Okay, it's now been more than 24 hours since I posted yesterday morning's dispatch on "Mayor Pete" joining the stable of "progressive warriors who now dominate Substack."
According to Substack, I have 7,560 subscribers.
Question: How many of these subscribers actually read this article?
Answer, per Substack article metrics: 2,064 (an "open rate" of 27.4 percent)
How many total people read this article (so far)? 3,234
(Note: I probably clicked on this article 10 times to see how many "reads" it had generated, so I subtracted my own multiple "page views.")
Comment:
- I had 600 more readers for a story I posted in early November 2023 when my newsletter only had 386 subscribers.
That story ("The Dog that Didn't Bark") produced 120 new subscribers for my Substack. My Mayor Pete story has produced two (including, I can't believe it, one paid - thank you!)
In recent months, my "Page View metric" has been about 4,500. When I wrote and published another story on "curious Sustack metrics," I generated 1,250 fewer readers. I don't know, but I think these latest "story-read" metrics might make/support my main point, which is I'm not "reaching" nearly as many readers as I used to.
As I keep writing, it's not necessarily "freedom of speech" that really matters; it's "freedom of reach."
Nobody can make a difference or change or challenge any faux narratives if their articles are hardly reaching anyone, especially anyone "who matters."
In thinking about the reception Substack’s newest all-stars have received, my mind harkens back to Sally Field’s famous Oscar acceptance speech: “You like me. You really like me!”
In thinking about my own latest Substack metrics (replete with a flood of “unsubscribe” and “email disabled” notices), my speech might be: “(Someone) doesn’t like me. You really don’t like me!”
... Still, to quote another somewhat famous “Covid Contrarian:" Onward!
Keep up the great work. I will be posting tomorrow about the bestsellers. We can compare notes after about all the astroturfing. My hunch is that they import campaign email lists and launder money through actblue. Still too many real people with broken brains that eat up their slop.
Thanks, Yuri. Your stories on the same topic have been a great source for my on-going research. We do have a lot of Americans with "broken brains." My theory is if our rulers can manipulate data (and they CAN) ... they will.
Look forward to your story ... now I've got to go finish up my "leaderboard" story. One point I'll make is that my little Substack SHOULD be in the Top 100 of the "Health Politics" Leaderboard, but it's not.
Me too, John. I also wonder how many of my own subscribers aren't real human beings. My working theory is that, by some mechanism(s), I lose access to real human being subscribers, but this is camouflaged by the bot subscribers. And I no longer REACH as many prospective subscribers as I once did.
When, on average, each article I publish used to produce 23 new subscribers and now, on average, produce 1 .... something significant has changed.
Even if there are no nefarious ops at work, it's clear that my reach and influence on Substack has long since peaked.
Still, I'm going to keep posting while I can. I have no where else to go.
I was once thrilled and budding with optimism back in the days when each of my new articles would net me 23 new subscribers. Now, half of my new articles don't generate any new subscribers.
This is doubly discombobulating when I track the sub progress of the Liberal Wacko cohort of authors. As I've documented, many of these authors generate 2,300 new subscribers with every article they post (some 5,000-plus per article).
So what we have here is an ... interesting contrast.
I agree Bill I noticed that too both on all the media sites especially when you pick up a surge of people and then the next days they drop from the site. X, getter and Truth social are full of people representing themselves as somebody they aren’t on using people photos and profiles saying they’re Musk or others.,
A day or so ago I lost about 30 "subscribers." (I reactivated my setting that allows me to get notifications of this.) About half are "unsubscribes" and about half are "email disabled" notices.
Still, my net subscriber number stays about the same as, somehow or somewhere, I'm also adding "new (free) subscribers." The strange thing is when I look at my dashboard to see how many new subscribers each article produces, it's usually 0 to 2. That is, if I am adding 25 to 30 new subscribers, these aren't readers who subscribed after reading any of my recent dispatches.
Are all these alleged new subscribers subscribing after finding articles I wrote four months ago?
P.S. The reason I disabled my subscriber notice a year or so ago is that my email account was, once upon a time, being flooded by "new subscriber" notices! I was getting too many notices of new subscribers in my emails.
That changed.
I also am seeing more and more notices that a subscriber payment "failed." Other "Contrarian" Substack authors have told me the same thing is happening to them.
Add all this up and one's "Spider Sense" that something might be amiss is activated.
FYI - I have encountered problems in trying to renew three different annual subscriptions where my bank automatically rejects an automatic renewal charge from a substack author by categorizing it as "fraudulent."
