David Vance SubstackRead More
Have to be honest and tell you that when I first joined up to this platform, I naively assumed it would just let me write about what I wanted and when I wanted. I never even considered for one moment that there would be sly censorship and treacherous shadow bans. That reminds of the days on Twitter before Elon took control. I understand that not everyone likes the “red in tooth and claw” nature of the social media platforms so my plan was to write interesting articles here (hopefully) and with a bit of luck others might like them and I could establishment a thriving community here. Boy was I wrong!
I started to realise something was WRONG between me and Substack around May. My account had grown rapidly and my daily views were (and remain!) decent. All seemed good to go. This is the trajectory I have been lucky to encounter elsewhere. But then I started to notice that the counter number of followers was frozen. It never ticked up. I couldn’t understand this at first and just assumed maybe I needed to produce better stuff. So I doubled down and .. nothing happened.
Worse again, I am notified each day of new followers and subscribers. Over the past month, I have been told I have around 250 new followers. This comes in emails from Substack. Yet the counter refuses to move and I am locked in aspic, a frozen account, shivering in the world of Substack.
The idea of being able to discuss this with a human being on Substack is foolish, all I see is stupid FAQ’s. So I sit and wonder why this is the case.
Is it the topics I tackle, is it my refusal to censor myself lest it offend a sneaky Substack algorithm? I was talking to a friend who has just deactivated her Substack because she did not like the way it was treating her. I fully understand her annoyance.
The thing about me is that I took the decision a few weeks ago to keep on posting here, confident that I have readers who appreciate the effort put in, and who find the content interesting. I still feel like that! So whilst I am alienated from the platform I am fond of my readers and will stay loyal to them.
I think the thing that p*sses me off most is that I wish Substack would have the cajoles to tell me what I have done “wrong”. But they don’t say. It is a stony silence.
My paid subscriber base has also fallen away so the economic value of Substack reduces to me each month. There may come a time when I move to another writers platform like Minds,
It’s such a shame that such an easy to use platform is so very woke and disrespectful to those who create content on it.
As I put it recently, Substack can go f*ck itself -it is you, dear reader, I care about!
