As someone who started a Substack six months ago, I actually suspect it could have the opposite impact: people with relevant content will be even more eager to cross-post it here to try and build their audience.
I’ve not done this myself because most of my content is not EA-related and the two posts of mine which were EA-related felt too introductory for the forum (ex: defending EA against non-EA critics). I also felt weird about using an altruistic platform to self-promote too nakedly if the post wasn’t a good fit (and even now I feel weird that someone might interpret this comment that way—isn’t self-awareness fun?).
But to my point, neither of the posts I wrote on Substack were thoughts I’d have posted here if I hadn’t started a Substack. And if I did have thoughts that felt like they would be of value to people who were already highly involved EAs, I’d be especially excited to put in effort towards fleshing them out now compared to how excited I’d have been a year ago, due to the ability to cross-post and potentially draw more eyeballs to my Substack.
In short, watching the subscriber count rise is an even more flattering dopamine boost than EA forum karma, and the market is competitive enough that many writers are sharking for excuses to self-promote on external sites.
(Relatedly, I’d definitely +1 to the idea of making a Substack for the weekly Forum Digest as soon as possible (maybe you already have one but I couldn’t find it from a quick search just now).)
As someone who started a Substack six months ago, I actually suspect it could have the opposite impact: people with relevant content will be even more eager to cross-post it here to try and build their audience.
I’ve not done this myself because most of my content is not EA-related and the two posts of mine which were EA-related felt too introductory for the forum (ex: defending EA against non-EA critics). I also felt weird about using an altruistic platform to self-promote too nakedly if the post wasn’t a good fit (and even now I feel weird that someone might interpret this comment that way—isn’t self-awareness fun?).
But to my point, neither of the posts I wrote on Substack were thoughts I’d have posted here if I hadn’t started a Substack. And if I did have thoughts that felt like they would be of value to people who were already highly involved EAs, I’d be especially excited to put in effort towards fleshing them out now compared to how excited I’d have been a year ago, due to the ability to cross-post and potentially draw more eyeballs to my Substack.
In short, watching the subscriber count rise is an even more flattering dopamine boost than EA forum karma, and the market is competitive enough that many writers are sharking for excuses to self-promote on external sites.
(Relatedly, I’d definitely +1 to the idea of making a Substack for the weekly Forum Digest as soon as possible (maybe you already have one but I couldn’t find it from a quick search just now).)