Annalee Newitz, parsing a variety of issues at Substack, this week:

Substack’s business is a scam. They claim to offer writers a level playing field for making a living, and instead they pay an elite, secret group of writers to be on the platform and make newsletter writing appear to be more lucrative than it is.

Me, in 2013:

What if I told you you could be published alongside writers from (but not in) The New Yorker for the low low price of free? In a nut, that’s Medium: a slick, magazine-like publishing and reading platform that writers should be so lucky to contribute to.¹

I don’t get the whole newsletter thing, so I never really bothered to figure out how Substack works. Sounds like it’s Medium, but worse.