Planning a Substackxit? Here's some alternatives to consider...

How do we really want to show up on the web?

TLDR (Too Long Didn’t Read):
You can now find me at:

Tuhat: if you want long-form writing on the web and straight to you inbox and that’s all, without needing to sign up to another platform or ecosystem.

Patreon: if you want long-form writing, short updates, a more interactive experience than Tuhat and an app ecosystem to leave comments and likes.

Mastodon: to receive “tweet” like updates and links to my other pages.

MyNotionSite (coming soon, will update with link when I am ready to launch): if you want to explore my personal universe, get deeper into the rabbithole that is my brain and see what I am up to and watch my writing and creative practice evolve in real-time.

I’ll hang around for a little bit, to make the change-over but I won’t be posting new writing here - it will be on Tuhat, Patreon and my private site. If you want to still receive my words by email then I strongly urge you to subscribe to my Tuhat or Patreon.

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When I first joined Substack it was barely more than a newsletter platform - it seemed like an easy free place to host my blog after choosing to shut down my personal website due to the hosting fees.

I didn’t really give much thought to it, and I didn’t download the app at first. I just posted my weekly blog and sent it out to my email subscribers. My only aim was to get some consistency in my writing practice, and to see if anyone found value in what I had to say.

Eventually I downloaded the app. This was pretty cool I thought! My feed was full of suggestions for long-form articles and I found some really cool newsletters.

But things in the world of tech start-ups change fast, and Substack started doing some things that made me feel a lot less comfortable here.

lol i might just get banned for this….

A non-exhaustive list of reasons I am slowly Substackxiting and why you might be too:

• They don’t have a problem with Nazis or figures like Andrew Tate using their platform. In fact, they have admitted to courting them to get their hands on that dirty money.

• They are changing and becoming enshittified as most growing social media do - pushing short notes and short-form video over longer articles. Feeds are driven by algorithms not by who you choose to follow.

• They use the same manipulation tactics that prey on vulnerable people, as other social media, to capture your attention and keep it - the infinite scroll, ever-changing feed and suggestions, mystery and phantom notifications alongside a million actual notifications and likes as social validation.

• They are introducing more and more AI and tbh so are the users - the platform is becoming flooded with low quality slop. And your work is not safe from being fed into AI despite what their settings may lead you to think.

• They randomly ban people for linking to other payment services or paid offerings - instead of pushing the Substack paid subscriber model which is how they get their cut.

  

• The algorithm can hide your work, I have noticed this after taking breaks. They punish a lack of consistency in daily notes posting - which can be too much for disabled creatives. They also hid my notes when I switched off paid subscriptions.

More and more I have felt unaligned with the direction this company is going. And it has turned my attention and opened my eyes to who is running this place and who is in charge here. Substack loves to stress creator control, see the following excerpts from the publisher agreement:

“First and foremost, you own what you create. Any original content you post, upload, share, store, or otherwise provide to Substack remains yours and is protected by copyright and any other applicable intellectual property laws.”

“your use of Substack’s products and services (referred to below simply as “Substack”) to publish and distribute content to the web and to a list of subscribers that you control (your “List”)”

“For clarity, please note that you are the controller of any personal data featured in content you publish on Substack, and you are the controller of your List.”

But the reality is they can kick you off, and clear your publication at any time. You don’t own your website. And if you don’t regularly back-up your posts and email list which you can do in settings (export your data, I do this a minimum of once per month) you could lose it all.

Transferring it all to another provider is also not always as easy as they make out. Some people have intense technical difficulties including Substack continuing to take a cut through their Stripe link when they are no longer even on the Substack platform! But aside from that they have created a culture where people like to be here. They like Substack. With in-app delivery as an option a lot of people on your “email list” aren’t even choosing to receive your emails and if you transfer to another provider and send an email you may find you get a lot of instant unsubscribes. These subscribers being folk who don’t actually want to receive emails from you at all, they just want to follow you here, on Substack.

