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Top-level
 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 65 comments
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, โUnlike the Fediverse, Substack gives writers an opportunity to get paid.โ 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 fundingโand 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. ๐คฃ โBut Elon Musk could buy all 23,000 Fediverse servers and do the same thing here!โ I assure you that my servers are not up for sale. And from speaking to numerous other admins, they wonโt be selling either. You see, for the same reason people play basketball because itโs funโnot because they want a $50 million NBA contractโmany of us run and operate Fediverse servers. But itโs amazing that some people canโt 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 โHow do you make money?โ question about other hobbies. โYou play chess. How do you make money from it?โ โYou eat cheese. How do you make money from it?โ โYou own a cat. How do you make money from it?โ Maybe I do these things for their own sakeโbecause they give me joy. @atomicpoet then again, if someone were to offer me $50 million to stop being a satirical online โtrollโ, I would seriously consider it. @atomicpoet itโs 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 โHow do you make money?โ 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 The other name for "shareholders" is parasitesโฆ @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. @atomicpoet My partner and I own cats. Plus we run a cat boarding facility which is very profitable. @atomicpoet You make money off your cat by putting it into cat modelling. Itโs HUGE in Romania. 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 If Elon bought all 23,000 Mastodon Servers today, at least 23,000 new ones would pop up tomorrow. @atomicpoet It's not their fault they can't imagine doing anything w/o a profit. They've been raised under predatory capitalism. It's what they know.  The underlying assumption here, btw, is not as much that everything has a profit motive, but that every entity has shadowy moneyed owners who can be bought out by a zillionaire against the will and interests of the people who have been visibly working for the entity. The capitalists' euphemism for this is the vulture capital system, but in the context of other historic societies, such as Soviet Russia or Imperial Rome, it was called political patronage. @atomicpoet @TexasObserver thatโs what building a community looks like. Humans without political borders. #WeAreTheGuardrails  @atomicpoet @TexasObserver it's a different model; because it comes from a different paradigm, some cannot process it ;-> 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 itโs 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 Twitterโs algorithm, which is now open source. People are punished for not buying a blue check. @atomicpoet Elon throwing everything at them including the kitchen sink  @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 That's how the profit motive ruins everything. If they were cooperatives or at least not-for-profit you wouldn't see that transition, because the goal never shifts from building value for users to making money for investors. @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. |
Gregory's Server
@atomicpoet yes, he can basically destroy a lot of things on a whim.