THE SUBSTACK NETWORK AND INACTIVE SUBSCRIBERS

Our friend Amelia Hruby, PhD is moving their Substack operation over to Ghost. They go on to explain that inactive subscribers won’t be automatically ported over, leading to this curious point from Amelia:

“you know where most of those inactive subscribers come from? 👉👉👉 The “Substack Network.” Which means that a lot of the amazing growth Substack is promising me (and bragging about in my stats dashboards)… is mostly resulting in inactive subscribers.”

I wrote about this experience (Substack Follows The Enshittification Playbook), and it aligns with what I’ve seen: the majority of the subscribers I’ve gained from Substack are inactive. And while newsletter open and engagement stats are not 100% accurate, there are patterns (and gut feelings).

Substack is definitely social media – the allure of growth, of audience – it’s there, and I’ve benefited from it. But that’s how enshittification works – it’s smooth and easy and amazing at the start for the user, and then it’s not.