Thinking about all this has me considering what I really want out of being online and posting my writing online. I really enjoy the community of like-minded people I have found here, and would miss the connection that we have formed through swapping comments, messages and notes if I leave. I also think my writing has improved and I have achieved my initial aims - I’ve proven to myself I can be consistent with at least one creative outlet and I’ve proven my words have value to people, thanks to all your lovely comments for letting me know.

In some way I feel I have reconnected to the magic of the web that I felt as a child, going online to talk to strangers, messing about, getting up to mischief.

But I no longer want to do that in a tech start-up CEO bro, profit at all costs kind of place. That to me is not what the web was supposed to be about.

The web was supposed to be open access, decentralised, fun, for and by the people. An accessible place anyone was welcome and anyone could show up however they wanted to. A place to connect over niche interests and creative expression. A free, creative commons. A sharing of knowledge.

A true third space.

But under surveillance capitalism and late-stage capitalism more and more we are aware that when a service is free, we are the product. Our very lives, our time is being stolen from us and sold to advertisers. Our data, what we look at, for how long, where we click, where we go next, all of it tracked and aggregated to form intensely personal and detailed profiles of who we are and what we are likely to buy, sold to the highest bidder.

I showed up here, in good faith, with my full name and my full self and I was rewarded with a great community of people to chat with and swap articles and comments and messages with. Unfortunately I no longer feel safe to do that. I don’t want to share my full-name and photo here anymore. Substack can no longer be my main creative outlet. It is starting to feel too extractive and I don’t like who I am giving my work to (and by this I mean the owners of Substack not you lovely people).

I am starting to feel the effects of the addictive features that never sit right with me, and are the reason I have left all other social media apps. I am also noticing the effects of the analytics. The posts that do the best seem to be the ones where I talk about the deepest hurts and I’m not so sure that is the kind of writing I want to keep doing. I am much more interested in sharing things that interest and excite me now like my last post on creativity and becoming more yourself, than I am sharing the troubled stories of my past just because I know they will get clicks and views.

When they introduced the voice-over feature I started to feel the pressure to record my voice as well, something else that can be fed into AI and used to make a fake version of me, or simply to further the AIs speech ability. It also created another whole task and process that must be completed to make a post, making it less accessible and turning me into a part-time content creator instead of what I truly am which is a mad devilish child playing on the internet.

I turned off paid subscriptions because I do not want your money going to Substack in my name. I have a kofi link where you can choose to support me, and I am much more comfortable with that.

So with all that said,

where are we going next?

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this, and if you are also considering leaving then the next move will very much depend on your own goals and interests and WHY (the reason you are online). This is why I have sat with this question for awhile and continue to sit with it and continue to research and experiment with my next move.

Some of the main factors to consider are type of work, size of your email list, cost, technical ability, decentralisation, discoverability, privacy, ownership and ethos.

Using me as an example I am sharing mostly writing, to a small email list, have limited funds, some technical ability (with the ability and confidence to learn more). I value decentralisation, I value some amount of discoverability, I value privacy and protection of my work from AI trawlers & bots. I also value the privacy of people visiting my site and do not want them tracked or surveilled beyond just letting me know someone was there. I value full ownership as I don’t want to be shut down, or give control of my work or page to anyone else. I don’t want to be subject to someone else’s choices and changes they make to the platform and I want a slower approach to the social side: chronological paginated feeds based on who I follow, rather than algorithmically driven infinite scrolls, a system that isn’t trying to capture my attention or sell something to me at every turn.

Now let’s talk about other options:

Something else worth considering is if an email newsletter is your essential sticking point, or if a blog or combination of the two would be more appropriate. Substack is a combination of the two.

Substack’s main competitors are Ghost and Beehiv.

Ghost is open-source software that you could run for free, if you have your own website server hosting, domain, and pay separately for the email services. They only support Mailgun email services which depending on the size of your list can cost from $15 up to $90 USD a month. They also have a pro option where they provide the server hosting and domain but this option obviously gives you less control, and is rented ground once again.

