Two years ago, the American platform Substack seemed to be the way out for journalists who saw their essays and deep -growing pieces suffer from the speed of the attention economy. Substack is a platform on which writers can easily put a newsletter, share with readers and reach new readers. The platform offers both mailing lists and a social media function, where users can respond to each other via ‘Notes’.
In the meantime, there is more and more controversy about the platform founded in 2017. Under the guise of ‘freedom of expression’, the founders of the platform keep their hands off the content that are shared with millions of subscribers within the newsletters. Authors with extreme opinions, up to Nazis, therefore get free job and build on communities that regularly push the limits of ethics and human rights. An unfortunate push notification in which a Nazi newsletter was recommended to users, brought the problems to Substack to the attention again this month.
In the Netherlands, the number of subscribers of Substack newsletters cannot yet be compared with those of the newspapers, but in the United States Substack has become a competitor by authors who started for themselves. With a monthly number of visitors of nearly 75 million, Subur Velt Pure on page views, among other things the Wall Street Journal. In May the number of paying subscribers crossed the limit of 5 million. With those subscriptions, the most famous American substituers earn up to a million dollars every year. For them, the platform is a way to immediately get income from their work, without a newspaper or publisher in between. Substack charges a small percentage of the income.
Dutch journalists
These benefits are also seen in the Netherlands, because many Dutch journalists, writers and media figures keep a substitue in addition to their usual work. For example, Ernst-Jan Pfauth, Stefan Noordhoek and Alexander Klöpping are at the top of the Dutch top list, each with more than 30,000 (free) subscribers. And also journalists Jonas Kooyman (with newsletter Oatmilk), Mara Grimm (Grimm table) and Adriaan ter Braack (Shamadriaan) can be found in the most popular substites in the Netherlands. Dieuwke Wynia, former editor -in -chief of De Wereld Draait Dooruses the platform, without contradiction, to bring its version of the story about the time in which she worked for the talk show and the discredited presenter Matthijs van Nieuwkerk.
The unfiltered focus on freedom of expression regularly criticizes the platform.
In 2022 and 2023, extremist newsletters were already popping up. Substackers called on the platform by letter to take action against extremism and expressed their criticism because the platform offers the opportunity for ‘Nazis to build a community and also earn money from it’. Substack decided not to pursue a policy against the extreme right-wing substitators. “We don’t think censorship will solve the problem, it makes it even worse,” said co-founder Hamish McKenzie at the time. Under pressure, the founders removed some Nazi sub-stacks, but according to critics, the lack of action opened the door for more extremist writers.
Alternatives
Due to the low benevolence among the founders to take action, many substitators are now considering switching to alternatives. First of all there is also American Beehiive. It is a similar platform for individual writers of newsletters with the aim of having writers earn money from their online followers. Like Substack, Beehiiv Schrijvers gives the opportunity to build their own newsletter and send them to their followers based on a subscription.
Beehiiv also has a more commercial character because of its extensive marketing that can also be seen in the positions offered (such as advertising options). Beehiiv tries to compete with Substack and started a media collective at the beginning of this year to attract and support journalists to their platform.
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What Beehiiv does miss because of the focus on newsletters and marketing, is the community aspect that many writers appreciate on substites. The social media functions ensure that writers and readers are all present on one platform. Due to the popularity of Substack, many readers have built up a kind of personal kiosk and users discover new newsletters through recommendation systems. Due to the Simplicity of Substack compared to the many Technical Functions of Beehiiv, Substack remains a quick and easy -to -pick up platform for many users.
Ghost offers another alternative. This open source publicity platform is managed by a non-profit organization, the employees of which operate remotely. This makes the platform a non-American option. With the system, the writer can manage his own server, with his own management about the data. The platform was once established to offer an easier alternative to the WordPress users who had problems setting up blogs through the system.
Ghost focuses on managing blogs, without including complex content management systems in the functions. But it is precisely because of the management of the server that Ghost is less accessible for users with little technical knowledge than substitations. And because the newsletters are all managed on their own server, the community aspect is also missing here.
A number of large American substituers – including Marisa Kabas, Luke O’Neil and Ryan Broderick – already left the platform last year. They had personal problems with the policy on the platform. Broderick (Garbage Day) Koos for Beehiiv, but also put Ghost as a good alternative in his Substack-Scheid, because “Ghost does not try to compete with Twitter by cramming all its users in one timeline”. Ty burr from Ty Burr’s Watchlist Switched to Ghost. A year after his switch, he indicated that he was mainly missing the recommendation system in the Substack community.
In the Netherlands, substitutes do not seem to make an abrupt switch yet, although they are concerned with the discussion, as seen under a bluesky post by Menno van den Bos (newsletter The hype is real and also freelance employee for, among other things NRC), in which he shares a critical essay about extremism on substit. Including Adriaan ter Braack and Rocher Koendjbiharie (from The spacer) say in a response to think about alternatives, but Ter Braack says he is “not over yet”.