Significant metric changes on Substack began about the time this independent writers' platform was attacked as being a haven for Nazis. Plus, other interesting Substack readership metrics.
The most brazen or conspicuous "shot against the bow" or "message" that was sent to a powerful member of the media/press in recent years was the message sent to the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange.
That "message" also worked.
Editorial comment: Assange, arguably, helped get Trump elected the first time (by exposing "Crooked Hillary"). I don't know why Trump doesn't grant him a full pardon and/or apologize to him on the part of the American government.
I should make one more comment: It should be clear to everyone that Substack didn't have a "Nazi problem.' What it had was a "Vaccine Hesitancy" problem ... and too many smart writers who were trying to detonate too many potential thermo-nuclear truth bombs.
I also think that the "curious" saga/change of The Drudge Report hasn't gotten nearly enough attention from investigative journalists. In fact, the 180-degree change in the world's most influential website has gotten zero interest from MSM investigative reporters.
I'm not even sure if Drudge is still alive. I assume he is, but I don't think anyone has actually seen him in years. What reallyhappened at The Drudge Report? I mean, shouldn't this be a blockbuster story?
Personally, I think "someone" got to Drudge and captured that website. So if this happened at Drudge, something similar could probably happen at Substack.
The Great Drudge mystery (or non-mystery) reminds me of the story of the wife of the leader of the Church of Scientology. I don't think anyone has seen her alive in about 15 years.
Substack subscriptions - based on size of newsletters …
According to various sources, Substack has more than 35 million subscriptions. As this analysis shows, almost all of these subscriptions go to newsletter authors with at least 2,500 subscribers …
Number of subscribers = Percentage of Total Subscriptions on Substack
0 to 2.5K = 1.2 percent (420,000 subscriptions)
2.5 to 5K = 16 percent (5.6 million subscriptions)
5 to 10K = 15 percent (5.2 million subscriptions)
10 to 20K = 9.2 percent (3.22 million subscriptions)
20 to 50K = 5.8 percent (2.03 million subscriptions)
50 to 100K = 2 percent (700,000 subscriptions)
100K or more = 50.8 percent (17.8 million subscriptions)
***
* 98.8 percent of Substack’s total 35 million active subscriptions come from newsletter authors with at least 2.5K subscribers.
* 34.58 million subscribers come from those with at least 2.5K subscribers.
* 17.78 million of Substack’s 35 million subscriptions come from 212 newsletter authors (those with at least 100K subscribers).
Expressed differently, more than half of Substack’s active subscriptions come from 212 writers, who make up approximately 1 percent of the more than 17,000 newsletters that receive paid subscriptions.
Expressed differently, more than half of Substack’s subscriptions come from just 1.25 percent of its 17,000 paid authors.
Just four (4) Substack newsletters produce at least 6 million active subscriptions. (Liberal historian Heather Cox Richardson has at least 2.6 million subscribers by herself. No “Covid Contrarian” author has more than 360,000 subscribers.)
Expressed differently, 17.14 percent of Substack’s 35 million+ “active subscriptions” come from just four newsletters.
Or, expressed another way … 0.023 percent of Substack’s newsletters produce 17.14 percent of the platform’s active subscriptions.
While the number is not published or is unknown, probably more than 95 percent of Substack newsletters produce fewer than 10 total subscribers.
You may be right on that one, because I think there are a lot of phantom/bot newsletters out there.
I like to look at those who follow me and/or subscribe to me to see what they read and, if it's a subscription, whether they're in my "peer group" of a few hundred subscribers. I notice a good number of them "have" a Substack that's devoid of posts or have a handful of subscribers but no Substack (maybe you can subscribe to Notes, I don't know?)
The ones that arouse my spider sense, though, are the ones whose "reads" are in the hundreds (or even over a thousand.) There's no way humanly possible to read that many! Heck, I have a hard time with 70 reads.