Beehiv is more Substack-like in that it is a proprietary company. It costs $43-96/month depending on the features you need. It is advertising AI features. With a small list you could get started for free but may find the features quite limited.

Neither of these platforms have the built-in discovery features that Substack has - as much as we hate on the notes feed it is how a lot of eyes get on your profile and then hopefully your publication and your list. Beehiv does allow you to pay to boost your profile and seems more focused on monetisation.

As you can probably tell I am not a fan of either of these options. Both are very expensive. Beehiv is advertising using AI features to create your “content” and Ghost, despite being more open-source is quite technical and still expensive to run.

The only free option I have found for sending emails so far is:

tuhat.net

Created by another Substackxit-er, Sascha, Tuhat is long-form writing only. Tuhat means one thousand in Finnish and posts must be a minimum of 1000 words. Posts are displayed on the main page in the chronological order within which they have been posted and in categories based on tags. There are sections for different languages. No algorithms, no ads, no tracking. The platform allows you to have an email list, import your existing list and send new posts via email all for free.

It runs on solar power. It is centralised in the sense that it is owned and run by one individual on their solar power servers. So you are still operating on rented ground and the rules could change at any moment. But for now it seems to align with my values and so I have created a page and my first post there; you can view and subscribe to me here:

https://tuhat.net/@onefootintheother/

You can also read the article from Sascha about Tuhat here to assess if it aligns with your values:

Goodbye Substack, hello Tuhat

Unfortunately I have already seen people post AI generated images which kind of sucks like read the room dudes…. but we shall see how this platform grows and changes over time. It is very new and as such my post is still on the first page, a couple days after being posted which is great for discoverability at the moment. How this will change as the platform grows, only time will tell.

Another free option: Patreon

Patreon automatically sends all new posts to your patrons - serving the function of an email platform without strictly being one. It also allows you to share other types of media: writing, videos, podcasts, images and set up different perks and tiers for paid and free subscribers if monetising your list is a main concern.

Patreon has taken an anti-AI stand against content on the platform being used to train AI models. It also strongly encourages users to share how much AI was used in generating their content and bans AI use to produce deepfakes or non-consensual imagery.

Patreon has recently introduced the discovery feed - a place to allow people to just happen across your posts, content and profile. But who knows what direction they will go in future - will they start pushing different content types to maximise engagement and go the way of all the other social media?

It seems they are hoping to create yet another all-in-one ecosystem where members are wedded to the platform, it will probably see a boost in free memberships and subscriptions then the inevitable bloat and enshittification that happens with all platforms. The rules can change at any time because once again it is rented ground and a company at the helm.

Blogging alternatives to consider:

If email is not your main jam, and you are here, like me, mainly because you love to get up to mischief online and share your words there are some options in the realm of blogging.

Self-hosting.

Owning your own domain and self-hosting you own server and website or blog is the number one way to full ownership, privacy and control.

Within “self-hosting” you can go as far as building your own server on a raspberry pi (a mini computer) and running open source software such as WriteFreely a simple blogging interface. The only cost would be the cost to purchase the domain name and the initial cost of the raspberry pi. And the cost of the electricity keeping the pi running.

With full ownership comes full responsibility and you will be responsible for keeping your server up to date and online and will require some technical skills to make this happen.

But no-one, absolutely no-one could ever take it away from you. You would have complete control over the server, the domain and whatever you choose to post. If write.freely disappeared tomorrow you would still have the code and still be able to run it. You are relying on no companies and no one can make changes to your site.

Decentralisation: The Fediverse

For discoverability you can also link and integrate your blog into the Fediverse - which is not a social media but a technology linking different services on a common protocol. Most services are based on open-source and free to use software, creating a link between many different servers and spaces on the web. This is true decentralisation as no one instance or server can control the whole network. If one goes rogue, it is easy to move to another and continue on.

Mastodon

is a decentralised social media platform and could be considered a microblog platform with its 500 character limit. It can also be utilised to share your posts from your blog into the Fediverse.

