Content creation doesn’t have a future on platforms… including Substack

Before you jump on blaming me for hyperbole, let me tell you this, I really mean it. Most of you have already realised that there’s a new video tab on the Substack feed which many people lashed out against; claiming that it would turn Substack into just another social media platform. The reality is that it’s always been a social media platform and adding video prominently there is a typical behaviour expected from them. This platform has a major monetisation problem and its business model is not sustainable in the long run. Taking a cut of revenue generated from paid subscriptions on the platform (10% on each subscription), with additional payment processing fees is not enough to make them profitable anytime soon.

There’s a subscription fatigue already in the audience where Europeans spend €700 / annual on them, Americans’ consumption creeps up to $300 / monthly. The vast majority of creators on Substack want to earn something that would justify their time spent on topics that matter to them and currently the best way for that is paid subscriptions, you see where this is going already I hope. As a user, you cannot pay hundreds of dollars, pounds, or euros to individual creators here, it’s simply not possible (the other alternative would be Spotify’s streaming model which screws small creators anyway).

This is not obviously unique to Substack, YouTube has been going through that phase for over a decade. The days Zoella and Joe Wicks made huge sums of revenue on that platform are way past. The supply of content has always grown way faster than the advertiser demand but at least people who had meaningful content other than cats and dogs made it, they were discovered. In countries where digital marketing’s share of pocket was not saturated yet, creators there enjoyed the growing revenue a bit longer. Add to these the economic slowdown post-QE, post-pandemic and the throttling forward of AI and there’s not much to be hopeful about.

Three incidents last week made me think about this a bit deeper. The first one was about one of my favourite channels, Levi HildebrandYT (formerly Future Proof), which was forced to change their channel name because of a minor trademark issue raised by an almost defunct website. I’m sure they fought against the claim yet they had to give up, I don’t know the details there may be some truth into it, but the point is that a channel like this one which creates incredibly valuable content on consumerism, greenwashing by brands, misinformation / disinformation on sustainability, fake advertisements and more are always at risk of advertiser blowback and YouTube will always stand by the advertiser as they pay the bills even though they pay lip service to the creators.

The second incident was by another favourite of mine, Design Theory. They published an appeal calling for paid subscription on Patreon or YouTube. The channel has close to 600K subscribers and yet they are not able to sustain their creator business. They are (like all other channels) constantly at the mercy of the algorithm, some episodes going viral, the others merely reaching a few thousand views while both require the same amount of time and effort. The creator cannot do anything about it, the priority is the shorts and even if as a viewer you’ve subscribed to the channel there’s no guarantee that you’ll see fresh content by the channels you subscribe to on your feed (you must hit the notify button).

I must mention the impact of TikTok here which has completely changed the creator dynamic on all others. The audience wants to discover new content, not creators for the most part which turns creators into mere vehicles for entertainment. YouTube has long worried about losing ground to TikTok’s incredible algorithm powering short form there while it turned into ‘new TV’ with long form (eventually migrated to the big screen in connected TV to close the circle) but they managed to adapt with the massive push behind YouTube shorts and hence here we are.

The last incident was another announcement by a major, well loved and respected history channel which was initially focused on world war two and branched out to other topics like espionage, pop culture in war times and others complaining about having to compete against cheap AI generated history content. These channels are not fact based for the most part (in Harrari’s words, they appeal to our preference for fiction over truth) and they churn out easy and cheap content in minutes rather than weeks. The worst part is that the algorithm doesn’t care about whether or not the content is generated by AI or produced by real people. The result? Well my history channel wants me too to be a paid subscriber.

Creators’ problems aren’t new, they’re just getting worse. Patreon has never been the answer here, it’s the same issue for the audience not willing to pay for each creator separately. Platforms are better when they’re small, that’s a fact. One thing that complicated things is the exodus following the downfall of X (traditional news media as well) and the celebs who emigrated from them to Substack and YouTube (think of podcasts in video form for example), who will garner more subscriptions, more views and more time to read than ordinary yet unknown enthusiasts on these platforms. Most content by today’s small size creators is not that interesting, but it doesn’t mean that it won’t be, writing and creating in general is a muscle, you get better at it.

The thing you cannot control at all is the discovery and where you end up on the feed. Ben Thompson presciently named this reality as the ‘great flattening’ where all content ends up at the same level, from pandemic to cat videos. On platforms especially like Substack, ‘the opportunity for new types of content predicated on reaching niche audiences which are only sustainable when the entire world is your market’ is still there but that window is fast closing.

The traditional content creators on TV, studios, newspapers are also squeezed out because the monopoly has declared victory there; I'm talking about Netflix of course which spends $18 billion annually, followed by Apple with $5B and Amazon on movie content (soon to be followed by gaming and podcasts). How will they compete against them despite the fact that the majority of platform content has gotten incredibly shitty for various reasons (check my latest essay on that).

When Apple had to pull down the iPad ad due to a massive backlash by the creative minds all over the world it really put the spotlight in our present and near future which made all of us mad. Reality hurts.

All platforms look the same now, it’s in their nature, in their business model, in their monetisation problem. The future is not great for us all content creators. What to do about it? Keep creating because you can’t help it. Have a home outside the platforms, get your blog even though it has few visitors today, don’t depend on the mercy of the platforms. Have some alternative to pay for the bills alongside your calling. Value your fellow creators’ efforts and pull them up to make them seen. I know there are no revolutionary ideas here but without valuable content there’s no internet either. With all the AI junk already penetrated into its veins, what our minds produce shines no matter what.

This content is not assisted by AI.