I moved The Glenn Show to Substack about two years ago. In that time, I’ve watched with great pleasure as our audience has grown, people have put down their hard-earned money for access to premium content and benefits, and The Glenn Show has progressed from a labor of love to a financially self-sustaining venture. I can now afford to pay a small staff to help expand the show’s reach and ambition and a professional editor to step up the video and audio quality. I can buy better recording equipment and make improvements to my home studio. Most importantly, though, your contributions ensure that I don’t have to rely entirely on advertisers or platforms that can shut me down if they don’t like what I’m saying.
Bari Weiss introduced me to you via her podcast just as I was finding myself dislodged from the fixed matrix of my echo chamber, and I will be forever grateful that you helped make that path morally navigable. IMHO, the world needs a Senator Loury. I understand we can't have nice things, but thank you just the same.
In the end, this direction will be the slow grinding diminishment of the Substack platform’s growth and reach potential when adopted my many, but I can empathize with the choice. Hopefully Substack will learn from the community model of Stack Exchange, as it seems to work well enough there.
Can someone pls tell me where I went wrong, apparently, in thinking the deal was “no pay, no comment”? If you could’ve commented before without paying, what was the benefit of paying?
I'm a little disappointed, but maybe I'm missing some things. Were trolls that much of an issue? You get a LOT of comments, Glenn, and there've been a few times you've acknowledged taking comments down because of something egregiously racist or offensive. I don't read all of them by a long shot so maybe I'm missing a troll problem you may have. I would like to see everyone given the ability to comment return, and if you block the ones who've effed up, that's no big deal. I would like to see a wider variety of comments, but maybe you've already got so many paying subscribers it doesn't impact them much? I don't know.
I’m confused. I thought I was paying bc only payers got to comment. Was it that way & it changed at some point to where anyone could comment? And now it’s changing back? Can someone pls tell me what I’ve been paying for?
As others have said in the comments to this post, it could create somewhat of an echo-chamber in the comments section.
What I have to add to these reflections is that emphasize the selection bias involved. Playing off what I said in my earlier post about this topic, it is precisely those people who disagree with Glenn's views that are likely to balk at paying him for a subscription.
he was on Glenn's show that i watched last night - there is a picture of him holding a drink- anyway - glenn talked about cleaning out his desk since he never went to brown in person anymore but worked from home = and john started talking about his pretty non-woke views had pretty much gotten him banned him from all of his liguistic groups - didn't lose he job at columbia but evidently is pretty much cancelled amongst the variouos linguistic groups he was in - it was actually pretty sad - he was devastated you could tell -
Everybody (and her mother and his father) has a Substack now, and each is asking $40-$80 per year for a subscription.
Online news and commentary outlets, with a host of commentators contributing, run from what, $50-$150 per year.
So at $40-$80 a pop, most common people are going to be able to subscribe to just a handful of Substackers.
Glenn made the cut because of my incredible respect for him and what he has been doing online.
There are many other Substackers I like, but only at, say, $20-$40 per year. I'd make my own customized online news and commentary service from them.
Basic economics tells us that there are many, many people like me.*
We'll see how this Substack phenomena plays out.
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* Everyone has a budget constraint of some sort, and they choose their bundles of Substack subscriptions to maximize their utility based on that budget constraint. The price of the various available Substack subscriptions is a factor in determining the "shape" of the budget constraint and therefore what a person's utility-maximizing bundle is.
i do find this unfortunate. There are many listeners of this podcast whose valuable insights we may lose. There are options to block and mute other substack members. However, that did not seem to work. If that did work then people could simply block members from their feed and we would not see the trolls or anyone else we did not want to. Similar to fbook. Hopefully, this will be instituted and TGS will move back to a free market of ideas and less of capitalist venture for substack and Glenn. :)
My ROI from TGS on substack is incalculably massive by any algorithm I am able to conjure. It is disheartening to realize Biden v Trump is our probable choice in '24 when you are exactly who the nation needs to lead us.