Mastodon operates with most of the features I desire like chronological feeds and feeds based on who I follow rather than algorithms. This kind of social networking can be harder for people to understand initially, and harder to get into, especially if swapping from traditional socials as it does not spoon feed you recommendations or learn from what you look at. You have to do the work to search through hashtags and groups and find interesting people to follow. This type of manual up front investment is worth it if you truly want to break free of addictive social media.

Bluesky may also be worth a look - similar to Mastodon but currently slightly more centralised as it is backed by a private company but it is transitioning to a more federated, decentralised approach.

Paying for hosting

If setting up your own server sounds too technical there are also options to pay for virtual servers and remain self-hosted or sign up to managed services that take care of all of that for you, but still operate under the principles of the open-source, decentralised web like creating a WordPress blog.

There are also platforms like the hosted version of WriteFreely; Write.as which costs only $6/month for email lists <500 subscribers and allows you to post blogs and send emails. For larger lists the cost is $25/month. This works by integrating the open source platform Ghost for you behind the scenes and taking care of the server hosting and technical details for you. But with the promise that if you were ever to set up your own server transition would be fairly seamless. It also has a built-in places for sharing you work and finding community. Micro.blog is similar and costs betwen 5-10$/ month.

And if blogging is your main concern you could also check out BearBlog. It is centralised in the sense that one man owns and runs it. But it’s ethos may align for you:

“Bear isn't going anywhere. No sudden shutdowns, no surprise acquisitions, no pivot to becoming an AI-powered metaverse blockchain solution. Just simple, clean blogging—now and in the future.” - read more here.

The cost is free to get started with a premium option for enhanced SEO and your own domain name choice. But the premium option has either a monthly cost of $6 or a choice of paying a $189 once off lifetime purchase.
No forgetting to renew - you’ve got it for life.

Most private blogs and websites still need to be promoted somewhere on the web - whether by appearing on podcasts or interviews, posting on socials, or sharing to the fediverse. Or they need to be so insanely SEO’d that they pop up when people search for your niche.

I think the important take-away from all this is that you cannot have all your eggs in one basket - especially if you don’t even own the basket. We all need a place we own whether fully self hosted or paying for hosting, and then many places we feel comfortable to share and promote our work, none of which need to be traditional socials and can be other free blogs and services, online forums and groups or part of the Fediverse.

A note on loneliness:

Going through this thought process of what I want out of my online presence I have been forced to acknowledge that on some level I am lonely. I am a chronically ill, disabled individual. A young creative person, living in an area overwhelmingly populated with retirees and in quite an isolated place. I struggle to find quality in-person community by which I mean people like me, close enough that we can regularly see each other without overwhelming fatigue.

Part of what I enjoy about Substack is being able to connect and talk to other people like me. I would love it if we could all be in a massive group chat. And Discord seems like a cool option: we could create a neurodivergent, chronically ill and/or disabled creatives discord. We could have a channel for promoting our own work and sharing links to our own websites, blogs or socials. We could have other channels for different interests, themes and topics of conversation.

This feels like a great solution to me, for replacing the social benefit side of a platform like this. The question is, without the incentive of “growing an audience” or getting eyes on our work, or hopefully money - would people still want to interact in this way? Are people only so interactive on Substack notes, because they also hope to benefit? Let me know:

I’m working on the Discord for pre-launch access please send me an email:

gardenatedge@gmail.com

OR a message on signal

@pkpercy.44

I will be putting some more effort into growing my in-person community. And I think it is worth saying here that despite desiring to spend time with people who get me down to the full depths of my soul, spending time with people who don’t can still be worth it. I have in-built social interactions as part of my swim club and whilst the people there don’t always know or understand what I am experiencing, seeing friendly faces, sharing a laugh and a swim and a hot drink does make a big difference to my mental state.

So don’t discount in-person community that isn’t perfect. Nobody is perfect. But they can still be great.