The bank then notifies me of the "fraud." I call the number given, reaching a foreign country where the agent speaks little English.
I finally convince him I WANT to renew the subscription and am told that cannot be done in his department.
In this manner, I was no longer considered a paying subscriber to those substacks until I waited long enough to subscribe as a "new" subscriber. Otherwise it would have appeared that my credit card charge not go through.
Several times in the process I considered simply giving up trying to deal with the substack service department and with the bank, and simply letting my subscriptions lapse. But I finally was able to manually pay as a "new"subscriber, after waiting enough time.
All this is to suggest that you consider that the inefficient substack business office and the inept banks bear some responsibility for the confusion you have experienced with subscribers.
Thanks for sharing this info, kathleen. I think this experience is now very common. I think I've lost significant numbers of paid subscribers who tried to subscribe. And, yes, this opens up the possibility that this might not be a Substack operation but some kind of dirty trick involving the banks and Substack's payment processor (Stripe).
I've also had my bank debit card paused at least five times. It's always because the bank/credit card operation "flagged" one of my efforts to renew a paid Substack subscription. I have to go to the bank and tell the employee, I do authorize those payments.
I appreciate your reply, Bill. As frustrating and time-consuming the effort to renew a paid subscription has been, and as sorry I am to hear you had the same experience, it's somehow comforting to know I hadn't been specifically targeted for this kind of (what I consider) personal financial interference.
I do hope you get to the bottom of the issue of exactly how these interlopers like Buttigieg, Newsom, and Moran burst on the substack scene with a huge, ready-made set of "subscribers." And that you keep writing about it. It's ultra-suspicious. And it has a lot in common with election fraud.
It appears Substack just like the other social media sites are being controlled by the algorithms the programmers have set up to limit free speech that go against the narrative they want to folks to see. This why I am Leary about the dangers of AI. The real question is if they control what people see how do we know what we published or posted that people are seeing? I do know this people in authority do read sub stacks so keep getting the truth out.
Bingo. I also think AI might be making a lot of the Reader Comments that help cement an authorized narrative. If a real poster makes a post that goes against the authorized narrative, he's suddenly attacked by many negative comments ... and those comments quickly get many "likes."
My personal theory is this might explain why Gov. DeSantis quickly went from a "rock star, brave, heroic politician" to a dirt bag who shouldn't be trusted, someone who was another Jeb Bush.
The almost-instantaneous narrative change about a man who was not long ago extremely popular with large swaths of the country always seemed "off" or contrived to me.
My personal theory on the DeSantis narrative-change operation is that the Powers that Be - probably led by the Vaccine Industrial Complex - actually feared him becoming president more than President Trump.
They probably thought they could disptach the DeSantis campaign - who was perceived as a real threat - and then they'd have no problem dispatching Trump ... by the "legalfare" operations you have chronicled.
It didn't work out that way, though, as too many people realized the 2020 election was rigged and were too determined to prevent a repeat.
Bingo, Bill! I read the tripe under Gov. Newscum’s new Substack…ran across it on my daily “news” feed that I spend way too much time scrolling through almost daily…and after gagging on over two dozen absolutely insane, totally anti-democratic full-blown TDS tirades—not to mention our Commiefornia Gov’s TDS-filled “articles”-I couldn’t help but think that THEY ALL SOUNDED LIKE AI…😡 I can’t imagine anyone I know slobbering all over Gavin the way these supposed “commenters” supposedly were doing…🤣
Anyway, I BLOCKED our idiot gov’s Substack so I won’t have to come across it unawares. Do you think it would work to have thousands of us true conservative subscribers search for and BLOCK all these progressive freaks and traitors? Just a thought…
Oh, and of course Substack may not like my comments here either…🔥
Gads, who's next? This new breed of Substack authors are termites; they'll gnaw away at the foundation until the structure collapses. Then they will swarm in search of something else to devour. I do not believe that there is a Democrat party today. In my opinion Joe Lieberman was the last of the true Democrats. The current crop are pretenders who have borrowed the "democrat" name in order to hang on to this collection of irrational followers. Hopefully, Substack founders will not be blinded by this faux success and will awaken in time to save their once noble platform.
I don't even know how to respond. TPTB seem intent on shutting down the majority of the population. It isn't working. The ecosystem of media available to see the non-controlled narrative is huge, and fragmented, and yes to some degree has its own problems.
A commenter on a blog I've followed for the last few years ends each of his comments with "Fear not, trust God." Somehow, the majority's voice will be heard and will win.
