An open letter to Chris Best, CEO of Substack
Don’t shoot the messenger.
Note: A shy reader of mine who doesn’t post, asked me to share her open letter to Chris Best, as it seemed the kind thing to do. Let’s hope she doesn’t get a passive aggressive reply like Robert M. Hamburger did.
Dear Chris Best,
“Man’s word is his wand filled with magic and power!” So I speak a word for Substack: let the fog be lifted.
You are co-founder and CEO of Substack, and therefore the steward of a very delicate idea: that the writer and reader may meet without the din of the marketplace, without the cracked cymbals of social vanity, without the little goblins of the algorithm crying, “Look at me! Like me! Restack me!”
Substack came to many of us as a promise of right conditions. Writing over posting. Readers over mobs. A direct channel, not a carnival. You have said, in substance, that Substack should help audiences reclaim their attention and escape the doomscroll. That is a beautiful word to speak over the world. But a word must be followed by its demonstration.
Then the reader opens the mobile phone application.
And there, where he asked for sourdough bread, he receives confetti.
Notes. Notes from people he follows. Notes from people adjacent to people he follows. Notes recommended through the extended Substack network. Restacks, replies, comments, and conversational vapor.
The Home tab, by Substack’s own description, is not a quiet reading room; it is a mixed mental atmosphere of posts, notes, recommendations, and conversations. The Inbox may still hold chronological posts, but the front door feels increasingly like a bazaar.
“Nothing on earth can resist an absolutely nonresistant person,” once wrote a wise woman. But this is not nonresistance; this is reader fatigue. The user is not resisting discovery. He is resisting being shown every passing mental postcard when he came to read a letter.
A recent reader complaint asked, in effect: where is the simple, chronological feed of posts from the Substacks I subscribe to? Another new reader said Home felt mostly like Notes, “some FB/Twitter thing rather than a place to read the writings of those I follow.” Others complain that Notes has become follow-for-follow, personal-brand soup, and a distracting social layer they wish they could remove.
This is the mud pie on your desk, Chris: not that Notes exists, but that Notes has become the thing readers must bless, mute, dodge, decipher, and spiritually overcome before reaching the writing.
There is also the matter of slop.
Slop is not poor writing. Poor writing may be alive, shy, awkward, and on its way to glory. Slop is dead on arrival. It is content without incarnation. It has no pulse. It has no wound. It has no risk. It is the wilderness before it blossoms as the rose.
AI is not, of itself, the enemy. A tool may be used under grace or under greed. Substack’s own survey says 45.4% of surveyed publishers use AI, mostly for research, proofreading, ideation, and productivity. So be it. But a platform built on trust must not be coy about the difference between a human being using a tool and a tool wearing a human face.
“A person who knows the power of the word becomes very careful of his conversation.” A platform that knows the power of attention must become very careful of its feed.
So here is the word I ask you to speak in product form:
Give readers a Posts-first feed.
Give readers a Notes-off switch.
Give readers a chronological posts-only default that does not have to be hunted like a lost coin.
Give writers stronger, visible tools for AI-use disclosure.
Give everyone better ways to mute engagement bait, growth-hacking rituals, and the ambient mist of “let’s grow together” performance.
For a feed is not neutral. Discovery is not a meadow. Recommendation is not a breeze. A feed is machinery, and machinery always carries intention.
“Every man is a golden link in the chain of my good.” Let Notes be a golden link for those who want it. But do not make it the chain across the library door.
Substack’s right work is not to become Twitter in a linen jacket. Its right work is to protect the direct line between the writer and the reader. Its right work is to make attention feel clean again.
I speak the Word for Substack: let the right feed appear in the right way. Let the Posts feed be restored, plain and blessed. Let Notes take its right place, and not another’s. Let all slop dissolve and dissipate, and let the Divine Idea of the platform come to pass: writers writing, readers reading, and attention no longer dragged through the marketplace by its collar.
Young Christopher, we know you’re trying your best! Your word is your wand! Like Adam, You have the power!
F.S.
New York.