💡
Am I considered a paying troll subscriber? The subscriber consensus here? The issue, Rule, Application, and Conclusion analysis? Lol!!!!
Such a smart idea. Your show is a highlight of my week. Thanks for thinking of ways to keep it engaging without the trolls.
Bari Weiss introduced me to you via her podcast just as I was finding myself dislodged from the fixed matrix of my echo chamber, and I will be forever grateful that you helped make that path morally navigable. IMHO, the world needs a Senator Loury. I understand we can't have nice things, but thank you just the same.
Glad you have the show here!
In the end, this direction will be the slow grinding diminishment of the Substack platform’s growth and reach potential when adopted my many, but I can empathize with the choice. Hopefully Substack will learn from the community model of Stack Exchange, as it seems to work well enough there.
Can someone pls tell me where I went wrong, apparently, in thinking the deal was “no pay, no comment”? If you could’ve commented before without paying, what was the benefit of paying?
I'm a little disappointed, but maybe I'm missing some things. Were trolls that much of an issue? You get a LOT of comments, Glenn, and there've been a few times you've acknowledged taking comments down because of something egregiously racist or offensive. I don't read all of them by a long shot so maybe I'm missing a troll problem you may have. I would like to see everyone given the ability to comment return, and if you block the ones who've effed up, that's no big deal. I would like to see a wider variety of comments, but maybe you've already got so many paying subscribers it doesn't impact them much? I don't know.
I’m confused. I thought I was paying bc only payers got to comment. Was it that way & it changed at some point to where anyone could comment? And now it’s changing back? Can someone pls tell me what I’ve been paying for?
completely valid new policy. i'm here for glenn and john's takes anyway. what they do to the comments section is inconsequential.
Perfection is elusive. Will this new protocol improve the discussion? Who can say? I hope Glenn will re-evaluate in 6 months and adjust as needed.
Another problem with pay-to-comment:
As others have said in the comments to this post, it could create somewhat of an echo-chamber in the comments section.
What I have to add to these reflections is that emphasize the selection bias involved. Playing off what I said in my earlier post about this topic, it is precisely those people who disagree with Glenn's views that are likely to balk at paying him for a subscription.
he was on Glenn's show that i watched last night - there is a picture of him holding a drink- anyway - glenn talked about cleaning out his desk since he never went to brown in person anymore but worked from home = and john started talking about his pretty non-woke views had pretty much gotten him banned him from all of his liguistic groups - didn't lose he job at columbia but evidently is pretty much cancelled amongst the variouos linguistic groups he was in - it was actually pretty sad - he was devastated you could tell -
Okay, here's a problem:
Everybody (and her mother and his father) has a Substack now, and each is asking $40-$80 per year for a subscription.
Online news and commentary outlets, with a host of commentators contributing, run from what, $50-$150 per year.
So at $40-$80 a pop, most common people are going to be able to subscribe to just a handful of Substackers.
Glenn made the cut because of my incredible respect for him and what he has been doing online.
There are many other Substackers I like, but only at, say, $20-$40 per year. I'd make my own customized online news and commentary service from them.
Basic economics tells us that there are many, many people like me.*
We'll see how this Substack phenomena plays out.
---
* Everyone has a budget constraint of some sort, and they choose their bundles of Substack subscriptions to maximize their utility based on that budget constraint. The price of the various available Substack subscriptions is a factor in determining the "shape" of the budget constraint and therefore what a person's utility-maximizing bundle is.
i do find this unfortunate. There are many listeners of this podcast whose valuable insights we may lose. There are options to block and mute other substack members. However, that did not seem to work. If that did work then people could simply block members from their feed and we would not see the trolls or anyone else we did not want to. Similar to fbook. Hopefully, this will be instituted and TGS will move back to a free market of ideas and less of capitalist venture for substack and Glenn. :)
My ROI from TGS on substack is incalculably massive by any algorithm I am able to conjure. It is disheartening to realize Biden v Trump is our probable choice in '24 when you are exactly who the nation needs to lead us.