While reading this I had Hunter Biden's paintings come to mind and the unrealistically high amounts anonymous people were paying him for these childish works of art....
Didn't we learn that a big part of Politico's subscription revenue came from NGOs?
Many people don't get how vitally important "Narrative Control" (and suppression of "dissidents") is to our rulers.
Big Pharma gets it. Just look at how much these companies spend on drug advertising, which is a protection racket. Also, Bill Gates and other Foundations buy off the media with huge "excellence in journalism" grants.
Substack was becoming one of the greatest threats to Narrative Control. IMO The Powers that Be weren't going to ignore this threat. That's not their m.o.
Bill X just put a restricted label on my sub stacks so much for Musk claiming X was a free speech site, it’s appears X is still controlled by left wing censures. I waiting to see how the appeal proces works.
Egads. Your focus on the conspiracy to really harpoon democracy is one of those "thermo nuclear," taboo topics. Keep on keeping on.
BTW, I listened to your 50-minute podcast interview with James Howard Kunstler. That was outstanding.
If you ever talk to Mr. Kunstler again, please drop my name and tell him I would also love to be a guest on one of his great podcast episodes. I could talk about "early spread" ... or possible shenanigans on Substack!
I have no need for them…any of them. And, if they keep showing up with the grace and encouragement of the SS brass, well, it might be time to shut it down like FB and X, get a few email addresses from some who have become friends and just move on.
It will be interesting to see how long it takes Mayor Pete and Gov. Newsom to reach 1 million subscribers. Moran will probably be over 350,000 in a couple of weeks.
I guess it's now safe to say the Covid Contrarians have lost our beachhead.
There are two America's today, and they are on a collision course. As 2024 turned into 2025, a mere 6 months ago, could you imagine the United States bombing Iran? Of course not. Just as you could not imagine a card-carrying Socialist winning the Democratic Primary for NYC mayor.
We aren't in Kansas anymore Bill, and things are only going to speed up. This "Crazy Left" thing has certainly infected Substack, and I don't have to look at any metrics to know that fact. Just check out the "Politics" tab on Substack and it will become immediately obvious that the Left is in control here.
You would fare better with your Substack if you posted a link to your articles at Truth Social. Your core audience is shrinking everyday Bill as the Substack platform is FORCED to the Left.
That's a good suggestion, Jeffrey. I've never figured out how to get an X or Twitter following of more than one or two people. I should try out Truth Social.
You are probably also right that Substack was "forced" to tack hard to the left. Still, I've done enough research into their founders and executives to know that their own politics align with these people and that they are probably embarrassed by the "Covid Contrarians." They appreciate the business/revenue/traffic they generate, but have never endorsed any of these authors' bottom-line views.
For example, all Substack authors have received "profile stories" sent out by Substack's PR department that celebrate Substack "success stories." None of these stories have ever profiled a "Covid Contrarian" author. And these authors were all right on the biggest issue of decades.
Substack should be proud to be the writing home of dissident journalists who were RIGHT.
Mayor Pete, Moran and Gov. Newsome\ enthusiastically suppported the lockdowns and still support the non-vaccines.
It's funny and upside down. You can't make money or be a success by supporting the brave "adults in the room" who were right. But you can by supporting all the fools who supported "crimes against humanity."
To even get close to noticed on X you have to be certified, which cost a nominal fee, something like $30 a year.
The ONLY people forcing Substack to the Left are the people that own it - that is certain. As I mentioned, just jump on the Politics tab and you can see the real agenda.
While Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and other large urban areas do not represent mainstream America, they do represent more of it than most of us are prepared to admit. We that lean Center-Right should not forget that Kamala Harris received over 70 million votes for President. Think about that for a second. While she was trounced in the Electoral College, that crazy woman was in striking distance of winning the popular vote.
As I said in my post, our beautiful country is on a collision course. The ultra-progressive, far Left Socialist verses the hardworking, Christian, traditional values segment of America. Sadly, there is little middle ground left.
>As 2024 turned into 2025, a mere 6 months ago, could you imagine the United States bombing Iran? Of course not.
Yes. US Senate has had a war declaration Bill with Iran parked for nearly a year with the Foreign Relations Committee. This was always the plan and Trump was always the guy who was going to do it. This is not over by a long shot.
S.J.Res.106 - A joint resolution to authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against the Islamic Republic of Iran for threatening the national security of the United States through the development of nuclear weapons.
