I do only notes and comments here, bc I am retired with a good income, and have no interest in competing with the authors I enjoy so much.
Nevertheless, I am highly suspicious of Substack’s sudden upsurge in huge shitlib accounts with 100s of thousands of subscribers the first week. Smells bad. Have to wonder if it’s related to all the weird numbers voodoo right side authors are seeing?
I have posted in the comment from Bill Rice Jr, who recently mentioned lots of unsubscribers. Hopefully we can either straighten up Substack or we need to find another platform. Some people recently mentioned this possibility.
For what it's worth, there are multiple ways to unsubscribe from a publication (link in email, own profile, 'Manage subscription' panel, possibly more), and I guess not all of these generate notifications. On a tangentially related note, I've occasionally also received multiple notifications in a row for one and the same subscriber, which clearly indicates the code isn't ACID-compliant.
And this might happen on the "incoming" end as well: from time to time I receive notifications for new subscribers but they never appear in the subscriber list (which is by default sorted by date, so it's easy to see). Current working theory: the notification is sent out too soon, and if they don't click through all the screens, the subscription is "aborted" and not saved.
It might be possible to test this experimentally but I'm such a lazy rodent. :)
I have absolutely seen this on mine as well for the last week and I half I keep getting new Subs emails and an occasional Unsubscribe email but for som reason my subscriber count has literally flatlined. The same number for 3 days now.
There are plenty of great comments here for you to work with, but just let me throw in my two sense,and that would be check, if you can, and see which subscribers and lost subscriptions are using the SubStack app. I can assure you I have many problems with all of my emails that I get from you and everyone else that I follow on SubStack. i’m not sure what SubStack terms of service require so I don’t know if it’s possible for us to communicate privately with emails. I can’t discuss it in comments
There are two additional elements to the equation that may be involved, if we are to believe it is simply mathematics. Current total number of subscribers = number who subscribed - number who unsubscribed - number of accounts removed by Substack sysadmins as spam or terms violators +/- error bar representing wide area database synchronisation uncertainty
Now, you have given an example of 18 missing subscribers, which seems, to me, to be a really big number of accounts who have been added to your subscriber list and then removed by some process other than unsubscribing. In the equation I describe above, reasons like spam or terms violations are mentioned. But it may be that they are unsubscribed from your 'stack without their knowledge.
It would be possible, though not easy, to go to your settings on Dashboard and work your way around to download all your articles and all your subscribers. They used to make it easy to get your subscriber list as a .csv download but last Summer they changed the download to your follower list instead, which isn't relevant to the pursuit of further data in this matter. The subscriber list becomes a .csv and so you need to open it with something like LibreOffice Calc or Microsoft (ew, Bill Gates ugly) Excel. Then look at the most recent subscribers from your email notifications of new subscribers. Find the ones that are not in the notifications of unsubscribers. Now you want to go onto Substack's web site, logged in, and see if any of those mysterious missing accounts are still accounts - if you search for them and they show up and they have recent comments or articles or other activity, then you might ask them in direct messages or comments on their notes or articles whether they knew that they had been removed from your subscriber list. Probably a good idea to check the .csv file to confirm the removal.
Yes, there is a known problem in computer science relating to database synch which causes error bars or uncertainty in things like subscriber count. However, it is not always negative, sometimes it is positive. We used to see that for large accounts on Twitter that would move up or down by as much as 1% over the course of a few days. This factor became less obvious after about 2018 when almost all of the activity on accounts we monitored became negative. Probably due to a change in 2017 or 2018 that was made to influence the midterm election cycle.
Some people who have been noticing this situation for a while include Margaret Anna Alice and Starfire Codes, so I will tag them in a restack here in a mniute.
Some of the voices here on Substack are being deilberately muted or silenced. Manipulating subscriber count is a way of saying that your ideas are not as popular. When you reflect on the liberal socialist communist culture in San Francisco (see the copyright notices and legal headquarters contact address) and the related ideology of the code team, you may suspect that your opinions are unwelcome. Substack pretends to be a free speech platform, but it is not. Someones' thumbs are on the scale. Not just one, but several. And, as we all know from George Orwell, some thumbs are more equal than others.