So it makes me wonder how many of HCR's 2.6 million subscribers are bots. Granted, liberal refugees from the mainstream media have some following to Substack but that's also true of other people too - one of my more recent subscribes is a writer who used to work for MASN and specialized in the Orioles, particularly their minor league and prospects. Now I pay him a few dollars a month for info I used to get free, but MASN lost a reader.
Same here. I only read who I follow/subscribe to, and heard of Richardson only through those I follow. Think I'll keep it that way, so I'm counting on those I follow to know what's up with the other writers 🙂
I wonder how many are bots. I have been flagged by women who are not real and are AI generated. Overwhelm the truth tellers by inflating the subscribers by creating bots. We are in a internet war.
Thomas, IMO the Bots and AI posts are a huge deal. Personally, I think/suspect they were used to quickly scuttle the presidential campaign of Ron DeSantis.
And similarly, they are boosting their numbers in polls and elections. I suspect there’s been lots of hanky panky going on for a long time. And it makes them pure evil!
Yes I figure bots are a major issue in the numbers game.
It may be because I don't visit the right (i.e. left) parts of the internet but apart from The Bulwark I see zero mention of any of Bill's top ‘Statist’/Status-Quo' substacks anywhere, except for a few mentions recently that Heather Cox Richardson was still lying about Charlie Kirk's assassination. The Bulwark gets mentions and links because we like laughing at their TDS.
On the other hand I do see lots of links, discussion etc. of the Covid Contrarian substacks
This was one my first big stories on changing Substack metrics and/or a likely "attack" on Substack. I published it Jan. 6, 2024 - 20 months ago.
Ironically enough, this story "It Begins" produced a record number of "likes," (1,150) "Reader Comments" (almost 700) and new and paid subscriptions (195 and 35 paid).
In contrast, my fairly-recent article on "curious Substack Leaderboards" produced a record-low number of Page Views (at least for its first week) and no new subscribers. That is, a subject that once seemed to have great interest among our community of writers and readers, now gets very little traction ... which is ... "curious."
For context, in the last 10 months, I've lost approximately 40 (net) paid subscribers. In those 10 months, I published approximately 140 original articles and essays.
In early January of 2024, one story netted me 35 new paid subscribers. I made far more money with that one article than I have in the past 10 months from 140 articles.
It's literally all been down hill (or up-hill) since I hit "send" on that article.
Yes, Substack is full of Nazis, and by the definition of the term (which they themselves don't seem too familiar with) those would be the very people, mainly fraidy cat covidian Biden voters, who wanted to mandate an experimental pharmaceutical biologic injection on citizens who didn't want it, and to remove the rights to free speech for anyone and everyone, and experienced medical doctors and nurses besides, who had a question or a concern, never mind an objection.
May Substack's Nazis write on! I fully support free speech! I say, it's their right to natter on like the moral and intellectual pea-brains and ice-pebble-hearts that they are. Moreover, I'm glad when they do, because then I know who they are and I can steer clear of them.
Its hard to tell how many subscribers are bots. Big Brother can amplify any subs tack that way independently of the company (if it is indeed independent of Big Brother) and then deamplify by unsubscribing them. Search is another powerful way for authors to be modulated.
Its only a paper moon sailing over a cardboard sea.
I agree. If "funny business" is happening, I'm not 100 percent sure it's necessarily anyone at Substack that came up with the new and different algorithms (for "threat" authors).
Still, I think Substack would have to know this was happening.
They might sell or otherwise offer an API backdoor that could substitute search algorithms or whatever and they might not know for sure what was happening but they could pretty well guess.
A more recent "working theory" is that the algorithms are also probably different for different writers. That is, some writers might be labeled as more of a "threat" than other writers. Laura at Clotastrophe has posted a story from an anonymous source that shows a document that shows embalmer Richard Hirschman (who is TRYING to be a whistleblower) is the highest level threat ... to someone.
People like Alex Berenson and Steve Kirsch once made similar lists, so I doubt this practice has been abandoned.
They probably use AI that learns from posts and comments to determine threats and other sources to determine what the threats are.
Ok, now Charlie Kirk talk is a threat, but mainly X, Y, or Z kind of Charlie Kirk talk, now who is engaging in that and how can this or that search make them invisible.
