Goodbye to the Substack app
I removed the Substack app from my phone today, and good riddance to it.
Good morning, my friends.
The last few days have been somewhat hectic for me doing deliveries, so I have not had the time or energy to sit down and do some writing. However, I have noticed some odd things about the Substack app that I thought were worth noting here.
I have deleted the app from my phone and will no longer participate on Notes.
First, I have noticed that the app now automatically refreshes itself every so often. This means that while I was reading something on my Notes feed, the app refreshed itself, and I lost my place. I could not finish reading the post and had to try to find it again. This is a huge pain in the ass that destroys readability.
The auto-refresh thing is new, as I hadn’t noticed it before. I do not know if it is a bug or a feature, but I hate it. X does not do that, you have to manually refresh it. I suspect that this is some sort of “improvement” added by the people running Substack. But it does nothing but lower the usability of the app and destroy the reader’s ability to enjoy their Notes feed.
Speaking of the feed, yesterday I encountered some posts where people were flinging the word “ni**er” around with reckless abandon. I don’t know how these people got into my feed, but I blocked them, as I had no desire to wade through that crap. I prefer higher-quality content and discussions.
X has a word filter built into it that lets you automatically remove such garbage. Substack needs to add one ASAP, as it makes it easy to avoid topics or words that you don’t wish to see come through your feed. Notes is still very primitive in terms of content filtering.
Another problem with the Substack app is that they seemed to have removed the toggle for Explore or Following. I could not find it. It used to be visible, but yesterday I looked for it and couldn’t figure out how to switch from Explore to Following. It seemed like the toggle had been taken out, or maybe I missed it? I am not sure.
Another strange thing I have noticed is that my Substack appears to be stuck around 1690 subscribers. This is very odd, as I get new subscribers every day and my unsubscribes are miniscule. Yet the overall number seems to be stuck around 1690. Have I been shadowbanned? I mention this because somebody told me a while back that they had had to resubscribe to my Substack three times. I don’t know what is going on, but the whole thing seems weird to me.
Substack is changing and has been doing so for a while. I do not like the feel of Notes anymore. It is getting colder in terms of the feel of it, and it seems to be flooded with a lot of trash posts and content now. So I will no longer participate in it for the time being.
Substack’s management has also made it a point to go after Elon Musk, criticizing X as not being a real “free speech” site. I dislike this new, aggressive approach, and I do not think it helps Substack. It just makes Substack’s management look bitchy and whiny, and I cannot see any value in it for Substack. To be sure, X certainly has its share of problems. No platform is perfect, but it would have been better for Substack’s management to take the high road instead of getting down into the gutter.
Elon Musk is not perfect either, but I still give him credit for seizing Old Twitter and making it far better than it was before when the woke communists were running it. X has been important in helping Trump by allowing a far wider range of speech than Old Twitter did. Elon deserves credit for that and a measure of respect from Substack’s management and from the rest of us.
Anyway, all of what I’ve listed above has turned me off from using the Substack app and from participating on Notes. I have an X account, so you can find me over there. I will still publish my articles on Substack (and also on Buy Me A Coffee), so no worries. But I do not like where things are going on Substack and Notes. I liked it better when it was more of a quiet backwater than the hyper-engagement-focused mess that it seems to be turning into now.
We will see what happens in the future. Perhaps it will be worth participating on Notes again at some point. I have left the chat on, and you can still DM me if you are paid or comped, but otherwise I will avoid Notes and the Substack app for now.
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I don't use the app. I did notice on the web based client that the following/explore tab has been moved to the home button. If you push that button, it gives you a choice of explore or following.
I wish they'd fix the minor things before adding more bugs.
I've noticed that on certain notes, I can't back out of them without going up to the browser button.
I used to be able to use a back arrow on the web cient.
I haven’t been paying attention to the details like you have — probably because I don’t write on here — but I have noticed the annoying refresh.
Also, I smelled a hint of fascism regarding Substack Management’s remark about true free speech. Free speech is free speech. Hopefully, management hasn’t been infiltrated by woke commies, so we’ll see.
Thanks for sharing this!