I suspect this is endemic across all "corporate" social media. I experience it over on SafeChat also. But what can you expect when everyone is more concerned about power and control than they are about truth and discussion? As El Gato Malo says, when you "are your ideas", any discussion that goes contrary to your ideas are perceived as a personal attack - and that is likely why their response is always "in kind".
I have no illusions about my own scribblings - I write for myself (and because someone on SafeChat urged me to) but I will never have the readership that you have. Maybe that's for the best.
I have the same problem with the numbers on Substack. I went from 2,894 to a current 2,871, while gaining readers. No, it does not compute.
My other concern is whether we are getting credit for the books we have for sale on Amazon? We have to trust they are giving us the right number of sales and the corresponding royalties.
Dude! First of all, kudos on the image you generated for this drop - that is AWESOME! :-)
Secondly... you already know where I am at. I too have experienced the discrepancies in totals, and they make zero sense.
Fren Bacon Commander made an interesting observation about this as well, how his growth in subscribers has been steady despite having not posted a single blog in two years... until recently. He finally dropped one again yesterday, and he is getting virtually no traction with it. He IS active on Notes, however, which seems to be the driver for subs... as long as you do not actually POST anything for those subscribers.
How messed up is that?
I tell ya, brother, it's a categorical failure of epic proportions, straight across the board.
I've been writing on the Substack platform since 2021 and I can say that a given article doesn't always count all new subscribers. The platform is free to use and does offer a host of services . . . so you take what you can get. In some cases it could be that people are subscribing multiple times or subscriptions are coming through earlier essays. But I would agree it always seems a bit off.
Frankly my bigger concern is censorship. My series of essay, The Urgent Need for Global De-Islamification, got me permanently suspended from FacistBook after I'd been on the platform for 20 years. I was accused of violating Communist Community Standards for "hate speech." LinkedIn deleted my latest in the series for the same reason. But they didn't outright suspend me. To be clear there is nothing in these essays that can be described as hate speech. I'm just simply concerned about the spread of Islam and think we need to take measure to force Muslim assimilation. I live in Dearborn and have nothing against my Muslim neighbors. But the radicalization within my community must be stopped.
The Urgent Need for Global De-Islamification Part 7
Muslims want a Global Muslim Caliphate Antithetical to our Constitutional Republic
Thanks, Bruce! I just signed up, and - for the first time in my life - I managed to score the username "@Stone'. Do you know how HARD it is get that name? LOL
So I am very much looking forward to exploring the platform...
In addition to writing about Covid nonsense, he has a library of articles on this same issue. One of the thoughts is that it has to do with all of the lefties who have infiltrated the site. As much as you or I may see lower numbers, all of the new additions seem to have highly inflated numbers.
I think reading Bill might clear (if you want to call it that) things up.
Yeah. I have seen big name crossover leftie journos with instant big big numbers, and he writes a controversial article and gets 4 comments. Tons of likes too. Not reasonable.
Substack has many more problems like its figures. Its renewed Search function under Archive is the worst: it severely truncates search results for my nearly 1,200 articles. It used to be great up to about 6-8 months ago.
Substack also tends to update its figures belatedly, and it has also changed the way annual revenue is calculated, not that it matters much.
Somewhat ironically, how can one know which way the math is tainted? It showed fewer unsubscribes or too many subscribers to begin with?
Your problem might also originate from not observing the difference between subscribers and followers. I hate the follower option, because I can send e-mail updates only to subscribers.
I do only notes and comments here, bc I am retired with a good income, and have no interest in competing with the authors I enjoy so much.
Nevertheless, I am highly suspicious of Substack’s sudden upsurge in huge shitlib accounts with 100s of thousands of subscribers the first week. Smells bad. Have to wonder if it’s related to all the weird numbers voodoo right side authors are seeing?
I have seen so many troll lefties which when I check have no posts and 2-4 subscribers. Bots as far as I can see.