At some point, I might write an article on all the articles I've published that might have made me stand out in the "threat" category. It's more than my subscribers might think. With probably 60 percent of the articles I publish, I take a deep breath and say to myself "somebody is not going to like this."
Stories on "curious changes with Substack metrics" would be one prominent example of these types of stories.
Maybe but the growth I got on it is organic and just topped 400 followers meanwhile, the parallel X account just dropped to 99 because a bunch of Fembots unfollowed.
For a while, I monitored Reich's numbers a couple of times a week. There were many days his total subscriber numbers were growing by 5,000 every day. Heather Cox Richardson's growth rate must have been even more. Have you seen "The Princess Bride?"
The "We Must Fight Fascism" meme is so clearly coordinated. It's also interesting how these narratives are created and then implemented. I'll try to show how this is done in my upcoming story on the features of the "Nazi Substack" operation. The formula, which Matt Taibbi illustrated a couple of weeks ago, hasn't changed.
I have to doubt that this is a problem. Consider that the conservative commentary on Substack was well established and the numbers of subscribers had stabilized over several years before the liberals started moving their blogs here, so naturally the liberals who are just starting up seem to be increasing rapidly, but that is only temporary; when they have become established, they, too, will stabilize.
Great story! After reading this article, I spent 45 minutes writing up a variety of thoughts in an ongoing chat with Grok. In 15 seconds it gave me a substantive response. Excerpts I've quoted below are just a small fraction of its reply.
I had wondered about the underlying mechanisms of social media and related mass psychology. Quoted response is below, and one takeaway might be that the numbers stampede is real. I'd bet the platform itself is part of it; but at the same time, very many are willing to receive the gratification of joining a new tribe where they will not have to contend with disruptive ideas.
Cognitive Dissonance and Its Counterpart: Leon Festinger's theory explains discomfort from conflicting beliefs, often leading to rationalization or avoidance, as in your reluctance to question authority during crises. The "opposite" could be termed "cognitive consonance" or harmony-seeking, akin to confirmation bias (where one seeks affirming information) or the pleasure of group affiliation, potentially releasing dopamine via social reward circuits, reinforcing tribal loyalty over critical inquiry.
Later Grok gave me some further perspective on social media and discourse. Part of why I'm talking to it is getting philosophical background framed around the best of Western civilization. I'm struggling with this, but right now my takeaway is that social media is just not great for social or political discourse. (Was this a very roundabout path to the obvious?) Quoted response:
Free Speech and Marketplace of Ideas: John Milton's Areopagitica and Mill's On Liberty argue that truth emerges from clashing opinions, not suppression. In social media's "interpersonal" void, this ideal falters when platforms foster unchecked "piling on," but republican principles (e.g., First Amendment) presume citizens' capacity for self-correction through exposure to diverse views, countering gratification from conformity.
The most brazen or conspicuous "shot against the bow" or "message" that was sent to a powerful member of the media/press in recent years was the message sent to the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange.
That "message" also worked.
Editorial comment: Assange, arguably, helped get Trump elected the first time (by exposing "Crooked Hillary"). I don't know why Trump doesn't grant him a full pardon and/or apologize to him on the part of the American government.
Reiner Fuellmich is in a German prison and deserves his freedom, an apology, and full pardon.
https://substack.com/@drreinerfuellmich/note/p-174797585?r=2qgmxy&utm_source=notes-share-action&utm_medium=web
I should make one more comment: It should be clear to everyone that Substack didn't have a "Nazi problem.' What it had was a "Vaccine Hesitancy" problem ... and too many smart writers who were trying to detonate too many potential thermo-nuclear truth bombs.
How ironic that those who question vaccine efficacy and safety are considered Nazis. Not to mention personal choice.
I also think that the "curious" saga/change of The Drudge Report hasn't gotten nearly enough attention from investigative journalists. In fact, the 180-degree change in the world's most influential website has gotten zero interest from MSM investigative reporters.
