Has Substack Jump The Shark?

Is this a Bloomberg hit piece?

____________________ THIS IS A SPECIAL REPORT_____

For the record I bumped another column, I had scheduled because I felt so strong about this and decided not to wait to publish. Please share this one. Many thanks in advance. AKcidentalwriter 3/31/25 3:23pm

I was cruising along observing the media last week of March on 3/29/25, I came across a article on Bloomberg by Jessica Karl called ‘Everyone Has a Substack What Could Go Wrong? Subtitle ‘The Newsletter Platform is headed For The Same Pitfalls as Podcast But It Still has Time For A Course Correction’. I said to myself oh boy!!! What is behind this?

What it said to me was a vibe I was feeling is that Substack has become to much like a social media platform. Folks are coming in with the I.G/Tik Tok mentality something I have avoided! I am getting followers that have no activity and appear ‘botish’.

She say’s in the first paragraph that Substack is also a place ripe for false narratives to spread. Without proper guardrails, the platform is headed for the same pitfalls we’ve seen with podcasting: Anyone can start one, and there is little to no accountability for what is going out in public. I said to myself she is not about the first amendment! For me after the U.S.A government gave ‘misinformation’ during the ‘covid apparatus’ yet got a pass from the official media channels in the 2020 - to the present consistently, I myself said no way I listen to the official channels because they were not giving the whole story! If it wasn’t for Substack how many people would have not gotten real insightful information about what was taking place? I would say millions! The official channels were just focusing on one monologue. There was no dialogue!

All of this is one dimensional to get individuals to be in a horror show daily. There was only one world and one way! It was the classic… MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY! The U.S.A Government was perpetrating Nazism/Fascism! The main stream didn’t call out the corporate/government experts one bit. Then when the vaccines came it was just a railroad to which one you will take! There was no other opinion accepted! Imagine going to a doctor and being told no second opinion. Not is this the proper way to go for individuals. There was no debate. No journalistic integrity.

I chose to Substack over Medium in Summer 2022 after I had completed writing full length books. I was exhausted of the censorship, I saw when it came to covid, vaccines, and the lost of freedom of speech. The idea that debate was dead was very offensive to me. Political correctness had bludgeoned all of these principles I had been taught in school and told by my elders This time period wasn’t American! I felt I was in a foreign nation! You couldn’t voice your opinion and thoughts which is an integral part of the American Spirit. Also, a most important part of being an American!

Jessica Karl say’s that the area in which Substack is gaining traction should set off alarms. Apparently the Tik Tok ban pushed what are called content creators and users onto the site. In January Substack announced a 20 million funding guarantee to assist creators grow their businesses.

I always say follow the money! In march 2025 Substack announced the company went from 4 million paid subscribers to 5 million paid subscribers in less than 4 months. That is a massive deal and signifies the platform acting exponential! However, it changes the focus. For example, An individual who called themselves a content creator made an attempt to sell to me pornographic videos via DM’s. They called themselves a content creator! i said Substack had changed…. lol. I have always saw Substack as a place for people that serious about their writing and messaging.

Further in the article, I disagree with Jessica’s calls for greater accountability, and editorial discretion! This discretion would come from an A.I product which I am vehemently against. I would be against this if a human was involved. She then backpedals a bit and say’s by no means advocating mass censorship… I say that view is quite utopian and not realistic. It would also alter the essence of Substack! She then advocates it must be a greater focus on veracity so it doesn’t become a vessel of misleading narratives. I just shook my head and laughed!

The covid era showed that misleading information meant you are going against the prescribed narrative! I didn’t listen to the prescribed narrative then of ‘follow the science’, but it was complying with a certain narrative which was actually misinformation if we now look backwards! So for me we shouldn’t go there again.

This is still America and we have a bill of rights. All of the so called ‘fact checkers’ were just following an agenda. There was no investigative journalism taking place! It was one big censorship cabal globally. Now with the US Aid we see that the propaganda machine was prevalent! So please tell me then if we were being fed propaganda as news where were the fact checkers then? This is what happens under communist regimes of the past! This mindset has been bought to America is all through the university/academic/school systems. A classic Marxist dictum! Nothing to do with American living!

At the end of the day, Substack it seems to be hiding behind section 230 of the ‘1996 Communication Act’ like Facebook/X have done over the decades! I know I do not want something or someone editing my weekly column! What I want is debate to bring people together not keep them apart! If we can’t teach this generation and the immediate one the principle of agree to disagree then this country polarization never ends because now most are in this Algorithmic Bubble, I call the D.A.I.C aka Digital Artificial Information Complex! Now with the rank n file showing up along with Tik Tokers/Instagrammers Substack’s heart is being changed!

With more video being promoted we will see more TikToking on the place I call ‘The Stack’. That is all fine but when Fonzie jumped the shark on the 70’s hit show Happy day’s you knew the show had lost it’s soul! I hope Substackers fight for the heart of the Stack they have come to know.

In her last paragraph of the article it has a quote from Jessica Maddox, an assistant professor in the Department of Journalism and Creative Media at the University of Alabama, It comes down to how you categorize ‘The Stack’. To her apparently it doesn’t want to be a journalism outlet. It is a social media platform. Now I have to watched Substack go more social but to me it still has a core of newsletters/journalism platform. Substack all entities and individual are attempting to stay relevant in this era! That is our greatest challenge as we move ahead. Can you blame them though.

Substack is all individual voices competing to be heard! If you do video/literary/podcasting it doesn’t matter because the individual voice takes us back to the Bill Of Rights’ and I thank Substack for that.

I feel the Bloomberg article was inherently biased and had all of the making’s of a ‘Hit Piece’. For me personally I have connected with some fascinating individuals that serious about what they do. They are very sincere and serious about their approach. They do not need oversight! We live in a very opinionated world and Sustack displays that fact! Just because I do not agree with something doesn’t men I shouldn’t be able to experience it. It shows me that we are in a ‘layer cake’ of thought, vision, decisions that form our reality! That I call is our human experience. Thank you for listening. Until the next episode!

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Disclaimer: There is absolutely no A.I utilized here. Only Human Intuitiveness.

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