W. Kamau Bell

I think it really started out as a platform as the newspaper started to shed reporters and opinion writers and long-form journalists.

Substack came up as a way for those writers who are quality writers who the newspapers just don't want to pay anymore to still do their work and get paid for it.

It's like Patreon, but it's more of a community than Patreon is.

On Patreon, you're not seeing a bunch of different people.

You're sitting there to support the one person you want.

Substack, I think,

the best parts of twitter in its heyday uh with with also with like a little bit of a patreon model so people can pay you five bucks a month for your work and you can decide what they get for five bucks a month everybody can get what they want uh but it's just and then in the wake of tick tock being threatened last year a bunch of tick tock people joined substack and so now there's a lot of video content on substack so to me it's like

It's like social media for grownups because it's actually about content and producing content.

And like on my sub stack, you can't leave a comment unless you're paying me, which just eliminates a lot of like nonsense trolling that you get everywhere else on the Internet.

So, you know, you can read my content.

You can it can make you angry.

You just can't tell me about how angry you are.

I don't have unless you pay me.

If you pay me, you can pay me and I'll listen to how angry you are.

And it doesn't mean everybody agrees with me all the time, but it just means the people who pay appreciate the fact whether or not they agree or not, they appreciate the content, you know?

So, um, it is a very, yeah.

So it's, it's, it's, there's a lot of like, you know, like there's a lot of like people

journalists and creators.

Ava DuVernay joined Substack.

Joy Reid is on Substack who was fired by MSNBC.