I'm not even sure if Drudge is still alive. I assume he is, but I don't think anyone has actually seen him in years. What reallyhappened at The Drudge Report? I mean, shouldn't this be a blockbuster story?
Personally, I think "someone" got to Drudge and captured that website. So if this happened at Drudge, something similar could probably happen at Substack.
The Great Drudge mystery (or non-mystery) reminds me of the story of the wife of the leader of the Church of Scientology. I don't think anyone has seen her alive in about 15 years.
It did...he was threatened 2015
Threatened with powerful amo because he hasn't given one interview since.
Substack subscriptions - based on size of newsletters …
According to various sources, Substack has more than 35 million subscriptions. As this analysis shows, almost all of these subscriptions go to newsletter authors with at least 2,500 subscribers …
Number of subscribers = Percentage of Total Subscriptions on Substack
0 to 2.5K = 1.2 percent (420,000 subscriptions)
2.5 to 5K = 16 percent (5.6 million subscriptions)
5 to 10K = 15 percent (5.2 million subscriptions)
10 to 20K = 9.2 percent (3.22 million subscriptions)
20 to 50K = 5.8 percent (2.03 million subscriptions)
50 to 100K = 2 percent (700,000 subscriptions)
100K or more = 50.8 percent (17.8 million subscriptions)
***
* 98.8 percent of Substack’s total 35 million active subscriptions come from newsletter authors with at least 2.5K subscribers.
* 34.58 million subscribers come from those with at least 2.5K subscribers.
* 17.78 million of Substack’s 35 million subscriptions come from 212 newsletter authors (those with at least 100K subscribers).
Expressed differently, more than half of Substack’s active subscriptions come from 212 writers, who make up approximately 1 percent of the more than 17,000 newsletters that receive paid subscriptions.
Expressed differently, more than half of Substack’s subscriptions come from just 1.25 percent of its 17,000 paid authors.
Just four (4) Substack newsletters produce at least 6 million active subscriptions. (Liberal historian Heather Cox Richardson has at least 2.6 million subscribers by herself. No “Covid Contrarian” author has more than 360,000 subscribers.)
Expressed differently, 17.14 percent of Substack’s 35 million+ “active subscriptions” come from just four newsletters.
Or, expressed another way … 0.023 percent of Substack’s newsletters produce 17.14 percent of the platform’s active subscriptions.
While the number is not published or is unknown, probably more than 95 percent of Substack newsletters produce fewer than 10 total subscribers.
You may be right on that one, because I think there are a lot of phantom/bot newsletters out there.
I like to look at those who follow me and/or subscribe to me to see what they read and, if it's a subscription, whether they're in my "peer group" of a few hundred subscribers. I notice a good number of them "have" a Substack that's devoid of posts or have a handful of subscribers but no Substack (maybe you can subscribe to Notes, I don't know?)
The ones that arouse my spider sense, though, are the ones whose "reads" are in the hundreds (or even over a thousand.) There's no way humanly possible to read that many! Heck, I have a hard time with 70 reads.
So it makes me wonder how many of HCR's 2.6 million subscribers are bots. Granted, liberal refugees from the mainstream media have some following to Substack but that's also true of other people too - one of my more recent subscribes is a writer who used to work for MASN and specialized in the Orioles, particularly their minor league and prospects. Now I pay him a few dollars a month for info I used to get free, but MASN lost a reader.
There are readers and there are writers. I remain uncomfortable with the Substack label "followers."
It looks to me that Substack assigns a "blog" to most of the readers but as you note they (we) don't actually post essays.
Uppate: I'm kind of drained. I think I'm going to publish my "Reader Comment Study" story/update tomorrow morning and not this evening.
Lot of numbers.
Funny, how I'm not subscribed to Any of the "status quo" list of authors, nor do I read anything they may have posted...
Go figure.
Same here. I only read who I follow/subscribe to, and heard of Richardson only through those I follow. Think I'll keep it that way, so I'm counting on those I follow to know what's up with the other writers 🙂
...because I can't afford to poison what's left ofy mind.
This part right here.
