Help me make a decision
I'd like your input
Almost 2.5k of you receive this newsletter, and so I’d like to get your input on something that impacts how you read what I write…
I’ve wrestled for a long time with the problem of Big Tech infiltrating our lives. It seems that I cannot unwind myself from it. Take this newsletter platform, Substack, for instance. It talks about being a place for writers, but it’s really not much different from all the other community-oriented corporate platforms backed by VC firms. Substack executives do what their board tells them to do. Ok, they have some leeway, but when we really get down to it, they do what they need to be commercially successful, to give their investors bang for their buck. Maybe that’s ok, but don’t sell me one thing and give me something else. Your business philosophy and core motivation matter.
He who pays the piper calls the tune, and I find that executive decisions are rarely for the primary benefit of their users or buyers but rather for their VC investors. So, all their shouting about the platform's honour and integrity is vacuous and disingenuous to me—marketing, in other words. In addition, many of these tech bros and their funders, either directly or indirectly, provide information and technology to governments and private corporations that support and enable genocide and destruction of our planet. Am I taking a leap in making this connection? Do the research, it’s not hard to find. Read The Age of Surveillance by Shoshana Zuboff, for example, or anything by
.The tech is good, innovative, lots of great features, and it’s easy to use—the best I’ve found. However, I’m increasingly at odds with the capitalist model and all that feeds it. Look at how this platform grows, for example. Substack is using its increasing reach to attract big names with existing large audiences. What deals are being done here? I don’t know, and maybe I shouldn’t be bothered by it, but you can bet they’re being lured by incentives and promises of broadening their audiences and revenue. At the same time, everyone else flounders on the fringes, fed daily diets of “how to be successful on Substack” type posts. I thought I escaped that crap when I took my attention from Medium. Others suggest that the Newsletter model is worn out. Fine, but I didn’t start writing online in 2013 to make money per se, and if I did, it has proven to be an unmitigated failure.
Every action counts, and if everyone began to unwind from the self-imposed bind we’ve placed on ourselves and how inextricably linked we have become to the problems in our world, then maybe we would see positive change.
So I’ve been rethinking my entire approach to writing, and I need your help making a decision…
Nice one, I appreciate your input.
Regards, Larry