Is Substack Becoming Facebook With a Paywall?
When visibility replaces substance, is Substack still publishing — or just another social network?
I have been observing Substack more carefully lately, particularly Notes, and I keep coming back to a question that is becoming increasingly difficult to dismiss:
What exactly is Substack now?
Is it a publishing platform?
An independent-media infrastructure?
A subscription business?
A professional network?
A social network?
A place to find friends?
A creator economy?
Or, increasingly, Facebook for people who prefer serif fonts?
That last description is deliberately provocative. But scroll through Notes for half an hour and the question stops sounding entirely absurd.
You encounter beautifully researched essays on economics, politics, history, science or culture with almost no visible engagement.
Then, two swipes later:
“Drop a 💯 if you agree.”
Hundreds or thousands of likes.
A photograph of coffee.
Hundreds of likes.
A beach.
Hundreds of likes.
“Keep showing up.”
Hundreds of likes.
“Write from the heart.”
Hundreds of likes.
“Who wants to connect?”
And, inevitably:
“Follow me and I’ll follow you.”
At which point I start wondering whether I accidentally closed Substack and opened Facebook circa 2012.
Except something more interesting is happening underneath.
Substack itself has changed
This isn’t merely my impression.
Substack describes Notes as a place for creators to publish short-form material — text, links, images, quotations and comments — not merely as a distribution channel for essays. Its Home feed includes material from people you follow, publications you subscribe to and the broader network around them.
Even more revealing is the relatively new distinction between a follower and a subscriber.
A follower doesn’t give a writer an email address and doesn’t receive the publication in an inbox. Following is deliberately a lighter social relationship: followers see Notes and activity in their feeds. Substack explicitly describes following as a way for creators to expand the top of their funnel and potentially convert those people into subscribers later.