I wonder how many are bots. I have been flagged by women who are not real and are AI generated. Overwhelm the truth tellers by inflating the subscribers by creating bots. We are in a internet war.
Thomas, IMO the Bots and AI posts are a huge deal. Personally, I think/suspect they were used to quickly scuttle the presidential campaign of Ron DeSantis.
And similarly, they are boosting their numbers in polls and elections. I suspect there’s been lots of hanky panky going on for a long time. And it makes them pure evil!
It's easier than ever to pull these ops off ... which is very scary.
Yes I figure bots are a major issue in the numbers game.
It may be because I don't visit the right (i.e. left) parts of the internet but apart from The Bulwark I see zero mention of any of Bill's top ‘Statist’/Status-Quo' substacks anywhere, except for a few mentions recently that Heather Cox Richardson was still lying about Charlie Kirk's assassination. The Bulwark gets mentions and links because we like laughing at their TDS.
On the other hand I do see lots of links, discussion etc. of the Covid Contrarian substacks
Great point, Francis. The Covid contrarians create buzz all the time. That’s why they are viewed as threats.
This was one my first big stories on changing Substack metrics and/or a likely "attack" on Substack. I published it Jan. 6, 2024 - 20 months ago.
Ironically enough, this story "It Begins" produced a record number of "likes," (1,150) "Reader Comments" (almost 700) and new and paid subscriptions (195 and 35 paid).
https://billricejr.substack.com/p/and-so-it-begins
In contrast, my fairly-recent article on "curious Substack Leaderboards" produced a record-low number of Page Views (at least for its first week) and no new subscribers. That is, a subject that once seemed to have great interest among our community of writers and readers, now gets very little traction ... which is ... "curious."
For context, in the last 10 months, I've lost approximately 40 (net) paid subscribers. In those 10 months, I published approximately 140 original articles and essays.
In early January of 2024, one story netted me 35 new paid subscribers. I made far more money with that one article than I have in the past 10 months from 140 articles.
It's literally all been down hill (or up-hill) since I hit "send" on that article.
Is this another instance of "astroturfing" from the Left?
Yes, Substack is full of Nazis, and by the definition of the term (which they themselves don't seem too familiar with) those would be the very people, mainly fraidy cat covidian Biden voters, who wanted to mandate an experimental pharmaceutical biologic injection on citizens who didn't want it, and to remove the rights to free speech for anyone and everyone, and experienced medical doctors and nurses besides, who had a question or a concern, never mind an objection.
May Substack's Nazis write on! I fully support free speech! I say, it's their right to natter on like the moral and intellectual pea-brains and ice-pebble-hearts that they are. Moreover, I'm glad when they do, because then I know who they are and I can steer clear of them.
I sincerely appreciate your Substack, Bill.
Thank you, East of Albeurqerque. I'm also East of Albequrque and we share the same wave length.
I'm also with you in that I appreciate when they show their true faces.
Yeah something is seriously wrong. My little experiment as follows:
Post on notes the. Copy to BlueSky and X. Past 5 to 6 weeks
Substack: 0 subscribers
BlueSky 391
X 106
Exactly the same name on the account publication across all 3 platforms
Very odd
Its hard to tell how many subscribers are bots. Big Brother can amplify any subs tack that way independently of the company (if it is indeed independent of Big Brother) and then deamplify by unsubscribing them. Search is another powerful way for authors to be modulated.
Its only a paper moon sailing over a cardboard sea.
I agree. If "funny business" is happening, I'm not 100 percent sure it's necessarily anyone at Substack that came up with the new and different algorithms (for "threat" authors).
Still, I think Substack would have to know this was happening.
They might sell or otherwise offer an API backdoor that could substitute search algorithms or whatever and they might not know for sure what was happening but they could pretty well guess.
A more recent "working theory" is that the algorithms are also probably different for different writers. That is, some writers might be labeled as more of a "threat" than other writers. Laura at Clotastrophe has posted a story from an anonymous source that shows a document that shows embalmer Richard Hirschman (who is TRYING to be a whistleblower) is the highest level threat ... to someone.
