The B-Side/“The Two Tracks of Your Tears”

Friday Ramble On the part of the algorithm that is us

“Tracks of Your Tears”, Bing Image Creator - Dall.E.3

Previously…

I have reached the conclusion that there are two tracks for Substack growth, fast and slow where slow includes long periods of decay, and when that is exhausted, stagnation. I am just pointing out how it really works. This is an exploration but it uses the information and observations that are readily available to us all.

The A-Side /“Two Track Stack”, The Vigne Intervention

The A-Side/"Two Track Substack"

Now, should you come into this episode cold and think this is about my personal disillusionment, you’d be missing the point. I am interested in the dynamics and you can draw your own conclusions about how useful it is.

So what do I claim?

That there are two Substack growth tracks:

• Fast tending to exponential

• Slow tending to decay

Any strategy for gaming Substack is never really about content but how it’s gift wrapped in order to change track. In the companion episode I gave an example of how engagement can happen despite having zero content and I predict this is going to become more commonplace.

An account that gets a high initial engagement is fast tracked into growth while an account starting from scratch with little engagement will follow a track of diminishing opportunity. I think many writers will think of that ‘opportunity’ as being exposure to a reading audience, but insofar as that is correct, it is indirect.

The direct opportunity is first and foremost to demonstrate the engagement-potential of the account to the algorithm - note that I did not say ‘content’. Yet any engagement becomes increasingly hard when your Substack goes on mute.

So how does that happen? If any kind of post fails to get traction, the next post will get even less platform exposure and unchecked, your discoverability circles the drain.

Those who stick with the slow track may take years to get anywhere, with long periods of stagnation and even decay. I think this is important to understand that even if you are gaining a few subscribers a month, it is not really a case of building anything, but improving your odds. Each post is still a roll of the dice until it is read by an individual who is capable and willing to blow your content up.

I dare say that anyone whose Substack suddenly took off after being stagnant, would most likely be able to pin it on something they posted or just happened to be picked up by the right person. This is why it is so difficult to change tracks or win lotteries; the odd are ‘stacked’ (geddit?) against you.

If you interrogate the Substack bot it will tell you that your platform exposure is linked to engagement. It is not necessary to read the linked post below, but if you are interested in what I have already said about another ‘conversation’ with the bot, you can find it here.

The Overlords of Under-Loved Content

This is unsurprising for a social media platform but it has implications for one that promotes writing. I argue that the extent to which it ‘promotes writing’ is as a side effect of amplifying proven engagement through further exposure. One way to get on the ‘right’ track is to do some marketing though direct engagement. Of course, not everyone who writes wants to embark upon self-promotion.

Theo sums it up perfectly.

You might say that I am selfish, expecting results without doing the dirty work. I disagree. Because engaging with readers’ (good faith) comments, and with the small number of newsletters I have the emotional bandwidth to sustain interest in, isn’t a chore - it’s a pleasure. The mutual exchange of ideas and feedback is a gift of the internet age. But wading into discussions I have no stake or expertise in, or dropping mindless platitudes that fake more enthusiasm for a post than I genuinely feel, purely to get seen, is a shallow and cheapening pursuit, one that inflates the currency of our goodwill, and I don’t want any audience I may obtain to be built off the back of it.

Theo FS

, Substack

Do we resign ourselves to becoming superficial as an antidote to becoming disillusioned? If those the only logical options it would seem that disillusionment would be a natural outcome. Even if someone was to decide to go elsewhere, or perhaps host their own content, they are unlikely to remove what’s already on Substack. There is a sunk cost dimension to all this that I won’t labour.

During a conversation that can be found below,

Landon Poburan

suggests that the algorithm acts on content.

I understand why he says that but have to disagree on what I think is an extremely common misconception. The Substack algorithm takes account of engagement and not content. The example he gives of someone whose Substack growth can be correlated to writing about controversial subject matter, is true, precisely because polarising articles engage people from both sides for opposing reasons. Any relationship between content and visibility has to be indirect.

I don’t believe that the Substack algorithm discriminates on any basis other than engagement. However, because it operates on our engagement, it will amplify any dominant biases that exist on the platform. Those who see the content are the arbiters of its value via the measure of their engagement. We are human transducers converting content into an engagement signal.

This also means that if the content is invisible it can have no value on the platform. The platform algorithm must be almost (not excluding the possibility that harmful content like suicide ideation would not be trapped) entirely indifferent to content. This means everything we write is forced into becoming a means to an end. If you are ever tempted to change your message to suit your audience at least recognise why.

You can expect no basic level of exposure when you contribute writing to the platform. This means that even your followers may not see what you write. I know this because I have sometimes had to check to see if certain people had posted anything after I had not seen anything from them in a while.

Here is an experiment you can try for yourself. Pick some accounts that you follow but whose newsletters you do not subscribe to. Copy links to them so you can find them easily. Set yourself a reminder to check on their activity in a couple of weeks. When you go back you will find you have missed most of their content in the interim. I dare say that most people engage with their feed and generally never bother looking for individuals they decided to follow.

Where’s the Evidence?

On Thursday 24 October 2024, I counted up my Notes and there were 256 that had collectively accumulated 95 ‘hearts’, most of them were gained from my comments to the Notes of others, and this is a significant detail.

I had 51 consecutive Notes with not a single engagement but then got 5 likes to my reply to somebody else’s Note. That suggests to me that the Notes I initiate are next to invisible. I could only get engagement by commenting on a Note that was already visible.

Now, any Substack guru or even the in-house Chatbot will advise us to engage with others - it makes sense. Yet it is not for the reasons that people might suppose, for example networking or, ‘building community’. It is about piggy backing onto content that is already visible, after all, you had to see it.

That the algorithm does not discriminate on the basis of content is extremely good news if you believe in freedom of expression, but the downside is that it only measures demand-side engagement. The supply-side engagement (i.e. of content producers) is of no consequence to the algorithm.