Writers on the Hamster Wheel of Winners Take All Platforms
In both this article and your previous one about Medium's algo paying less you wrote about Medium extracting a higher % of the platform's "behavioral surplus", to use Shoshana Zuboff's term ( from The Age of Surveillance Capitalism). The ability of big tech platforms to do this to content creators is the product of an unregulated free market with no antitrust enforcement. As a conservative who doesn't like regulation, file this outcome under: be-careful-of-what-you-wish-for, you-might-just-get-it. I, as a Rooseveltian liberal (TR and FDR) who loves ruthless enforcement of the same rules for big and small players through enforcing antitrust law based on MARKET POWER and SIZE (which DOES matter), find it funny (and contradictory) that you preach the conservative deregulatory gospel and then lament the results of what you wish for. Substack is still a startup and has no choice but to offer content creator-friendly terms. After it scales up that will change as Substack figures out how to extract a higher % of the revenue from its creators. I'm not sure you'll ever get that boulder to the top of the hill, though you'll be much better paid for pushing it than on Medium while Substack still has to behave itself and be a creator-friendly upstart.
Just as commodity producers are price takers whose price gets reduced to the marginal cost of production, the vast majority of content creators on winners take all tournament market platforms will see their % of the behavioral surplus extracted reduced to the bare minimum the platform has to give them to keep them there.
While I wish you all the best on Substack, it's in your interest to understand the strategic and regulatory drivers of your decision and be prepared for what's coming.
