Platfomers
Those who fail to understand statistics are doomed to repeat history.
It’s getting so a person can’t hear the notification pings of all the likes they’re racking up without using advanced search features to find someone on the same platform saying things they don’t like. Where can a person go to get some peace, quiet, and an audience who will hang on their every word?
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Three-leaf clovers are the norm. For every 5000 common clovers, you’ll tend to find one lucky one. Yes, that’s the real math. The bigger the field, the more four-leafers you’ll tend to find. That’s real math too.
A platform doesn’t start as a platform. It starts as an idea that someone MacGyvers into reality with matchsticks, duct tape, and, these days, some code.
Audio blogging was born twenty years before Apple debuted the pod device that would give it its modern name. It took a complex web of tech to get voice to a PC. People saw demand and built platforms to bring audio blogging to the masses.
In the pre-internet era, a newsletter was, in fact, a letter. Someone typed it, printed a bunch, stuffed each one into an envelope, and mailed one to each of their recipients. That same person printed and sent out invoices, collected money, and managed a list of their subscribers. I’m already tired.
Email solved some of this. No more printing, stuffing, and mailing. Platforms like Substack solved the rest. It manages subscribers and collects money. People who produce newsletters could focus on producing newsletters. Substack made it easy for a mass of people to share their ideas. That’s why 17,000 people post their words on Substack.
Casey Newton is the poster boy for Substack success. In their early days, Substack needed a winner. They paid to design Casey’s logo. They subsidized a year of his healthcare. They gave him legal support as he left his former employer. Casey writes about platforms. In three years at Substack, his subscriber base grew from 24,000 to 170,000. Some calculate that he made nearly a million bucks last year.
He’s leaving Substack.
Because, to him, Substack has a Nazi problem. In its early days, there were no Nazis on Substack. Today, Casey and his staff found seven (7) writers on the platform that, “…conveyed explicit support for 1930s German Nazis.” That’s about four times more bit more frequent than finding lucky clovers.
For the record, I don’t like Nazis. And, I use Substack. You know that because you’re reading my Substack right now. Sometimes, I drive a German car. That car brand was used by high-ranking Nazis at a time of peak Nazism. One or more of my household appliances are German brands. In my life, I’ve used BASF cassette tapes, worn Hugo Boss clothes, and taken baby aspirin made by Merck — yes, the German one. You get the picture. It’s a contradictory mess.
How’s this for a messy contradiction? In 2021, Casey said, “The only way a Substack grows is through tweets. I am like 85% serious when I say this.” So, he gets Twitter and statistics. Twitter has, in rough terms, 300M users. If we apply clover stats, that would mean about 60,000 probably say nice things about Nazis on Twitter. More if we used Substack’s proportions.
Every day, Casey posted his Substacks on Twitter. Until November 14th. His penultimate post linked to his story that Etsy employees were “roiled” that the platform banned products with the phrase “from the river to the sea.” He didn’t take a side or explained why he used the word, “Roiled” in his title. In the comments to the post, one person asked him about that. He said he saw “tense” internal messages and didn’t quote them to protect sources. He said, “roiled” was his “subjective” word.
Margaret Atwood, Casey Newton, a guy named Ed Zitron, other people with high and high-ish profiles are leaving Substack for a new platform called Ghost. It’s open source and has no content moderation. Apparently, it doesn’t need it because it only has a few users.
Ed told his 66K Twitter/X followers and 18K followers on BlueSky that he was leaving Substack. Somehow oblivious that Twitter/X, BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn are even bigger fields where even more massive numbers of people say things that roil others. Oh, Snap.
Those who fail to understand statistics are doomed to repeat history.
Speaking of high profiles and history, I’m going to close with this story. There’s a decent chance I imagined it. But, I swear, to this day, I believe this story to be true. I was about 12 years old. A stretched, black limo pulled up outside my school. The chauffer got out, came around curb side, and opened the door for three people. One of them was Gary Lee Weinrib. I know amazing, right?
Gary is his real name. You may know him better by his public handle, Geddy Lee. He’s the bassist, lead singer, and sometimes keyboard player for the iconic prog rock band, Rush.
This morning, a version of one of his most famous lines is repeating in my head, “We are merely players, platformers and portrayers. Each another’s audience inside the gilded cage.”
