All Internet platforms eventually devolve into a mess of advertisements, algorithms, self-dealing, and bloat. An iron law of the Internet: If a product or service depends on advertising to fund itself, it will make increasingly selfish decisions until it manages to ruin itself.
I come to this via TWIT. I have been following you since your first time on. I like the idea of "Blogmail." Read it when you have the time or delete it. Single Click.
Good blogmail (I am subscriber) on creators and their audiences. All social media starts with an email address, so core ownership is an email list as pointed out (although some people now only sign up with personal phone#s...).
💯 on all of it. I write comic scripts, guess what? A lot writers and artists are getting clapped by AI. Yet if you see marketing departments, they're using AI to short cut everything from copy writers to graphic designers. I'm a hardliner in AI, I don't use it, don't play with it, don't interact with it. It's too damaging already to people's livelihoods.
You're correct that at this point, owning as much stuff as possible that's 'your stuff' and your audience is paramount for survival now. Especially with how social media is slanting to walled gardens to keep their userbase from expanding.
> If we bring back blogging, the Internet could get pretty cool again.
That content will still be 'consumed' by LLMs and turned into Q&A. If you are counting on consumer's preference to read long-form, I worry that TikTok and Twitter are showing otherwise.
Love that first paragraph. Oh, and putting Substack on notice.
Make the internet cool again!
I come to this via TWIT. I have been following you since your first time on. I like the idea of "Blogmail." Read it when you have the time or delete it. Single Click.
Good blogmail (I am subscriber) on creators and their audiences. All social media starts with an email address, so core ownership is an email list as pointed out (although some people now only sign up with personal phone#s...).
💯 on all of it. I write comic scripts, guess what? A lot writers and artists are getting clapped by AI. Yet if you see marketing departments, they're using AI to short cut everything from copy writers to graphic designers. I'm a hardliner in AI, I don't use it, don't play with it, don't interact with it. It's too damaging already to people's livelihoods.
You're correct that at this point, owning as much stuff as possible that's 'your stuff' and your audience is paramount for survival now. Especially with how social media is slanting to walled gardens to keep their userbase from expanding.
Well said and to the point (not that I'd expect any less from you, Alex). Bring back the raw, uncut internet.
RIP Google Reader. Good thing we still have Feedly to follow our favorite bloggers regardless of whether they use Substack or their own domain.
> If we bring back blogging, the Internet could get pretty cool again.
That content will still be 'consumed' by LLMs and turned into Q&A. If you are counting on consumer's preference to read long-form, I worry that TikTok and Twitter are showing otherwise.
#ShortAttnSpanNation