My current plan:

As I said before I have made a post on tuhat.net/@onefootintheother this is one of the places I feel comfortable sharing my work at the moment. I have also made a Mastodon account and shared my post there. I will be putting in some time finding interesting accounts to follow there, so let me know if you join!

I have also created a Patreon account to post my writing which you can follow here.

Behind the scenes I have been building a Notion site for my personal website.

Notion

This is an interesting option. It is not private - in the sense that Notion a private company, could access your content and everything you put there is hosted in Notion servers but it is not designed as social media. It is a productivity or organisational app, with the added feature of being able to publish your entire workspace as a read-only site to the web in one click. The endless pages within pages that Notion allows has made creating this site extremely easy and intuitive. This is all possible on a free account with the limitation of 5MB per file uploads.

In the future if I want to add custom code or a custom domain to my site for further customisation or add password protected areas there is another company super.so that integrates with Notion and makes this possible for $16/month.

Notion does have “Notion AI” in the workspace but I emailed support and they were able to remove all AI features from my workspace for me.

It is possible to share widely on the web without needing to rely on services like Facebook, Instagram, or Substack.

Notion and publishing a notion site is free. Patreon is free. Tuhat is free. Mastodon is free.

In the future I want to work towards building my own server, to host my own site on a private domain, this way I will have low ongoing costs, full creative control and ownership and will not be relying on any other companies to host my data or provide a platform. I will still share in other places but I will have at least one place that is entirely my own. There will be an initial investment in hardware and skill acquisition so that will come with time.

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The bottom line

Social media and tech start-ups are ever changing, it is more important than ever to have a place that you own and control. Then from there you can share your work more widely. How you choose to show up online can be an expression of both your creativity and your values.

Too often we perform outrage at changes, and then continue on with business as usual because the alternative - figuring out what is actually right for us can seem too hard.

This post is designed as just a broad overview and case-study, you will have to consider your work, your values and your needs and further investigate features and questions you have about various platforms like the percentage they take in fees, whether they support video or audio, or the steps involved in transferring data. This article hopes to serve as a gift of more questions than answers, along with a bunch of little threads you can pull on and follow deeper if you so choose.

This post is fuelled by my personal perspective and my deep hatred of social media and what it is doing to us psychologically and to the ethos of the internet in general.

The internet was supposed to be a common ground for all humanity. A place to share knowledge, connect with others and be present without always having to shell out cash. A place where you could wander from room to room depending on your interests and find new and unique things at every turn. When we are increasingly reliant on and trapped in one platform, in a never-ending stream of “content”, addicted and unable to put it down, we are losing sight of what the web can be. We are pushed into funnels towards handing over our credit card details. We are extracted from and advertised to. We are overwhelmed and dysregulated. We are easily manipulated.

I am not just angry at what these companies are doing, but angry at what we allow them to do, time and time again.

The world wide web was only made possible by certain individuals choosing freedom of information over profit. Choosing to make the world a better place rather than make more money. Social media start-ups fly in the face of this, their sole purpose is to trap you in their corner of the web and bleed you dry to line their own pockets. If the only places we spend time are these websites then we have allowed the web to become a for-profit enterprise over a for-humanity endeavour.

Companies and governments are shutting down anyone who questions this methodology, even when what they are doing is blatantly illegal.

We know what happens to whistleblowers:

TLDR (Too Long Didn’t Read):

You can now find me at:

Tuhat: if you want long-form writing on the web and straight to you inbox and that’s all, without having to sign up to another platform or ecosystem.

Patreon: if you want long-form writing, short updates, a more interactive experience and an app ecosystem to leave comments and likes.

Mastodon: to receive “tweet” like updates and links to my other pages.

MyNotionSite (coming soon, will update with link when I am ready to launch): if you want to explore my personal universe, get deeper into the rabbithole that is my brain and see what I am up to and watch my writing and creative practice evolve in real-time.

I’ll hang around for a little bit, to make the change-over but I won’t be posting new writing here - it will be on Tuhat, Patreon and my private site. If you want to still receive my words by email then I strongly urge you to subscribe to my Tuhat or Patreon.