Substack is finally adding DMs to its platform, allowing newsletter subscribers and authors to chat directly with other people.
Announced in a blog post on Wednesday, Substack messages now live in a new chat tab on the app and website. You’ll see messages from newsletters you’ve subscribed to, as well as messages from other users you’ve connected with – all other messages will go into a Requests folder, which you can approve or reject like other messaging platforms.
Ongoing content moderation issues behind Substack crash
If you want to send a message to someone on Substack, you can do so from the author page or other user’s profile page, or directly in the Chat tab. You can also share posts or notes via chat (Substack’s answer to tweets). Blocked and banned users won’t be able to send messages to people who tagged them, and you can report messages in the Chat app – a feature that was only added to Substack in January.
As well as being a way for users to build community with other users, Substack sees the feature as a particularly good opportunity for writers to build a lucrative subscriber base; for example, as the company suggests in its post , private messaging may be a limited benefit for paying subscribers, while a lock icon will appear for non-paying readers. Writers can also connect with other writers and collaborate directly within Substack.
It’s a much-needed draw card for Substack, which has been embroiled in controversy over its ongoing content moderation issues and the company’s poor handling of misinformation and hate on the platform, despite its terms of use and content guidelines. in trouble. While Substack remains popular (the company says it will have more than 20 million monthly active users and more than 2 million paid subscribers by 2023), users have repeatedly left the platform in droves.