I have posted in the comment from Bill Rice Jr, who recently mentioned lots of unsubscribers. Hopefully we can either straighten up Substack or we need to find another platform. Some people recently mentioned this possibility.
For what it's worth, there are multiple ways to unsubscribe from a publication (link in email, own profile, 'Manage subscription' panel, possibly more), and I guess not all of these generate notifications. On a tangentially related note, I've occasionally also received multiple notifications in a row for one and the same subscriber, which clearly indicates the code isn't ACID-compliant.
And this might happen on the "incoming" end as well: from time to time I receive notifications for new subscribers but they never appear in the subscriber list (which is by default sorted by date, so it's easy to see). Current working theory: the notification is sent out too soon, and if they don't click through all the screens, the subscription is "aborted" and not saved.
It might be possible to test this experimentally but I'm such a lazy rodent. :)
Quit your whining, whiny white male “free speech absolutists!”
WHITE MALE OWNED SUBSTACK PLATFORMS NAZIS ON THEIR PODCASTS & CENSORS WOMEN & BLACK PEOPLE!
I was white man TaliBANNED from November 30, 2024-January 6, 2025 and my soaring numbers never recovered afterward! Fuck all y’all!
https://wynnwynnsituations.substack.com/p/i-smell-a-rat-in-the-substacks-algorithm?r=nlxz5&utm_medium=ios
I have also noticed that a lot of users just disappear without my ever getting an unsubscribe email.
Could be a bug, or could be Substack limiting the reach of politically incorrect sites.
I have absolutely seen this on mine as well for the last week and I half I keep getting new Subs emails and an occasional Unsubscribe email but for som reason my subscriber count has literally flatlined. The same number for 3 days now.
There are plenty of great comments here for you to work with, but just let me throw in my two sense,and that would be check, if you can, and see which subscribers and lost subscriptions are using the SubStack app. I can assure you I have many problems with all of my emails that I get from you and everyone else that I follow on SubStack. i’m not sure what SubStack terms of service require so I don’t know if it’s possible for us to communicate privately with emails. I can’t discuss it in comments
There are two additional elements to the equation that may be involved, if we are to believe it is simply mathematics. Current total number of subscribers = number who subscribed - number who unsubscribed - number of accounts removed by Substack sysadmins as spam or terms violators +/- error bar representing wide area database synchronisation uncertainty
Now, you have given an example of 18 missing subscribers, which seems, to me, to be a really big number of accounts who have been added to your subscriber list and then removed by some process other than unsubscribing. In the equation I describe above, reasons like spam or terms violations are mentioned. But it may be that they are unsubscribed from your 'stack without their knowledge.
It would be possible, though not easy, to go to your settings on Dashboard and work your way around to download all your articles and all your subscribers. They used to make it easy to get your subscriber list as a .csv download but last Summer they changed the download to your follower list instead, which isn't relevant to the pursuit of further data in this matter. The subscriber list becomes a .csv and so you need to open it with something like LibreOffice Calc or Microsoft (ew, Bill Gates ugly) Excel. Then look at the most recent subscribers from your email notifications of new subscribers. Find the ones that are not in the notifications of unsubscribers. Now you want to go onto Substack's web site, logged in, and see if any of those mysterious missing accounts are still accounts - if you search for them and they show up and they have recent comments or articles or other activity, then you might ask them in direct messages or comments on their notes or articles whether they knew that they had been removed from your subscriber list. Probably a good idea to check the .csv file to confirm the removal.
Yes, there is a known problem in computer science relating to database synch which causes error bars or uncertainty in things like subscriber count. However, it is not always negative, sometimes it is positive. We used to see that for large accounts on Twitter that would move up or down by as much as 1% over the course of a few days. This factor became less obvious after about 2018 when almost all of the activity on accounts we monitored became negative. Probably due to a change in 2017 or 2018 that was made to influence the midterm election cycle.
Some people who have been noticing this situation for a while include Margaret Anna Alice and Starfire Codes, so I will tag them in a restack here in a mniute.
