I’ve been thinking about this great

piece a lot. The big social networks were once good (I was there when they were born!). But the ads-based business model destined them—and therefore the entire media system—to a particular fate. The world doesn’t need yet another social network, but it does need, and deserves, a better media system based on a different model with different rules. This is what we’re up to with Substack—not just creating a publishing network for writers (although that’s an important part of it), but building an entirely new system from the ground up. It’s a long project, but we hope the effects will be enduring.