Substack is Turning to Crap Already
A couple of days ago, when I was signing up for a curiosity newsletter, Substack confronted me three separate times with a screen asking me to sign up to “recommended” newsletters as well. This was of course designed with a dark pattern, a big colorful sign up button, a faded grey text link to skip. All three times I dismissed it via the text link. Hours later, I received an email version of that same page. Seriously.
Substack, get the hint. I do not want to subscribe to anything you recommend me after I dismissed it three fucking times already. Talk about not respecting their users.
Also, what a good job of making sure I’m not signing up for any other Substack-based newsletters, ever. I value newsletters for offering less noise, not more. But here we are again, the attention economy grabbing at any scrap they can get their hands on. This is why anything optimized for “engagement” will inevitably become the same nonsense it originally came to replace.
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