Substack just killed the creator economy

Summary

Substack just fucked over their writers (and readers).Last week, they announced that all writers would be required to offer Apple’s in-app purchase (IAP) payment option. That means that Apple will be collecting a 30% fee for all subscriptions purchased on Substack via IAP. But don’t worry, Substack will automatically set prices higher in the iOS app so their writers take home the same amount (i.e., the cost is passed on to the readers). Oddly enough, this heavy-handed decision was made unilaterally, without giving writers the ability to opt out. Users responded pretty much exactly how you would have expected in the comment section of the announcement.It hasn’t even been two full months since Substack raised their $100M Series C, and The Chernin Group (TCG) is already deploying their usual playbook of aggressive growth and revenue extraction at the expense of the original product and vision. This is the same TCG that had previously decimated Food52, Hodinkee, and Cameo.Substack writers just saw their prices inflated 30% on iOS. Writers now have to wait 45 days to receive payment from Apple. Writers had absolutely no say in the decision, despite the very real consequences for their business. The feature cannot be disabled or toggled off. And while the move is obviously terrible for everyone involved (not named Substack or Apple), focusing on the exorbitant fees is entirely missing the forest for the trees. This move is far more insidious. While users interact with Substack, Stripe is actually powering the backend payments. When writers join the platform, they connect their own Stripe account to Substack. This means that the writer owns the data and billing relationship with their readers, independent of Substack. When a reader upgrades to pay for a newsletter, under the hood, they become a customer in the writer’s own Stripe account. The writer has full ownership of this transaction and can view, update, and manage billing settings as they please (it’s their customer ...