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yep, i get steady "growth" on my empty substack page that just links to where i've actually been writing for the last 18 months
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The network that boosts growth in question bsky.app/profile/luke...
Molly White
@molly.wiki
substack has no incentive to remove fake subscribers (if anything, the opposite) bc it contributes to the belief in an incredible "network effect" that will turn any writer into heather cox richardson herself with no work required by the author — and the fear they will lose it if they go elsewhere
July 7, 2025 at 6:05 AM
24 reposts
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I got a sudden bunch of fake looking subscribers on my tiny (free tier!) ButtonDown the other day; they sent an message saying they had removed them before I even noticed.
This is the way of any public traded tech company.
The dot com era of metrics never went away. The way "views" are calculated for streaming has decreased and decreased to the point where someone who literally only saw the ad roll and clicked off counts.
View-botting to beneath the barrel.
None of the platforms who's value is tied to # of users have, my tiktok which I used to watch and like dog training videos has more followers than my mastodon account where I actually write smart things on a topical instance :-)
I've subscribed to something like half a dozen Substacks in the last few years, and I couldn't even tell you *how* a network effect is possible. The real "network effect" is writers cross-promoting each other, appearing on each other's podcasts, citing each other's work, etc.
Are you hosting your site separately? Is easily scalable for growth? Not asking for revenue numbers, but are you able to stay above water (curious question).
yep, i self-host citationneeded.news for about $100/month and it is my primary source of income.
scales just fine, see the "self-hosted ghost" column in my chart here (though i pay a little more for hosting, and don't have a fixed sub price): bsky.app/profile/moll...
Fixed an error in the chart for self-hosted Ghost at 50,000 subscribers:
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