Leaving Substack: The Lesson in Platform Risk

It feels a little like the first time your parents sent you a friend request on Facebook — suddenly the vibe shifted, and you weren’t sure if you wanted to hang out there anymore. I may have even been the one who made Substack uncool just by showing up.

That doesn’t mean I’m abandoning it altogether. I’ll still use Substack as a distribution channel — the same way I’ll post content to LinkedIn, try to get ranked in search, or experiment with other platforms. But it won’t be my home base.

Here’s why.

We’ve Seen This Movie Before

If you were running a media company on Facebook in the early 2010s, you remember what it felt like. Publish a post, and your audience saw it — all of them. It was a firehose of free distribution. Until it wasn’t. Overnight, reach collapsed. The “friends and family” algorithm took over. Suddenly, publishers had to pay to reach the very people they had worked so hard to attract.

Search went through a similar arc. Organic SEO used to be a reliable growth engine: publish quality content, rank, earn traffic, and capture data. Today, with AI answers and zero-click search, you lose both. The clicks never make it to your site, and the behavioral signals that once powered your strategy are hidden behind Google’s walls.

The Substack app follows the same pattern. Discovery, engagement, and even billing are moving inside their controlled environment. Your readers aren’t just yours anymore. They’re theirs.

The Real Cost of Convenience

At first glance, Substack’s iOS integration looks like progress: frictionless payments, easier onboarding, and the chance to capture subscribers who never would have gone through your website.

But here’s what changes under the hood:

• If a reader subscribes through the iOS app, Apple takes 30% of the revenue.
• That transaction isn’t tied to your Stripe account. It’s tied to Substack → Apple. Which means you don’t own the payment relationship. If you leave, you can’t take that data with you.
• To offset this, Substack has said it will raise subscription prices for those readers, so your net payout stays the same. But that means your subscribers pay more just so you can earn the same.

For small creators, the convenience may outweigh the tradeoffs. For scaled operators, the math is tougher — you’re ceding both margin and strategic leverage. And once your billing relationship runs through someone else’s ecosystem, you’re locked in.

The Control Illusion

The hardest truth for media operators is this: no channel is fully under your control. Even the ones that feel like they are.

Email is another example. It’s the most durable channel we have because you can export and migrate your list. Unlike with Facebook or Substack, you can “take your ball and go home.” But deliverability is never guaranteed. Spam filters, inbox algorithms, and privacy updates all play gatekeeper. Just because someone opts in doesn’t mean they’ll see your newsletter every time.

That doesn’t make email any less powerful. It simply means that audience ownership isn’t a binary — it’s a spectrum. You reduce risk by moving closer to ownership, but you never eliminate it entirely.

What to Do Instead

If platform risk is unavoidable, the answer isn’t to retreat — it’s to diversify and strengthen your foundation. A few moves worth considering:

1. Double Down on First-Party Data
   Build experiences that generate data you can actually use: preferences, behaviors, purchase intent. The more you know about your audience directly, the less you depend on platforms to tell you.
2. Invest in Redundancy
   Don’t let one channel carry your entire strategy. Pair email with your site, events, podcasts, or communities. Each touchpoint reduces the risk of being blindsided by someone else’s algorithm shift.
3. Treat Platforms as Distribution, Not Destination
   LinkedIn, Substack, or TikTok can be fantastic for reach. Use them for what they are, but always point people back to your owned properties whenever possible.
4. Plan for Goalpost Changes
   Assume the incentives will change. Build optionality into your model so you can shift when the rules inevitably do.

The Bigger Lens

This isn’t really about Substack. It’s about incentives. Platforms will always evolve in ways that maximize their own growth and revenue — not yours. That’s not malice; it’s business. For a long time, writers and Substack were sitting side-by-side, but they've clearly gotten up and moved across the table from you.

The question for operators is whether you’re building in alignment with that reality. Are you treating platforms as accelerants to your growth, or are you betting your entire model on rules you don’t control?

Because history has made one thing clear: the audience you rent will never be as valuable — or as secure — as the audience you own.