I’m not Zvi obviously, but my model is something like this: Wordpress is very boring. It’s not “a thing”. Nobody blames Wordpress for content published on Wordpress; they blame whoever wrote it. Probably the fact that every Wordpress blog has its own style contributes to this; there is mostly no unified “Wordpress brand”, except the brand of people who haven’t gotten around to picking a real theme yet.
Substack talks a good game about anti-censorship, but Substack is NOT boring. They are trying to make a name for themselves, they force common branding across all the blogs on their site, and they generally want Substack itself to be “a thing”, not just a neutral platform that fades into the background. And they are likely to attract controversy, and then as a result attract pressure. Usually people eventually fold under pressure. Promises not to fold under pressure are just meaningless marketing copy.
I’m not Zvi obviously, but my model is something like this: Wordpress is very boring. It’s not “a thing”. Nobody blames Wordpress for content published on Wordpress; they blame whoever wrote it. Probably the fact that every Wordpress blog has its own style contributes to this; there is mostly no unified “Wordpress brand”, except the brand of people who haven’t gotten around to picking a real theme yet.
Substack talks a good game about anti-censorship, but Substack is NOT boring. They are trying to make a name for themselves, they force common branding across all the blogs on their site, and they generally want Substack itself to be “a thing”, not just a neutral platform that fades into the background. And they are likely to attract controversy, and then as a result attract pressure. Usually people eventually fold under pressure. Promises not to fold under pressure are just meaningless marketing copy.
That makes sense.