame people to be honest).

However, I find that I’m rather reticent of Notes so far, only because it seems to be the exact issues that I had with Twitter and seems to be an additional feature that serves to dissuade people from reading for additional context.

And this isn’t exactly coming out of nowhere.

Over the past few months I’ve looked at Substack with a rather leery eye. What once seemed to serve as a place that did away with a lot of the gamefying of social media seems to move ever closer to just emulating much of what made Twitter the cespool of the internet.

Consider that several months ago Substack released their badge feature which alerts people to how many paid subscribers one has.

Introducing the Substack Bestseller badge

I actually had a lot of issues with this feature. Whether intentional or not such a feature essentially serves to direct potential paid subscribers to those who are already high in the paid subscriber count.

Consider someone who wants to support writers on Substack yet their budget is limited. In general, one may argue that people financially support writers based on the quality of their work first and foremost.

But what happens with the new badge feature? Readers now have a frame of reference to gauge their money’s worth, even though this frame of reference should not be inherently tied to the quality of the posts.

Suppose now a reader examines their options in lieu of these badges. What may have been considered quality work may not be put under question:

“This person doesn’t have a badge so maybe there’s something wrong with their work. There may be a reason why other people aren’t supporting them…”

In contrast with someone who may have several thousand subscribers who may see a purple badge as an indication of higher quality:

“Well, this person has thousands of paid subscribers. Surely they’re doing something right. Thousand’s of people can’t be wrong, can they?”

Note here that I’m not indicating that those who have badges are not deserving of badges, and I’m certainly not using myself as a frame of reference. At the end of the day it’s also necessary to argue that people are free to do with their money as they see fit.

But there’s also no denying that the implementation of such a feature will have an inherent effect on how readers gauge the writers they come across.

Rather, there are many writers who are struggling to find support, and with this badge feature Substack has delineated the idea of supporting writers based on their work by providing a tangential measure of a writer’s worth with colorful badgers.

I wouldn’t be surprised if readers may be influenced in some ways by the badges a writer carriers rather than the worth of their work.

In following this addition Substack has now also taken to tell readers how many subscribers someone has.

Again, this seems to be such a strange addition that only serves to further point out the supposed worth of one’s Substack.

Why exactly would it be necessary to inform readers of how many subscribers a writer has if not to just add additional gamification to the subscriber/paid mode of Substack?

No longer is it solely about the work one puts out, but now writers may feel an incentive to sacrifice some of their work if it means that it reaches a wider audience or garners more subscribers.

This is one of the reasons I actively avoided social media for most of my life. Social media companies such as Twitter don’t incentivize nuanced thinking or greater discourse, but quick comebacks that further add to the divisiveness and superficial nature of social media.

Why spend time providing one’s own perspective when you can just “clap back” at someone and get those ever sought after retweets and likes (which really don’t provide anything aside from a quick serotonin/dopamine hit)?

Unlike many of my generation I’ve actively hated social media and have avoided it as much as possible. I hated how it made me feel to want to chase being accepted or to get likes or comments even if they really served no actual relevance in the real world.

And that brings us to Notes…

It’s only been a few day and I have limited data to go off of as I’ve only posted maybe 3 times since the launch.

I can’t argue in regards to gaining far more subscribers with such a short time. However, the one post I actually restacked onto Notes with respect to the EPA and dioxin doesn’t appear to garner any more viewership which may be due primarily to the topic.

Maybe the metrics for Notes work differently than regular Substack, but it does raise questions as to whether readers may turn to commenting on Notes rather than reading the actual piece someone puts out.

We’re already dealing with an issue of people not checking sources. One of the most egregious fallacies of Twitter was the assumption that the Tweet someone makes bears any correlation to the actual content of the article or study they posted.

I’ve seen many cases on Substack alone where writers have claimed that a study said one thing when in reality the study may say the complete opposite or lacked the necessary context needed to interpret a study’s results.

I’ve also commented before that most readers don’t click on links in posts. In general, I’ve found that a link to a study gets around 1-2% of clicks on the link (Substack actually provides metrics on clicks). This is why I originally took to adding a study’s figures to my articles so that I could at least make sure that readers have looked at it in some capacity and be made aware of details within a study.

Now we’re going one step even further and adding an additional incentive to not read or explore topics in a deeper manner. People are now even further incentivized to behave in the same ways that they did on Twitter (i.e. superficially and not meaningfully).

“Why read the study when someone covered it on their Substack?”

Why read the Substack if someone summarized it in their Notes?”

“Why read…”

It’s far too early to consider the lasting impact that Notes will have on engagement, but I also can’t help but think about how much more superficial the discourse may become.

It’d be interesting to see if Substack releases any metrics with respect to Notes that don’t look at subscription rates, but also translations into views as well.

So we’ll have to wait and see what comes of Notes. I will also personally say that I am still confused with how it works with comments and whatnot.

Maybe I’m just not hip to it yet…

With that, I’d like to know what people think of Notes. Will this will be an overall benefit/harm to Substack? Do you think this will translate into more engagement, and would this engagement be superficial or (relatively) deeper?

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