Substack versus Patreon, Blogger, Buttondown, Ghost ...

Is there anywhere left without controversy?

You may or may not be aware that there is heated discussion going on right now about the ethics of Substack, with many creators choosing to leave the platform in the last few months. I’ve been reading some extremely interesting articles by very smart people on the subject yesterday and today.

I am only just beginning to dip my toes into the world of online content creation, so I am by no means an expert on it in general. However, what I have been paying attention to over the years is the ethics of tech companies, especially in regards to how they use and exploit art and artists.

If you’re interested in questions of authorship, patronage, and ethics, like I am, I invite you to read on as I piece apart the current landscape of content hosting platforms and all the various ways they profit off of creators.

Social media — algorithmic

There are social media platforms that offer algorithmic suggestions for content it thinks you might like. Meta (Facebook and Instagram), Twitter, Youtube (owned by Google), Tiktok, Medium, Substack and others do this. By suggesting similar content, users of these platforms can “discover” new creators to follow and interact with, creators’ followings can grow, and certain content can end up spreading “virally.” Most of these platforms also have some kind of monetization feature by which popular creators get paid for their content. The first and most familiar ones in the list make money by selling advertising space, and selling your personal information and browsing habits to third parties, including using your content to train AI.

Medium makes money from a mixture of ad sales and reader subscriptions: you subscribe to the Medium site itself, and then Medium distributes payments to content creators based on the popularity of their content.

Substack makes it’s money by taking 10% of each individual creators’ paid subscription revenue.

Algorithmic suggestions of content helps readers find new content, and helps creators grow an audience.

Social media — without the algorithm

There are social media platforms that do not offer algorithmic suggestions, like Patreon and Cara. These basically require content creators to already have, or to actively build their following by means other than their Patreon and Cara accounts. In other words, fans have to perform a direct search for you, or be linked from somewhere else, in order to begin following you on Patreon or Cara. There is no way for users to “discover” new creators by browsing these platforms.

Patreon offers creators a platform to monetize content by way of subscriptions. Patreon then takes a percentage of these fees to run it’s business.

Cara is crowd-funded at this point. It is geared toward visual artists, and was founded on the guarantee that they will never sell your art for AI training purposes.

Content subscription hosting

Blogger, Buttondown and Ghost are entities that are positioning themselves as alternatives to Substack amid the recent controversy regarding Substack’s creators aligning themselves with Zuckerberg and Musk, and dragging their heels on removing literal Nazi content from their site.

Blogger is owned by Google. Content creators using Blogger can get paid by running ads via Google. Google is not an ethical entity, therefore I would never touch this product with a ten-foot pole.

Buttondown and Ghost offer content subscription services, but it’s the creator who pays a monthly fee for the service. With the content hosting platforms discussed earlier, the creator does not have to invest capital in order to begin sharing. In contrast, for a monthly fee, Buttondown offers a newsletter service, subscription payments and analytics similar to Substack, but without the algorithmic social media interaction features.

Ghost offers the same, but with the added features of webhosting, and of being open source — and thus never at the mercy of a profit-hungry board.

The ongoing discussion

So, Substack is a little unique in the bunch in that, right now, it is the only entity offering a social (interactive, where users can like, comment and share), algorithmic platform whereby new creators can build a following, receive subscription fees, publish ad-free content, generate an email newsletter, and view certain performance metrics.

As stated, there are lots of folks right now who cannot abide the recent statements by Substack’s founders praising Zuck and Musk, and being dilatory on removing Nazi content. They argue that they don’t want their content appearing on a site alongside Nazi content, or supporting a company that praises fascist thieves.

I mean, yeah, I get that. But also; the people running our government right now are literally racist fascists. If I had the chance to appear on PBS News Hour tomorrow, I would run the risk of appearing alongside the Nazi salute.

This is not something we can escape — anywhere in the current landscape of publishing and journalism.

I mean, we can create our own islands, for sure. I think if I were able to and wanting to create my own media island, I’d go to Ghost, for sure.

However, I am no where near that, or even working towards that, really. Personally, I started a Patreon account 3 or 4 years ago. My most hardcore of fans who knew me in real-life, and one or two who found me via social media, became my subscribers there. But in 3-4 years, that list has not grown an inch.

So, I started a Substack only about two months ago. I doubled my paid following.

Being that I have under 50 paid supporters at this point, this is not some kind of huge boast. Quite the opposite. I am the absolute definition of a small fish, here. But personally, I am very happy building my little piece of the internet slower than a snails’ pace, right now. Buttondown and Ghost only make sense for people with over 1,000 or more paid followers, as evidenced by their own cost comparisons to Substack on their own websites.

So, I am going to keep using Instagram and Substack. They provide me exposure to new fans, for free. Neither are particularly ethical companies. Meta is an unethical company. Substack hasn’t shown it’s full hand yet, I think. But I also don’t provide them much in the way of monetizable content, either. I am literally using them in the same way they are using me.

Maybe there will come a time when I have a following that could sustain me creating a little platform on Ghost of my own. But I’m just not that kind of content creator, right now. Right now, I’m sticking to this newsletter, which is about all I can accomplish at the moment, in between writing my book for Microcosm Publishing, full time work, and tabling at ‘zinefests and selling prints for funsies. Which reminds me, I still haven’t posted about our first annual Central Valley ‘Zinefest! Which was incredible.

But for now, I will continue to use these platforms to my advantage, and to spread radical, militant transgender ideology (as the administration terms it) as far and as wide as humanly possible. And I think that’s an appropriate protest.

Message me directly if you would like to own my newest print, below. I’m really happy with the way they turned out, printed by California-based Lumaprints. I sold quite a few prints and ‘zines at our fest a few weeks ago! We will definitely be holding another, at some point. Stay tuned.