I’ve been thinking about why I initially found Substack appealing, and why I’m now uncomfortable with it.
Substack launched as a simple blog and newsletter platform built on open protocols: email and RSS. Writers owned their subscriber lists and their published material, and could leave at any time. But between 2020 and 2025, the platform introduced features that fundamentally altered this relationship.
Social features without portability
In April 2022, Substack introduced Recommendations, a cross-promotion system where writers who recommend others are three times more likely to be recommended in return. This created network effects that keep both readers and writers circulating within Substack’s ecosystem. Chat followed in November 2022, offering creators private group conversations with subscribers (marketed explicitly as “your own private social network”). Then in April 2023 came Notes, a Twitter-like microblogging feed exclusively within Substack.
None of these features are portable. Whilst Substack still allows writers to export their posts and subscriber email lists, there is no official export for Chat conversations or Notes content. The social graph built through these features – the followers, discussions, restacks and community interactions – cannot leave with you.
They could conceivably have been built to work as part of the open web, like Mastodon and Bluesky – and even Meta’s Threads – but they weren’t.
The shift from subscribers to followers
The introduction of followers represents perhaps the most significant change towards a walled garden. When someone follows you on Substack, you do not receive their email address. They see your Notes and recommendations in the app, but your posts do not reach their inbox. If you migrate to another platform, these followers cannot leave with you.
Substack’s co-founder Chris Best described following as “a lightweight way to express interest” that may lead to subscription. The platform now reports that 32 million new subscribers came from within the app over a three-month period in 2024. Discovery increasingly happens through in-app social features rather than external traffic or email subscription. Writers report gaining followers far more readily than email subscribers. That is, they build audiences that belong to Substack rather than to themselves.
Multimedia expansion
Video functionality started in January 2022, with editing tools added in November 2023 and five-minute videos in Chat and Notes by June 2024. Livestreaming launched in September 2024. Following TikTok restrictions in January 2025, Substack announced direct video monetisation through the app in February 2025. Combined with podcast hosting from December 2020, the platform now handles the entire content lifecycle within its own infrastructure. Again, this could have been built for the open web – but wasn’t.
The original promise was portability through open standards. The newer features creating growth and engagement operate on proprietary, platform-locked technology. What began as a blog with email distribution has evolved into a closed ecosystem where discovery, consumption, discussion and monetisation all occur within Substack’s walls.
Just another Facebook. There’s also this.
Substack’s promise was portability. The reality is a closed ecosystem. This matters if we believe the web should be a space we own, not rent.
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