[juanbyrge]

Lol, I could host all of substack as static html pages on a $20/mo linode instance. Embarrassing.

[MontyCarloHall]

Everyone knows it is trivial to host a read-only static website with the traffic of Substack.

It’s the read/write part that gets you.

[_Algernon_]

Doubt you could do that in a way where you'd attract users at the level of Substack.

[miiiiiike]

You could if you gave people $400-500k to move over.

[nicky0]

If my grandmother had wheels, she would be a bike.

[ScottyAdams0]

They only pay $3500 and it comes with a big NDA.

[miiiiiike]

They were fronting people 250k+ for their first year. IIRC

[ScottyAdams0]

Umm maybe it’s the fact substack is outright paying for traffic and lying about it? It’s just their own paid influencers who use it.

[Veen]

Perhaps I'm a bit old-fashioned, but paying writers to write doesn't seem like a particularly nefarious activity to me. I mean, I believe the NYT does it too, and a few other organizations.

[naasking]

Where are they lying about it? They openly admit to paying writers. And no, it's not "just" their influencers using it.