Sponsor: Sen. Graham, Lindsey [R-SC] (Introduced 07/31/2024)
Thanks for bringing that legislation to my attention, but it matters little within my premise. Until last week no President in 40 years had been willing to take the political risk associated with directly attacking Iran, no matter what they said during an election cycle. Having the authority to do something is one thing, actually doing it is quite another.
Trump is changing the world dynamic right before our eyes.
I think they are positioning the company/platform in a manner that they can sell it for a lot of money. In one sense, you can say the outreach to the Wacko Left is smart business as 98 percent of the world's writers and prominent public figures don't think like the Covid Contrarians.
I think this site was, once, in danger of going under. The Covid contrarians saved it and put Substack on the map. But the company's founders knew they couldn't grow the platform if it was associated with "disinformation spreaders," conspiracy theorists and "extremists." They also probably knew the site was getting ready to be ruthlessly attacked by the Powers that Be and the Censorship Bureaucracy, which is ruthless and doesn't fight fair.
If Bots and NGOs are supporting these authors with paid subs, Substack is getting 10 percent of that new revenue.
Ever wonder Bill if they buy their numbers ? Or maybe ,it is the reality that those who questioned many things in the past few years , really are a minority with less than hive minds of thinking .
I don't know how these writers get such huge numbers of subscribers so fast. Some have speculated NGO money is being funnelled or laundered to supporters ... or some are bots .... or they are all real or authentic subscribers. All three possibilities are alarming to me.
What's, perhaps, more interesting to me is why more "conservative" or MAGA writers aren't experiencing similar explosive growth.
I know this: Since the Statists/Status-Quo Protectors took over Substack, my own numbers have fell off a cliff. Maybe this is just a coincidence?
Take a look here Bill when time about our government and who we are aligning with - this guy was anointed via guile and deceit : these two(wife) kill me - he is total WEF , works on the Mckinsey principle , is beholding to XI , was the architect of CBDC and freezing peoples bank accounts, is now governing with no budget and his party has gone on vacation as he flits around the world making deals - other than that - people think he's great ! https://lawyerlisa.substack.com/p/the-green-perv-order-carneys-new
Yes , coming from a fishing town in Cape Breton , I'm still trying to understand just how European I am ;then there are the majority who think he is doing a great job . Some days I wonder will we be taken over by Xi or the Iranians but for now it's that oddity wrapped in screens and blind trusts who believes "we" will be rich ... the narcissism is vast and certainly not hidden in a blind trust - about the only thing transparent about him.
Other ideas that come to mind Bill, are the facts that many people aren't buying into the old newspapers as usual and they are finding out about this "new" thing called substack - tthose of us who questioned something wasn't right - knew about years ago . I think they want this way of getting the "news" and I have no doubt they are supported by the same sources( bots, $$$) that loved safe and effective ideations. We have been recycling our stories of all the horror for a number of years, something we all will never forget . I think perhaps a few bits of the dam are cracking for those people who thought ,after the virus debacle , life would go back to normal but for many it hasn't ; it's a new world order in the making that is bizarre and disruptive . What is able to ground you Bill since I think more and more life as we knew it ,is really disappearing on a number of levels ?
To your last question, it's good to have a mission or a project you think has the potential to be important. I once thought I could maybe move the needle on a few subjects via my research stories and commentaries. I'm now starting to realize that, at least on Substack, this isn't going to be possible.
This is why I'm focussing so much on Substack oddities. As originally created, this "citizen journalist" platform had so much potential to be an agent for significant change.
But, apparently, not anymore ... which bothers me.
You are a writer Bill - your focus, and especially now when bothered, may very well percolate to the surface because the oddities will be there in spades to mine.
Questions: Did cabinet member Mayor Pete ever pick up on the fact that "President" Biden had suffered too much brain damage to continue in this job?
If so, why didn't he say anything or do anything? If he didn't pick up on Biden's cognitive decline, why didn't he?
Why didn't he say anything? My answer to this question would broil whatever you have in foil. It's probably the very same answer that you have.
My Story on curious leaderboard data is now posted at my Substack. See link here:
https://billricejr.substack.com/p/substacks-curious-leaderboards
Article "Reach" Update:
Okay, it's now been more than 24 hours since I posted yesterday morning's dispatch on "Mayor Pete" joining the stable of "progressive warriors who now dominate Substack."
According to Substack, I have 7,560 subscribers.
Question: How many of these subscribers actually read this article?
Answer, per Substack article metrics: 2,064 (an "open rate" of 27.4 percent)
How many total people read this article (so far)? 3,234
(Note: I probably clicked on this article 10 times to see how many "reads" it had generated, so I subtracted my own multiple "page views.")
