platforms

Scratch interviews three writers who left Substack for Beehiiv or Ghost, with the numbers attached: actual monthly platform costs, subscriber attrition, what the migration broke. The useful bit is Frankie de la Cretaz on Substack’s deliberately bad data export, and the recurring point that “discoverability” is partly a story the platform tells you so you don’t leave. I’ll say it again: be sceptical of platform analytics! Reading this as I think through where a gated, paid-subscription project of my own should live (I have something in the pipeline).

A small tool for pulling things out of the algorithms and into a reader. I already route most of my reading through RSS, so the appeal is obvious: fewer apps, no algorithm, one inbox. Whether the feeds hold up long-term is the usual question with these services (platforms tend to notice eventually) but for now it’s a neat way to follow a handful of people on Instagram without opening Instagram.

Musicians are in peril, at the mercy of giant monopolies that profit off their work.

What is lost when we “watch Netflix” rather than shows and “listen to Spotify” rather than songs?