Stop The Subslop
An open letter to Substack CEO Chris Best
Dear Chris Best;
You’ve publicly stated that you’re ignoring the Open Letter by Robert M. Hamburger that is spreading virally across Substack, because you said it was written by AI.
You said, and I quote:
Pro tip: if you want to write me an open letter lecturing me about the hard work of writers, don’t make it horrible, obvious AI slop.
I’ll take that challenge.
Why does Substack prioritize slop notes instead of prioritizing articles and publications?
Every time I go to the Substack home page, it’s flooded with nonsense like this:
“Describe your Substack in 5 words!”
Spam.
“Dear Substack 🤍 Send me the writers who choose depth over noise.”
More spam. That person is trolling for likes and subscribers.
“There’s no shortcut. No hack. You get better by doing more of it. Write today. Write tomorrow. Keep writing.”
Spammy spam. Canned spam.
The Substack algorithm prioritizes that nonsense instead of prioritizing articles and publications.
Why?
There are more and more people on Substack with ZERO articles but hundreds or thousands of followers, because they flood Substack with slop notes, and Substack prioritizes their karma farming slop.
Meanwhile, I can’t even find articles that interest me.
I write fiction. I want to read fiction. There’s supposedly tons of it here. Fiction is one of the main Substack categories, so where the hell is it?
Search for fiction. The only things that show up are people who put the word Fiction in their usernames, which I finally did to make my publication findable.
The issue isn’t that notes exist.
Notes are fine. If users want to post notes on their user page or in their publications, that’s fine. Those notes can even be useful. “I’m going to be out of town next week, so I might not be online much. See you again soon!” That would be a useful note.
But this?
“If you could summarize your writing voice in a single word, what would it be?”
That’s spam.
“Give yourself permission to be weird!”
More spam.
“Every scar you carved became a window for light.”
Pure spam. But it’s what the algorithm shares on the Substack home page and when people click Explore even though the point of Substack was to be a home for essays, articles, and publications.
Why does Substack prioritize notes?
Why doesn’t Substack prioritize our actual content? My God, the Substack app practically hides publications, and articles only get shared on the home page or in explore when people post notes or restacks.
Why?
I’m guessing you’ll never see this, and if you do, you’ll brush it off just as quickly as you brushed off the original open letter, even as it goes viral because it’s striking a chord with so many of us.
Please, stop the enshitification of Substack.
Please stop prioritizing slop.
Seriously. I’m begging you. Please.
P.S. Chris Best, I double-dog-dare you to accuse me of using AI to write this, as you did with Robert M. Hamburger’s open letter. These words are mine, written by me. And I mean every single one of them.
I wholeheartedly agree. There is a very small number of people on Subshite who write anything worth writing. Most of it is traffic-generating spam. Meeting other writers and creatives on Substack, whether their stuff is to my tastes or not, is like joining with the lost people, holding hands to keep each other afloat, as we wade through a torrent of raw, stinking, sewage.
I'd really like to find more writers too. I've found like 10 fiction writers, 4 of them are fellow romance authors, two of which don't publish their stuff here, and one fellow paranormal romance/romantasy author.
I understand it's a subgenre, and therefore not everyone is looking for it.
But I came here to find readers and fellow writers, not figure out yet another popularity contest... I mean. algorithm