Some of the voices here on Substack are being deilberately muted or silenced. Manipulating subscriber count is a way of saying that your ideas are not as popular. When you reflect on the liberal socialist communist culture in San Francisco (see the copyright notices and legal headquarters contact address) and the related ideology of the code team, you may suspect that your opinions are unwelcome. Substack pretends to be a free speech platform, but it is not. Someones' thumbs are on the scale. Not just one, but several. And, as we all know from George Orwell, some thumbs are more equal than others.
I suspect this is endemic across all "corporate" social media. I experience it over on SafeChat also. But what can you expect when everyone is more concerned about power and control than they are about truth and discussion? As El Gato Malo says, when you "are your ideas", any discussion that goes contrary to your ideas are perceived as a personal attack - and that is likely why their response is always "in kind".
I have no illusions about my own scribblings - I write for myself (and because someone on SafeChat urged me to) but I will never have the readership that you have. Maybe that's for the best.
I have the same problem with the numbers on Substack. I went from 2,894 to a current 2,871, while gaining readers. No, it does not compute.
My other concern is whether we are getting credit for the books we have for sale on Amazon? We have to trust they are giving us the right number of sales and the corresponding royalties.
Dude! First of all, kudos on the image you generated for this drop - that is AWESOME! :-)
Secondly... you already know where I am at. I too have experienced the discrepancies in totals, and they make zero sense.
Fren Bacon Commander made an interesting observation about this as well, how his growth in subscribers has been steady despite having not posted a single blog in two years... until recently. He finally dropped one again yesterday, and he is getting virtually no traction with it. He IS active on Notes, however, which seems to be the driver for subs... as long as you do not actually POST anything for those subscribers.
How messed up is that?
I tell ya, brother, it's a categorical failure of epic proportions, straight across the board.
I've been writing on the Substack platform since 2021 and I can say that a given article doesn't always count all new subscribers. The platform is free to use and does offer a host of services . . . so you take what you can get. In some cases it could be that people are subscribing multiple times or subscriptions are coming through earlier essays. But I would agree it always seems a bit off.
Frankly my bigger concern is censorship. My series of essay, The Urgent Need for Global De-Islamification, got me permanently suspended from FacistBook after I'd been on the platform for 20 years. I was accused of violating Communist Community Standards for "hate speech." LinkedIn deleted my latest in the series for the same reason. But they didn't outright suspend me. To be clear there is nothing in these essays that can be described as hate speech. I'm just simply concerned about the spread of Islam and think we need to take measure to force Muslim assimilation. I live in Dearborn and have nothing against my Muslim neighbors. But the radicalization within my community must be stopped.
The Urgent Need for Global De-Islamification Part 7
Muslims want a Global Muslim Caliphate Antithetical to our Constitutional Republic
https://brucecain.substack.com/p/the-urgent-need-for-global-de-islamification-7c2
You might also want to start cross posting to PickAx which promises no censorship and just began a few days ago:
https://pickax.com/
Thanks, Bruce! I just signed up, and - for the first time in my life - I managed to score the username "@Stone'. Do you know how HARD it is get that name? LOL
So I am very much looking forward to exploring the platform...
Duke, may I suggest looking up Bill Rice …
https://substack.com/@billricejr
In addition to writing about Covid nonsense, he has a library of articles on this same issue. One of the thoughts is that it has to do with all of the lefties who have infiltrated the site. As much as you or I may see lower numbers, all of the new additions seem to have highly inflated numbers.
I think reading Bill might clear (if you want to call it that) things up.
Yeah. I have seen big name crossover leftie journos with instant big big numbers, and he writes a controversial article and gets 4 comments. Tons of likes too. Not reasonable.
Substack has many more problems like its figures. Its renewed Search function under Archive is the worst: it severely truncates search results for my nearly 1,200 articles. It used to be great up to about 6-8 months ago.
Substack also tends to update its figures belatedly, and it has also changed the way annual revenue is calculated, not that it matters much.
Somewhat ironically, how can one know which way the math is tainted? It showed fewer unsubscribes or too many subscribers to begin with?
Your problem might also originate from not observing the difference between subscribers and followers. I hate the follower option, because I can send e-mail updates only to subscribers.