Comment:
- I had 600 more readers for a story I posted in early November 2023 when my newsletter only had 386 subscribers.
That story ("The Dog that Didn't Bark") produced 120 new subscribers for my Substack. My Mayor Pete story has produced two (including, I can't believe it, one paid - thank you!)
In recent months, my "Page View metric" has been about 4,500. When I wrote and published another story on "curious Sustack metrics," I generated 1,250 fewer readers. I don't know, but I think these latest "story-read" metrics might make/support my main point, which is I'm not "reaching" nearly as many readers as I used to.
As I keep writing, it's not necessarily "freedom of speech" that really matters; it's "freedom of reach."
Nobody can make a difference or change or challenge any faux narratives if their articles are hardly reaching anyone, especially anyone "who matters."
Cutting room floor text:
In thinking about the reception Substack’s newest all-stars have received, my mind harkens back to Sally Field’s famous Oscar acceptance speech: “You like me. You really like me!”
In thinking about my own latest Substack metrics (replete with a flood of “unsubscribe” and “email disabled” notices), my speech might be: “(Someone) doesn’t like me. You really don’t like me!”
... Still, to quote another somewhat famous “Covid Contrarian:" Onward!
Keep up the great work. I will be posting tomorrow about the bestsellers. We can compare notes after about all the astroturfing. My hunch is that they import campaign email lists and launder money through actblue. Still too many real people with broken brains that eat up their slop.
Thanks, Yuri. Your stories on the same topic have been a great source for my on-going research. We do have a lot of Americans with "broken brains." My theory is if our rulers can manipulate data (and they CAN) ... they will.
Look forward to your story ... now I've got to go finish up my "leaderboard" story. One point I'll make is that my little Substack SHOULD be in the Top 100 of the "Health Politics" Leaderboard, but it's not.
Bill I wonder how many are bot subscribers
Me too, John. I also wonder how many of my own subscribers aren't real human beings. My working theory is that, by some mechanism(s), I lose access to real human being subscribers, but this is camouflaged by the bot subscribers. And I no longer REACH as many prospective subscribers as I once did.
When, on average, each article I publish used to produce 23 new subscribers and now, on average, produce 1 .... something significant has changed.
Even if there are no nefarious ops at work, it's clear that my reach and influence on Substack has long since peaked.
Still, I'm going to keep posting while I can. I have no where else to go.
I was once thrilled and budding with optimism back in the days when each of my new articles would net me 23 new subscribers. Now, half of my new articles don't generate any new subscribers.
This is doubly discombobulating when I track the sub progress of the Liberal Wacko cohort of authors. As I've documented, many of these authors generate 2,300 new subscribers with every article they post (some 5,000-plus per article).
So what we have here is an ... interesting contrast.
Thanks. Good luck with your new Substack.
I agree Bill I noticed that too both on all the media sites especially when you pick up a surge of people and then the next days they drop from the site. X, getter and Truth social are full of people representing themselves as somebody they aren’t on using people photos and profiles saying they’re Musk or others.,
A day or so ago I lost about 30 "subscribers." (I reactivated my setting that allows me to get notifications of this.) About half are "unsubscribes" and about half are "email disabled" notices.
Still, my net subscriber number stays about the same as, somehow or somewhere, I'm also adding "new (free) subscribers." The strange thing is when I look at my dashboard to see how many new subscribers each article produces, it's usually 0 to 2. That is, if I am adding 25 to 30 new subscribers, these aren't readers who subscribed after reading any of my recent dispatches.
Are all these alleged new subscribers subscribing after finding articles I wrote four months ago?
P.S. The reason I disabled my subscriber notice a year or so ago is that my email account was, once upon a time, being flooded by "new subscriber" notices! I was getting too many notices of new subscribers in my emails.
That changed.
I also am seeing more and more notices that a subscriber payment "failed." Other "Contrarian" Substack authors have told me the same thing is happening to them.
Add all this up and one's "Spider Sense" that something might be amiss is activated.
FYI - I have encountered problems in trying to renew three different annual subscriptions where my bank automatically rejects an automatic renewal charge from a substack author by categorizing it as "fraudulent."
The bank then notifies me of the "fraud." I call the number given, reaching a foreign country where the agent speaks little English.
I finally convince him I WANT to renew the subscription and am told that cannot be done in his department.
