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   Dan Hon (danhon@dan.mastohon.com)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Oct-2023 08:09:59 JST Dan Hon

   • Cory Doctorow

   New newsletter episode!

   s16e11: Substack's Thin End of the Quora Wedge

   The thing that caught my attention for today's episode starts with Substack's Quora-like shitty user experience, with its modal for signup when you just want to read a blog post.

   Given Substack's (obvious?) path to enshittification, why are people still using it to start newsletter, and what would it take for them to switch?

   A big tie-in to @pluralistic's recent writing on fixing the internet.

   https://newsletter.danhon.com/archive/s16e11-substacks-thin-end-of-the-quora-wedge/

   • Embed this notice
     Rick Mycroft (trashpanda_x@umbraxenu.no-ip.biz)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Oct-2023 11:09:21 JST Rick Mycroft

     in reply to

     • Cory Doctorow

     @pluralistic @danhon Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) is like an AnCap Hogwarts. They take in budding Valley Bros, and teach them marketing hype wizardry, longtermism, and then at the end, the Grifting Hat gives them corporate paperwork, a big bag of VC money, keys to offices already staffed with libertarian types, and most importantly: their gimmick.

     "Bankman-Fried, your gimmick is an imaginary bank."
     "Altman, you get a fancy autocomplete and a ball that steals souls."
     "Holmes, your gimmick is fabulous medical testing devices."
     "Do they work?"
     "Why would that matter!"
     "Right, sorry."

   • Embed this notice
     Dan Hon (danhon@dan.mastohon.com)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Oct-2023 11:09:22 JST Dan Hon

     in reply to

     • Cory Doctorow

     In the newsletter, for funsies, I dashed down a quick enshittified version of the Gartner Hype Cycle:

     Here you go, Cory :) @pluralistic

     https://newsletter.danhon.com/archive/s16e11-substacks-thin-end-of-the-quora-wedge/

     Nicholas Sarwark repeated this.