APPARENTLY EVIDENCE HAS NO PLACE IN THE NEWS, THE COURTROOM OR IN GENERAL. So much so, that one is likely to get more and better information watching a cooking show, a travelogue, or a D-I-Y program. I’m not saying anything new here.
But with every passing day, I am increasingly convinced that I did the right thing by leaving Substack. I haven’t closed my account there yet, but that may be a future event. As it is, I have simply stopped posting there.
The evidence that Substack is a breeding ground for AI bots, scammers and miscreants is mounting. In the nearly one week since my sign-off post on Substack, I have been receiving numerous notifications that so-and-so is now following me, I’ve received nearly a dozen new “subscribers,” and some of my older posts are getting “liked” by many. With success like this, why would I ever leave?
Except that I’m not blind to the patterns that I saw developing before my departure: The use of capital letters on only the first name (if this repeated pattern isn’t a dead give-away, I don’t know what is. I mean, who doesn’t capitalize their own name???), and first-name-only women’s names with photos of young, white ladies, often with come-hither looks. Substack’s analysis feature lets one examine subscriber data, and a strikingly high percentage of them have never contributed a single word to the site. For a site that purposes itself as a writer’s platform, the lack of actual writing is significant.
I have not bothered to check Substack’s marketing materials, but the influx of phony accounts could be seen by the company as a plus. If head count or “eyeballs” is a metric upon which it makes money, the more the merrier. It doesn’t matter if the accounts aren’t real or contributing anything of substance. In fact, the unscrupulous businessman might make the site even more attractive by adding features that don’t add value to a writer, and then not make an effort to moderate them. I am of course, referring to “Notes” and “Chat.” The company might claim these features allow writers to better communicate with one another, but in my experience, they are like honey to ants to those who merely like to stir the pot.
The general opinion of sites like Reddit and Bluesky is that they are loud, opinionated, biased and often incorrect. They are niche communities, as is Substack, and appeal to a subset of the general population; I do not participate on them. When it was Twitter, X was much the same, but even under Elon Musk’s helm, with the heavy-handedness of moderation reduced, the site is still little more than a distraction with the sheer volume of postings. Facebook, on which I still have an account, is now the “grand-daddy” of social media sites, is still afflicted with bozos, bunco artists and fakes, but the younger generations have moved on to their own preferred cesspools. Chinese spy application TikTok leads the list, but Instagram (owned by the Facebook people, Meta), Snapchat and even YouTube (some people will make a social media out of any site that allows comments, it seems).
The difference, it seems to me, is in the level and impartiality of the moderation of these channels. For two years I was a volunteer moderator for a professional web site, and what goes on behind the scenes might amaze some. Still, even-handed moderation is a make-it-or-break-it feature of quality online forums and social media. I retain memberships on several sites because the subject matter interests me, and the moderation makes them feel like “community.” Once or twice, I have had my wrist slapped because I overstepped a boundary, but the moderators’ decisions are the final say, and my choice has always been to accept it, or leave the site. I’ve left some sites, not because of a personal rule, but because the moderators began acting like little dictators. There’s a fine balance needed to properly moderate a site.
That’s something Substack is currently missing. And is the reason I’ve left.