In this manner, I was no longer considered a paying subscriber to those substacks until I waited long enough to subscribe as a "new" subscriber. Otherwise it would have appeared that my credit card charge not go through.
Several times in the process I considered simply giving up trying to deal with the substack service department and with the bank, and simply letting my subscriptions lapse. But I finally was able to manually pay as a "new"subscriber, after waiting enough time.
All this is to suggest that you consider that the inefficient substack business office and the inept banks bear some responsibility for the confusion you have experienced with subscribers.
Thanks for sharing this info, kathleen. I think this experience is now very common. I think I've lost significant numbers of paid subscribers who tried to subscribe. And, yes, this opens up the possibility that this might not be a Substack operation but some kind of dirty trick involving the banks and Substack's payment processor (Stripe).
I've also had my bank debit card paused at least five times. It's always because the bank/credit card operation "flagged" one of my efforts to renew a paid Substack subscription. I have to go to the bank and tell the employee, I do authorize those payments.
I appreciate your reply, Bill. As frustrating and time-consuming the effort to renew a paid subscription has been, and as sorry I am to hear you had the same experience, it's somehow comforting to know I hadn't been specifically targeted for this kind of (what I consider) personal financial interference.
I do hope you get to the bottom of the issue of exactly how these interlopers like Buttigieg, Newsom, and Moran burst on the substack scene with a huge, ready-made set of "subscribers." And that you keep writing about it. It's ultra-suspicious. And it has a lot in common with election fraud.
It appears Substack just like the other social media sites are being controlled by the algorithms the programmers have set up to limit free speech that go against the narrative they want to folks to see. This why I am Leary about the dangers of AI. The real question is if they control what people see how do we know what we published or posted that people are seeing? I do know this people in authority do read sub stacks so keep getting the truth out.
Bingo. I also think AI might be making a lot of the Reader Comments that help cement an authorized narrative. If a real poster makes a post that goes against the authorized narrative, he's suddenly attacked by many negative comments ... and those comments quickly get many "likes."
My personal theory is this might explain why Gov. DeSantis quickly went from a "rock star, brave, heroic politician" to a dirt bag who shouldn't be trusted, someone who was another Jeb Bush.
The almost-instantaneous narrative change about a man who was not long ago extremely popular with large swaths of the country always seemed "off" or contrived to me.
My personal theory on the DeSantis narrative-change operation is that the Powers that Be - probably led by the Vaccine Industrial Complex - actually feared him becoming president more than President Trump.
They probably thought they could disptach the DeSantis campaign - who was perceived as a real threat - and then they'd have no problem dispatching Trump ... by the "legalfare" operations you have chronicled.
It didn't work out that way, though, as too many people realized the 2020 election was rigged and were too determined to prevent a repeat.
Bingo, Bill! I read the tripe under Gov. Newscum’s new Substack…ran across it on my daily “news” feed that I spend way too much time scrolling through almost daily…and after gagging on over two dozen absolutely insane, totally anti-democratic full-blown TDS tirades—not to mention our Commiefornia Gov’s TDS-filled “articles”-I couldn’t help but think that THEY ALL SOUNDED LIKE AI…😡 I can’t imagine anyone I know slobbering all over Gavin the way these supposed “commenters” supposedly were doing…🤣
Anyway, I BLOCKED our idiot gov’s Substack so I won’t have to come across it unawares. Do you think it would work to have thousands of us true conservative subscribers search for and BLOCK all these progressive freaks and traitors? Just a thought…
Oh, and of course Substack may not like my comments here either…🔥
Not to mention paid bot subscribers
Gads, who's next? This new breed of Substack authors are termites; they'll gnaw away at the foundation until the structure collapses. Then they will swarm in search of something else to devour. I do not believe that there is a Democrat party today. In my opinion Joe Lieberman was the last of the true Democrats. The current crop are pretenders who have borrowed the "democrat" name in order to hang on to this collection of irrational followers. Hopefully, Substack founders will not be blinded by this faux success and will awaken in time to save their once noble platform.
Heather Cox Richardson is an embarrassment to historians everywhere, but she certainly scratches the Wine Mom itch.
An embarrassment for certain. A whiter shade of pale than Hannah Jones.
I don't even know how to respond. TPTB seem intent on shutting down the majority of the population. It isn't working. The ecosystem of media available to see the non-controlled narrative is huge, and fragmented, and yes to some degree has its own problems.
A commenter on a blog I've followed for the last few years ends each of his comments with "Fear not, trust God." Somehow, the majority's voice will be heard and will win.
