Meta’s Ethically Dead. Substack’s Fading. What Comes Next?

A detailed solution for how to stay connected as the platforms fail.

Given the title and topic I am fascinated to see if this post will move or not. Please consider giving it a boost with a like, share, comment, or link in one of your posts. I call it Digital Philanthropy :-).

Below is a detailed proposal, easily implemented, that we can all do to connect with others, share our work, and take care of our mental health without social media platforms. Scroll down to the picture of my dog Rose if you don’t need to be convinced we have a problem or don’t care about how I got to writing this piece this morning.

I had a dream last night that Sam Altman was taking Ketamine in Halls lozenges. If you’re new to me, Ketamine almost killed me. Altman is known to appreciate drugs. Musk uses Keta so much it is impacting his bladdermine (i.e. he’s using it a lot).

I try not to scroll social media first thing but syncronistically I had a message I had to respond to so I saw Sarah Fay, PhD’s comment on Substack’s post: (note what happened there - instant, early morning distraction from purpose)

And then I saw this on my Youtube from my friend Juan (who is a spectacular massage therapist focusing on pain as well as shamanic healer).

And on LinkedIn, every day, some form of: Cindy Gallop

My exit started with Meta which is an obvious no-go if we’re going to think about ethics. [privacy is zero - don’t give them camera access btw, misinformation, election interference, child welfare in too many ways to count, AI companionship gone wrong]. Read this article at Overturned by Kelly Stonelake for more. Kelly left Meta and is now an activist against the unnecessary evil of social media. The loss of Meta in its previous form is a huge loss - it’s where we all connected with everyone we ever knew. Our earned networks. And there are legitimate reasons to stay. But I don’t have any. So I left. (Might return to post this piece! I don’t want to lose all my friends!)

Then began the whispers on TikTok from creators saying they can’t say certain things. I’m not a creator there so didn’t go deep.

But then: LinkedIn. Substack. The playfield so obviously uneven. I have seen massive changes in my reach in the past year.

There isn’t one reason for the problems (AI with its embedded bias? attention economy? surveillance capitalism? more obvious political influence?) and we may not agree on all of them but it’s clear that social media is less and less social and the list of harms growing.

We humans want to connect. To learn, to offer our work to the world in so many different ways. It’s a dark time: Layoffs in a brutal job market. Political polarization. And minimal ways to connect with each other. No surprise we’re talking to ChatGPT (but we mustn’t).

Solutions I’ve heard so far:

Committing to IRL. Local. This is the way.

And - I made my first online to IRL friend on AOL studying for the CFA exam in 1997. I am not willing to give up the ongoing connection with people all over the world that has changed my life just because the platforms are failing us.

There are alternative platforms: Bluesky, Tribela, Mastodon, Pixelfed, Web3 (ex. Base, Farecster). (I’m on Bluesky and Base [erosforlife.base.eth though I don’t post much]. Keeping my eye on the others).

Online Communities: From Signal group chats to Discord and Mighty Networks. A small group of aligned people is powerful. I commit to two communities right now and try to be in there every other day in place of the scroll.

Below is my proposal for one more key way we can connect with technology we all already have: E-mail.

Rose is happy to serve as Dopamine injection as we dive into email ideas

How to connect widely without social media:

The overview: Instead of scrolling social media feeds, you’re going to have a separate email address that you scroll.

This way you are intentional about what you consume in those moments when you desire that scroll, when you want the cross-fertilization of ideas you do it on your email, which becomes a feed. And you keep this email separate from all other emails. I’ll tell you more below.

For creators, we invest more in our emails and learning how to communicate by email and making emails enjoyable to read, shareable, et cetera. Now, here are the details.

I bet you’re already doing pieces of this. It’s just about thinking more broadly about the why of it and committing to doing it together.

For all of us:

1. Create/use a different email address than your usual for email newsletters. (I use XXXX.subs@gmail.com for example. Instead of/in addition to following people on social media - sign up for their emails. This email address should not receive anything time sensitive or personally important. Just people you like to follow.

   Note to Substackers - make this email your Substack email so you receive your Substack subscriptions there as well. Be careful with this if you write on Substack as some people have had problems with split accounts and other issues.

2. Visit that inbox as if it was a feed - which it is! You can create rules and folders and use AI tools - whatever you like! But nothing coming to that email address is anything other than information - no deadlines, no bills, no stakes. Your dopamine lives here now!

   
   Intentionally re-do your media habits to include your feed inbox.
   

   Recommendation: Put this inbox onto your phone using a separate email app. This becomes where you ‘go for the scroll’.

3. Like and comment on the creator’s website if that’s available. Some creators may publish content on their websites that you can interact with. It takes a minute to click and engage but you will have less volume in your ‘email feed’ so if something moves you - be generous!

4. Share. Share emails with your friends. Copy signup links/content links into group chats and texts. Sharing is philanthropy for the kind of world you want to live in.

For Creators:

This method requires that we connect with people more deeply - it asks more of us. And it is deeply fruitful far beyond vanity metrics - because the connection is deeper.

1. Have an email newsletter. You will start small and it will grow over time as you connect with people. I recommend Kit (not a referral link) to start because it’s free up to 10,000 subscribers if you keep things simple. It also has a solid creator profit ethos. Remember that you can export your Substack subscribers to your list.