People like Alex Berenson and Steve Kirsch once made similar lists, so I doubt this practice has been abandoned.
They probably use AI that learns from posts and comments to determine threats and other sources to determine what the threats are.
Ok, now Charlie Kirk talk is a threat, but mainly X, Y, or Z kind of Charlie Kirk talk, now who is engaging in that and how can this or that search make them invisible.
At some point, I might write an article on all the articles I've published that might have made me stand out in the "threat" category. It's more than my subscribers might think. With probably 60 percent of the articles I publish, I take a deep breath and say to myself "somebody is not going to like this."
Stories on "curious changes with Substack metrics" would be one prominent example of these types of stories.
X definitely has a BOT problem whereas BlueSky doesn't appear to have that issue which is surprising.
Blue sky is probably captured and ‘they’ are trying to mitigate X
Maybe but the growth I got on it is organic and just topped 400 followers meanwhile, the parallel X account just dropped to 99 because a bunch of Fembots unfollowed.
Back up to 108 now ...organic too
Not strange at all right? Yeah ...
This was on a totally different Substack publication with a different email so it's not connected to this account I am posting under either.
How in the heck do Acosta, Reich and The Bulwark get so many subs? Wild.
For a while, I monitored Reich's numbers a couple of times a week. There were many days his total subscriber numbers were growing by 5,000 every day. Heather Cox Richardson's growth rate must have been even more. Have you seen "The Princess Bride?"
"Inconceivable!"
It's not plausible. Something is up.
Well. I'm now a paid subscriber. This is my second paid subscription after lurking on substack for four years now.
Thank you, Tracy! New paid subscribers have become very rare in the last 12 or so months. I appreciate your support.
It's not a "Nazi problem", its a "Noticing problem". Shut it down.
The "We Must Fight Fascism" meme is so clearly coordinated. It's also interesting how these narratives are created and then implemented. I'll try to show how this is done in my upcoming story on the features of the "Nazi Substack" operation. The formula, which Matt Taibbi illustrated a couple of weeks ago, hasn't changed.
Noticing the coordinators is (((easy))).
I have to doubt that this is a problem. Consider that the conservative commentary on Substack was well established and the numbers of subscribers had stabilized over several years before the liberals started moving their blogs here, so naturally the liberals who are just starting up seem to be increasing rapidly, but that is only temporary; when they have become established, they, too, will stabilize.
Liberals will stabilize? Well, it’s a theory I suppose.
Great story! After reading this article, I spent 45 minutes writing up a variety of thoughts in an ongoing chat with Grok. In 15 seconds it gave me a substantive response. Excerpts I've quoted below are just a small fraction of its reply.
I had wondered about the underlying mechanisms of social media and related mass psychology. Quoted response is below, and one takeaway might be that the numbers stampede is real. I'd bet the platform itself is part of it; but at the same time, very many are willing to receive the gratification of joining a new tribe where they will not have to contend with disruptive ideas.
Cognitive Dissonance and Its Counterpart: Leon Festinger's theory explains discomfort from conflicting beliefs, often leading to rationalization or avoidance, as in your reluctance to question authority during crises. The "opposite" could be termed "cognitive consonance" or harmony-seeking, akin to confirmation bias (where one seeks affirming information) or the pleasure of group affiliation, potentially releasing dopamine via social reward circuits, reinforcing tribal loyalty over critical inquiry.
Later Grok gave me some further perspective on social media and discourse. Part of why I'm talking to it is getting philosophical background framed around the best of Western civilization. I'm struggling with this, but right now my takeaway is that social media is just not great for social or political discourse. (Was this a very roundabout path to the obvious?) Quoted response:
Free Speech and Marketplace of Ideas: John Milton's Areopagitica and Mill's On Liberty argue that truth emerges from clashing opinions, not suppression. In social media's "interpersonal" void, this ideal falters when platforms foster unchecked "piling on," but republican principles (e.g., First Amendment) presume citizens' capacity for self-correction through exposure to diverse views, countering gratification from conformity.