While reading this I had Hunter Biden's paintings come to mind and the unrealistically high amounts anonymous people were paying him for these childish works of art....
Didn't we learn that a big part of Politico's subscription revenue came from NGOs?
Many people don't get how vitally important "Narrative Control" (and suppression of "dissidents") is to our rulers.
Big Pharma gets it. Just look at how much these companies spend on drug advertising, which is a protection racket. Also, Bill Gates and other Foundations buy off the media with huge "excellence in journalism" grants.
Substack was becoming one of the greatest threats to Narrative Control. IMO The Powers that Be weren't going to ignore this threat. That's not their m.o.
Bill X just put a restricted label on my sub stacks so much for Musk claiming X was a free speech site, it’s appears X is still controlled by left wing censures. I waiting to see how the appeal proces works.
Egads. Your focus on the conspiracy to really harpoon democracy is one of those "thermo nuclear," taboo topics. Keep on keeping on.
BTW, I listened to your 50-minute podcast interview with James Howard Kunstler. That was outstanding.
If you ever talk to Mr. Kunstler again, please drop my name and tell him I would also love to be a guest on one of his great podcast episodes. I could talk about "early spread" ... or possible shenanigans on Substack!
Well do Bill
Where can I find the Kunstler interview?
All of them - ALREADY BLOCKED !!!
I have no need for them…any of them. And, if they keep showing up with the grace and encouragement of the SS brass, well, it might be time to shut it down like FB and X, get a few email addresses from some who have become friends and just move on.
It will be interesting to see how long it takes Mayor Pete and Gov. Newsom to reach 1 million subscribers. Moran will probably be over 350,000 in a couple of weeks.
I guess it's now safe to say the Covid Contrarians have lost our beachhead.
There are two America's today, and they are on a collision course. As 2024 turned into 2025, a mere 6 months ago, could you imagine the United States bombing Iran? Of course not. Just as you could not imagine a card-carrying Socialist winning the Democratic Primary for NYC mayor.
We aren't in Kansas anymore Bill, and things are only going to speed up. This "Crazy Left" thing has certainly infected Substack, and I don't have to look at any metrics to know that fact. Just check out the "Politics" tab on Substack and it will become immediately obvious that the Left is in control here.
You would fare better with your Substack if you posted a link to your articles at Truth Social. Your core audience is shrinking everyday Bill as the Substack platform is FORCED to the Left.
That's a good suggestion, Jeffrey. I've never figured out how to get an X or Twitter following of more than one or two people. I should try out Truth Social.
You are probably also right that Substack was "forced" to tack hard to the left. Still, I've done enough research into their founders and executives to know that their own politics align with these people and that they are probably embarrassed by the "Covid Contrarians." They appreciate the business/revenue/traffic they generate, but have never endorsed any of these authors' bottom-line views.
For example, all Substack authors have received "profile stories" sent out by Substack's PR department that celebrate Substack "success stories." None of these stories have ever profiled a "Covid Contrarian" author. And these authors were all right on the biggest issue of decades.
Substack should be proud to be the writing home of dissident journalists who were RIGHT.
Mayor Pete, Moran and Gov. Newsome\ enthusiastically suppported the lockdowns and still support the non-vaccines.
It's funny and upside down. You can't make money or be a success by supporting the brave "adults in the room" who were right. But you can by supporting all the fools who supported "crimes against humanity."
To even get close to noticed on X you have to be certified, which cost a nominal fee, something like $30 a year.
The ONLY people forcing Substack to the Left are the people that own it - that is certain. As I mentioned, just jump on the Politics tab and you can see the real agenda.
While Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and other large urban areas do not represent mainstream America, they do represent more of it than most of us are prepared to admit. We that lean Center-Right should not forget that Kamala Harris received over 70 million votes for President. Think about that for a second. While she was trounced in the Electoral College, that crazy woman was in striking distance of winning the popular vote.
As I said in my post, our beautiful country is on a collision course. The ultra-progressive, far Left Socialist verses the hardworking, Christian, traditional values segment of America. Sadly, there is little middle ground left.
well said
Many people don't realize it but the NYC mayor candidate refused to sign a resolution denouncing the Holocaust. This guy has some serious issues.
>As 2024 turned into 2025, a mere 6 months ago, could you imagine the United States bombing Iran? Of course not.
Yes. US Senate has had a war declaration Bill with Iran parked for nearly a year with the Foreign Relations Committee. This was always the plan and Trump was always the guy who was going to do it. This is not over by a long shot.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-joint-resolution/106/text
S.J.Res.106 - A joint resolution to authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against the Islamic Republic of Iran for threatening the national security of the United States through the development of nuclear weapons.
