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As people come to see how advertising-focused social media feeds aren’t really helping them understand the world or trust each other, they’re choosing to subscribe and pay for content created by their favourite creators specifically for Substack, McKenzie says. Recently, the app surpassed 5 million paid subscribers.
While Substack can be understood as a social media app, McKenzie says its paid-subscription model takes the best qualities of social media – “networking people together and helping them discover great stuff” – but gives power and ownership back to users.
“We have no choice but to be in service of the writers and their audiences, because if they don’t feel like they’re getting value from us, they can just pick up and leave.”
Canadian writer Margaret Atwood publishes “whatever comes into my addled, shrinking brain” on her Substack In the Writing Burrow.
Thomas Karlsson / DN / TT News Agency via AFP
Hamish McKenzie: The impact of independent journalism Saturday Morning
Margaret Atwood, George Saunders, Salman Rushdie and Patti Smith are some of the acclaimed writers who now share subscriber-only content on Substack, he says, and big-name journalists are getting in on it, too.
Since he moved his writing over to Substack for more editorial freedom, former New York Times writer Paul Krugmanhe has become a lot more prolific, McKenzie says.
“He’s much more loose and conversational, and he’s making a tonne more money.”
To read the news, former CNN broadcaster Jim Acosta once had to sit behind a studio desk with pancake makeup on, McKenzie says. Now he makes “a very good living” delivering a daily video show via his iPhone.
“Don’t give in to the lies. Hold on to the truth!” is the motto of The Jim Acosta Show on Substack.
AFP
Trust is built between content creators and subscribers, McKenzie says, because the creators “have to keep showing up”.
“They have to reward the respect and the trust that the consumer has placed in them. That ends up creating a different type of media culture, at least different to the big social media platforms.”
Although Substack removed content after the publication of the 2023 Atlantic article ‘Substack has a Nazi problem’ , the app is no worse than any other when it comes to content moderation, McKenzie says.
Inciting violence, porn, spamming and doxing are not allowed on Substack, he says, but to maintain the “sacred relationship” between a Substack publisher and their audience, the bar for intervention “should be extremely high”.
Companies have spent billions of dollars on policing content moderation without “making any great progress”, McKenzie says, so Substack doesn’t see value in going the same way.
“Our approach is to build a different system that rewards different types of behaviours and produces a different culture.
“I don’t think if you’re an extremist and you’re trying to spread your propaganda, that Substack is going to be a very good place for you to succeed.
Substack co-founders Hamish McKenzie, Chris Best and Jairaj Sethi.
Courtesy of Substack
As a former journalist, McKenzie says the Substack business model supports “good journalism”, but it’s also a fact that the industry is in crisis.
“The business models that were built to support [journalism] were all built a hundred years ago, and things have changed a lot, not least of which is the arrival of the internet.
“We need new models that are going to give journalism a fighting chance, especially against the corrupting effects of the current big social media platforms.”
As we live through the “messy transition” away from having a centralised, stable world of traditional media and towards new models that distribute power to more people, the whole ecosystem is controlled by just a few people at the top, the San Francisco-based Kiwi says, including his former employer, Elon Musk.
I’ve seen Elon Musk be ruthless and brutal and unfeeling. I’ve seen him be warm and charming, and funny. And I’ve seen him be intensely intelligent and insightful.
Hamish McKenzie
After Musk heard about McKenzie writing Insane Mode , he tried to pressure his former employee for “an uncomfortable period”, but the former colleagues parted on reasonable terms.
Musk even tweeted him the other day, McKenzie saying, “he wishes that Substack were part of X”.
While the tech entrepreneur appears “hotheaded and impulsive from a distance”, Musk has a “different psychological profile from the average person”, McKenzie says.
“I’ve seen him be ruthless and brutal and unfeeling. I’ve seen him be warm and charming, and funny. And I’ve seen him be intensely intelligent and insightful. I’ve seen him be a strong leader, and I’ve seen him be a boss. He’s many things wrapped up in one, and any attempt to simplify the understanding of Elon Musk is a futile one.”
In the future, McKenzie believes, we will see a media ecosystem “richer and more valuable and more deep” than ever before.
Substack is intended not as the “be all and end all” of this developing landscape, but as a “contribution”, he says, and they are just getting started.
“I don’t see anything in the laws of physics that should prevent Substack from getting to more than 50 million paid subscriptions.”
Hamish McKenzie: The impact of independent journalism Saturday Morning
