this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2025
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Never used Substack, can someone please explain how this is different from lets say Medium?
Medium is proprietary and publicly traded so is on the enshitification train full speed ahead
So Medium and Substack are similar? And Ghost is also an open-source alternative to Medium as much as it is alternative to Substack?
Yes. That's right. There are some subtle differences between Medium and Substack mostly owing to the fact that Medium was originally designed as a blogging site and Substack was originally designed as an email newsletter platform (with a place to park blog posts as well). So each is a bit catered a bit more catered to their original goal, although they've certainly become more similar over time.
Ghost seems to be squarely in the middle: both a blog site builder/newsletter platform from the outset. Honestly, Ghost looks to maybe be doing the site builder piece even better (like more ability to remove Ghost branding relative to Medium/Substack, which makes sense since it's open source).
Ghost is also a non-profit. It's kind of a poster child of sustainable software development.
Medium has a paywall, which tends to keep me away, but Substack pays Nazis to post there. This makes the Substack platform distasteful for those who dislike fascists.
Oh, interesting. I knew something was off about the place when I kept seeing anti-"woke" conservative opinion pieces posted there, but I thought it was just a bunch of MAGA morons voluntarily role-playing as "independent" "journalists".
Ghost has optional paywall as well.
Substack is newsletter focused, subscriptions are for individual substack writers' newsletters (you can't access all substack newsletters with a single subscription) and it has a recommendation feature that writers like because it can help them grow their subscribers and therefore grow their revenue.