Gregory's ServerSubstack is not a suitable alternative to Twitter.
If Elon Musk can buy Twitter, he can buy Substack.
However, Elon Musk cannot buy the Fediverse. No one company owns it. It is not for sale.
 109 comments
@TimWardCam Weird because I was just on Usenet recently, and required no Google services to do that. In fact, Google does not own Usenet.  @atomicpoet I know that, you know that, I'm just saying that most users of Google Groups probably don't. At this point, if a social network refuses to join the Fediverse, I’m not interested. Anyone trying to build yet another proprietary walled garden is just a mini-Musk. You do not need a billionaire or a VC fund to use social media. They are just middlemen opportunists trying to insert themselves between you and your friends. The Internet was built to make it easy for you to connect with others, and that is getting easier with protocols like ActivityPub. You don’t need Elon Musk. You don’t need Mark Zuckerberg. You certainly don’t need any Silicon Valley tech bro to let you use social media.  @atomicpoet I am old enough to remember when FB allowed some federation. Probably before Thiel. To people who say that Elon Musk won't buy Substack because he could "barely afford" to buy Twitter: Substack is no unicorn. Substack's current valuation sits at $585 million. That might be an over-estimation because its revenue for the entirety of 2022 was probably $18.6 million. Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion. He can assuredly buy Substack if he wanted it. https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/28/23660473/substack-retail-investors-revenue-profit I've worked for a social media start-up before. In fact, I was an early employee at a well known one. I know how this goes. Founders start with the best of intentions. But then VCs start making demands. And at that point, startups go for the fastest, easiest method to acquire revenue growth. That is, if they want to stay on board. A good many of them take their exit as soon as it becomes available. Just look at Instagram and WhatsApp. @atomicpoet I estimate by C funding you might own 1/4 of the company. Does that seem fair? If Elon Musk walked into Substack's office right now (probably with a sink) and offered them $585 million to buy it, do you think their shareholders would say "No"? Not on their life. They would be skipping for joy. Everyone who owns equity in Substack would be popping open bottles of champagne. Meanwhile, all those writers that Substack is paying will now be under Musk's thumb -- yet again. This is why the Fediverse is the better choice compared to Substack. @atomicpoet History is littered with examples of platforms that no longer exist or are irrelevant, however owning your own domain name, website and list of subscribers will always work out in the long run. @atomicpoet Further, if a company did not sell in such a circumstance, doesn't that mean they could be sued by shareholders for neglecting their "fiduciary duty"? The amount of power the rich have can not be overstated. Trying to beat them by playing their own game is a waste of effort. Thankfully there are alternative approaches. Hopefully enough of us pursue them. Some folks might be thinking, “Unlike the Fediverse, Substack gives writers an opportunity to get paid.” Not so fast. When @TexasObserver was nearly shut down because they lacked funding for operations, they turned to the Fediverse for help. Within 48 hours, we helped them raise $250,000 in funding—and now that 70-year-old newspaper still lives. As a result, 17 journalists still have their jobs. @atomicpoet @TexasObserver The issue I still have is discoverability. The homepage of Medium, for example, gives a fine selection of articles to start reading. I haven't found a Fediverse offering that manages that (yet). It's frustrating, because I imagine that should be easy with an ActivityPub feed. I can't understand why I haven't found something like that yet. @ollie_francis @TexasObserver The important question: what exactly are you trying to discover? @atomicpoet @TexasObserver Personally, I want a place where I can be given a list of long-form writing from creators and hashtags I follow without any of the short-form, quick-fire posts that tend to form the bulk of Mastodon. 🤣 “But Elon Musk could buy all 23,000 Fediverse servers and do the same thing here!” I assure you that my servers are not up for sale. And from speaking to numerous other admins, they won’t be selling either. You see, for the same reason people play basketball because it’s fun—not because they want a $50 million NBA contract—many of us run and operate Fediverse servers. But it’s amazing that some people can’t imagine doing things without a profit motive.  @atomicpoet musk must know this. Even if he was able to buy thousands of instances - which is functionally impossible - next week there would be thousands more. You can't monopolise the Fediverse. Imagine if people asked the silly “How do you make money?” question about other hobbies. “You play chess. How do you make money from it?” “You eat cheese. How do you make money from it?” “You own a cat. How do you make money from it?” Maybe I do these things for their own sake—because they give me joy. @atomicpoet then again, if someone were to offer me $50 million to stop being a satirical online “troll”, I would seriously consider it. @atomicpoet it’s under $5 million per follower. And I have some valuable followers!  @atomicpoet and even if he *did* buy all existing instances, setting new ones up is trivial and the migration between instances is possible. Also, let's put the $585m in perspective: that's ~75 times less than he paid for :birdsite:. It's about a third of :birdsite: 's annual interest payments. @atomicpoet >Imagine if people asked the silly “How do you make money?” question about other hobbies. I wish I could only imagine. I get asked the same question whenever I start a new hobby or whenever I do something for fun The difference between Substack and my Fediverse servers is that Substack has a fiduciary duty to shareholders to generate profit. I do not. @atomicpoet On a less financial point, the issue I have with it is that it's not really comparable to #twitter , it's more like a blogging platform. Which isn't, in itself, a bad thing, but it's not a twitter replacement.  @atomicpoet It's another commercial alternative, but because authors on there can monetize their work, it's going to drive journos there. But not so sure it's sustainable as people will only pay for one or two Substacks at most. actually, the only thing that Musk could do is to buy the base (mastodon/misskey/calckey/etc.). For sure, many developers (humans in general) exhibit non-financial motives. but I would not be so sure that they continue to exhibit them when financial ones are placed in the table @atomicpoet Sure, but to play devil's advocate, he could buy both Fastly and Cloudflare, kick off anybody who uses them to protect their ActivityPub server and then all these admins would be open to state-sponsored DDOS attacks.  having a place where ideas flow freely and the best can go viral no matter what the powerful/wealthy think about them, is culturally important. what Elon claimed he believed in but has proven not to. fun, sure. but this confusion over goals imo is what lets assholes like Elon justify jokes at other people's expense. humor is necessary but there's a cruelty that then muddies the water regarding just unpopular opinions and what might be true, and ultimately deters engagement. @atomicpoet if he tried then I could see some people selling out, because there will always be some. He's arrogant enough to not bother trying though, IMHO. @atomicpoet @TexasObserver that’s what building a community looks like. Humans without political borders. #WeAreTheGuardrails I don't completely agree on that. it might be better in some aspects and worse in others. substack wins with respect to convenience. and many pals value convenience over ownership, control, rights @gdiak As Twitter already demonstrated, a walled garden is convenient until it’s not. @atomicpoet no, I did not... the events that are I am aware of have to do with (human) rights, free speech, fake news, etc... but I fail to see how these topics are related on how twitter may stop to be a convenient platform (at least for the majority of users) @gdiak Look at Twitter’s algorithm, which is now open source. People are punished for not buying a blue check.  @atomicpoet indeed, it is part of the sv mindset, not the founding part itself, but what happens. And social media also attracts particularly bad vc's, of the 3 letter agency kind.... @atomicpoet I could certainly imagine him buying substack out of spite. In any case, supporting protocols such as ActivityPub over platforms really seems like the best way forward.  On the internet, everything paid can/will be taken away: Adobe bought Figma and we are just waiting for it to disappear. Only open source software sometimes remain. What lost service do you miss dearly? @atomicpoet Apologies Chris, my comment is a little off topic but I believe this is important. Bringing it up bc I follow many great writers on Substack and hope they think about this: What happens to content on Substack when the site sells out or shuts down? Writers have ZERO control of their content if they rely on a site owned/operated by any external entity, incl Twitter. Some have put in years of hard work. Danger of it going "poof" tho unlikely as of right now, could devastating. @atomicpoet To be fair, Musk could only BARELY buy Twitter and even that is kinda ruining him. Still, your point stands @atomicpoet I don't believe that we're above being sold out to the corperations... 🙃 Yes Mastodon is free and open sorce but so is Crome(based of Google's Chromium) Firefox and Ubuntu. They all pander to corperations because it pays the bills. If companys wanted to control us they will start looking to support the current maintainers financially. :3 @notpike Mastodon is not the Fediverse. And even if they were acquired, they still don’t own the majority of Mastodon servers. @atomicpoet Yes however the code base may be influenced and that's what I'm getting at. :3  @atomicpoet Can Musk set up some 32,000 instances, federate them using ActivityPub with Twitter, and then purge the existing Fediverse instances? In other words, not buy the Fediverse but create something that supplants it? @staidwinnow Got to love FUD! I’m sure Elon Musk would like to convince you that he’ll do that. But Microsoft once thought they could buy and supplant the Internet. They failed.  @atomicpoet to borrow a cliché, the fediverse interprets commercialism as damage and routes around it  @atomicpoet we need to rethink what it means to rent a plot on someone else's private information estate. @atomicpoet Musk is driven by his feelings and whims. There may be others who think “what the heck, it’s less than a $1 billion”. Football clubs, horse-racing, mega-mansions and social media are the billionaires’ playthings.  @atomicpoet  @atomicpoet I can see the initial fun with Substack Notes but the irony is the more successful it gets the more appealing it becomes to a unhinged billionaire. I think you are absolutely right. The future (especially for independent media) has to be the Fediverse. @atomicpoet I'm all for Fediverse and have been enjoying my time here but let's be realistic. Twitter was sold because Elon offered an absurd valuation which was approved by the board because it was absurd. They literally had to drag him into court to honor the terms of the deal. Substack is a completely different org and, given what we've seen these last few days, I don't think offers would even be entertained. People have different needs, and Substack has managed growth responsibly. @atomicpoet Also Substack has the good taste of wearing an easily abused name that appropriately reflects its nature. Suckstack.  @atomicpoet Elon Musk cannot buy Substack unless its owners agree to sell to him.  @atomicpoet ftr, and as PSA for everybody else who may find the same strategy useful in THEIR situation: that ("bad guy can buy service") is exactly the reason why 1) after ~15 years of #blogging I had to surrender to the masses who will read email, but NEVER an RSS feed 2) but I did it as aleaving the blog active, and using #substack as a repeater for it, as I explained here: https://mfioretti.substack.com/p/i-just-started-a-newsletter-and-its @atomicpoet Importantly, there are more subtle ways of buying a platform/ medium than the blunt way that Musk has used on Twitter. More subtle buying of media is arguably even more dangerous because readers/ viewers/ users are even less aware of the interests behind what they think is reporting/ usability   @atomicpoet @chrisnoto Substack is a financial backer of Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, Matt Yglesias, Bari Weiss and whole bunch of other right wing assholes. I wish people would skip it.  @atomicpoet zero interest in any substack owned social thing. they can do whatever they like, I don't care |
@atomicpoet Maybe. Google sort-of took over Usenet - most users of Google Groups probably don't know where it came from.