Sponsor: Sen. Graham, Lindsey [R-SC] (Introduced 07/31/2024)
Thanks for bringing that legislation to my attention, but it matters little within my premise. Until last week no President in 40 years had been willing to take the political risk associated with directly attacking Iran, no matter what they said during an election cycle. Having the authority to do something is one thing, actually doing it is quite another.
Trump is changing the world dynamic right before our eyes.
The fat lady sang her song awhile ago.
We should reach out to the two founders of substack and see what they think- what they are currently working on. Have they been bought?
I think they are positioning the company/platform in a manner that they can sell it for a lot of money. In one sense, you can say the outreach to the Wacko Left is smart business as 98 percent of the world's writers and prominent public figures don't think like the Covid Contrarians.
I think this site was, once, in danger of going under. The Covid contrarians saved it and put Substack on the map. But the company's founders knew they couldn't grow the platform if it was associated with "disinformation spreaders," conspiracy theorists and "extremists." They also probably knew the site was getting ready to be ruthlessly attacked by the Powers that Be and the Censorship Bureaucracy, which is ruthless and doesn't fight fair.
If Bots and NGOs are supporting these authors with paid subs, Substack is getting 10 percent of that new revenue.
Yes, but that's because most of cointervening users of social media (MAGA) is on X not Substack. Otherwise, I don't think this would be as easy.
It also should have resulted in dialogues between opposing view points but it hasn't. That goes beyond the Covid Contrarians as well.
Now I'm pro-censorship!
Sounds like BS and bots making those numbers look real, what losers…I don’t buy it!
Ever wonder Bill if they buy their numbers ? Or maybe ,it is the reality that those who questioned many things in the past few years , really are a minority with less than hive minds of thinking .
I don't know how these writers get such huge numbers of subscribers so fast. Some have speculated NGO money is being funnelled or laundered to supporters ... or some are bots .... or they are all real or authentic subscribers. All three possibilities are alarming to me.
What's, perhaps, more interesting to me is why more "conservative" or MAGA writers aren't experiencing similar explosive growth.
I know this: Since the Statists/Status-Quo Protectors took over Substack, my own numbers have fell off a cliff. Maybe this is just a coincidence?
Take a look here Bill when time about our government and who we are aligning with - this guy was anointed via guile and deceit : these two(wife) kill me - he is total WEF , works on the Mckinsey principle , is beholding to XI , was the architect of CBDC and freezing peoples bank accounts, is now governing with no budget and his party has gone on vacation as he flits around the world making deals - other than that - people think he's great ! https://lawyerlisa.substack.com/p/the-green-perv-order-carneys-new
Elbows up, Lisa!
Who needs parliament when you have 'Executive Orders'?
For Americans: Canada does not have Executive Orders, but Carney keeps signing them anyway.
Also, he seems to have decided we're Europeans now.
Whee!
Yes , coming from a fishing town in Cape Breton , I'm still trying to understand just how European I am ;then there are the majority who think he is doing a great job . Some days I wonder will we be taken over by Xi or the Iranians but for now it's that oddity wrapped in screens and blind trusts who believes "we" will be rich ... the narcissism is vast and certainly not hidden in a blind trust - about the only thing transparent about him.
Other ideas that come to mind Bill, are the facts that many people aren't buying into the old newspapers as usual and they are finding out about this "new" thing called substack - tthose of us who questioned something wasn't right - knew about years ago . I think they want this way of getting the "news" and I have no doubt they are supported by the same sources( bots, $$$) that loved safe and effective ideations. We have been recycling our stories of all the horror for a number of years, something we all will never forget . I think perhaps a few bits of the dam are cracking for those people who thought ,after the virus debacle , life would go back to normal but for many it hasn't ; it's a new world order in the making that is bizarre and disruptive . What is able to ground you Bill since I think more and more life as we knew it ,is really disappearing on a number of levels ?
To your last question, it's good to have a mission or a project you think has the potential to be important. I once thought I could maybe move the needle on a few subjects via my research stories and commentaries. I'm now starting to realize that, at least on Substack, this isn't going to be possible.
This is why I'm focussing so much on Substack oddities. As originally created, this "citizen journalist" platform had so much potential to be an agent for significant change.
But, apparently, not anymore ... which bothers me.
You are a writer Bill - your focus, and especially now when bothered, may very well percolate to the surface because the oddities will be there in spades to mine.