2. Post the sign up link to that email newsletter on your social profiles and posts/comments. This works.

3. Give people a reason to sign up. You’ve seen this before in the form of ‘lead magnet.’: “5 secrets…”, “7 mistakes”, e-courses, guides….. This works for some creators. But we are not limited to this kind of pain point itching.

   You could offer something in the spirit of “I know you’re human and sometimes you need a nudge and I have this to offer from my heart…” such as a playlist or an audio meditation or…. here’s my version:

   Subscribers who respond to pain points are different from subscribers who respond to little gifts. Just like in the real world being intentional and trustworthy about how we do things online influences the relationships we create.

   Note to Substackers: When someone signs up for your Substack it is as good as them signing up for your email list. You can use the ‘reason to sign up’ right here in Substack and fulfill your promise in the Welcome email you send them upon subscription (you can see how I do this above).

4. IMPORTANT: Share the work of other creators, service providers, stores…. Make it a habit. Embed their work in yours with attribution. I am adding a calendar item to make sure that I share what I consume every single week.

5. Learn how to encourage sharing - this is a technical and social task. First - make it easy to share your newsletter and ensure there is a nice social image on the link. Then - pay attention to making work that people want to share. It’s a whole field of creation that I am diving into deeply.
   

6. Engagement will move to emails and, if you have them on your website, comments. You will be spending more time here with your people and less time on feeds. Consider if you want to add blog-style engagement to your website.

7. Revise your monetization strategy. This is likely to be fewer paid subscribers but higher value transactions as your connection deepens. You can still offer subscription newsletters (Kit offers this feature. You’ll always pay a transaction fee - worthwhile question as to who you pay it to). Other options: products, services (workshops, courses, coaching, etc) affiliate sales, memberships, etc.

8. As you grow, learn about list segmentation. This means not every email subscriber gets every email. Your super fans want more than your less regular but still committed subscribers. You may write on different topics. Don’t go overboard and don’t do this too soon but it’s the next step in serving your people.

This works when we all do it. Regularly. One link to another creator nice but people respond to repetition. We need to keep sharing, keep cross-pollinating, keep communicating so it becomes a way of being. This takes time - there is no instant fix only a gorgeous gestation into a new way of connecting with so many amazing people around the world who find each other through this magic we call the internet.

We will have to reset our inner vanity metrics. Followers are less valuable than email subscribers. Subscribers are welcoming you into their inbox. There will be less of them but they will be closer.

We will revise our relationship to clout. You are unlikely to know if someone you are reading or sharing has a lot of subscribers or a few. We have to share based on what we find valuable or meaningful not what’s “in”.

The platforms are not going to like this or encourage it so we should use this time well. Every platform has its rocky relationship with allowing profile links, external links, etc. So be smart. Notice what happens. Right now what often works is to encourage people regularly onto your list in comments on your own posts and content pieces such as audio and video.

Email does not eliminate the dopamine problem it only reduces it. And our email feeds can become short form reels in a tenth of a second once the overlords catch on. But we have time for now. A feed without hooks other than subject lines. A feed that cannot (for the most part!) be intruded upon. That we can defend and nurture.

If you look at my own tech stack I have work to do - you will see me duplicate my Substack over to my website over the next few weeks.

What this will require of us:

Dopamine detox - I’m an advocate for titration and never an advocate for moral judgment. Little by little over time as we release the scroll we support others in doing so as well through sharing our experiences and creating from the grounded energy that comes from letting go of toxicity.

Supporting, reminding, and educating each other. It’s up to us what we pay attention to and how we communicate. Remember - it’s all made up.

Creators will have to learn a new tech stack It’s doable I promise - let me know if you have questions. I know. And.

Creators will have to offer deeper reasons to subscribe, stay and share beyond a cute photo. But cute photos are still important :-). And learning this will be of benefit. Because it’s learning how to connect.

This will not happen overnight. But the way we all kind of know that we shouldn’t hijack someone else’s thread with our links…we can have these kinds of best practices too. Of signing up for each other’s lists - giving each other space in our subscription inboxes, sharing widely. Trying not to scroll like we try not to smoke. Too far? I don’t think so.

When I look around the world. Witness. Think. Listen. And in the past two years I’ve had time to do more of that than I’d like. One conclusion seems painfully obvious. Social media is one of the core problems of our age. We have become separated. So much so we can barely speak to another person IRL who lives in separate internet worlds.

We can’t share music, let alone facts. Horrible behaviour is normalized without consequence. Every single person in ‘the arena’ trying to create a better world is trolled and harassed mercilessly. As are many non-public figures including teenagers just coming into their own.

Our mental health is suffering dramatically. We can barely stand scripted content such that they are making “second screen” content that takes into account the fact that many of us are scrolling while watching. Ugh.

The times are tough. Big decisions. Much at stake. We need power, strength, presence, memory, focus, mood and vitality. Scrolling supports none of these.

And there are solutions - including this one. Moving to email collectively drastically reduces the evils of social media. We deserve better than living at the mercy of ketamine-fuelled grandiose delusions. We can do it for ourselves. And the earth. And our children. And our children’s children.

I would love to hear your thoughts and actions in the comments. We do it together.