Substack Video! But Why?
For various reasons, including controversial ones.
Substack’s announcement highlights a few use cases:
A video of Patti Smith singing would clearly be of interest to her audience.
A food newsletter like Andrew Zimmern’s could post a video of a recipe, travel to a place with delicious food, etc.
Bari Weiss’s video is for paid subscribers only. Some free subscribers would surely be tempted to click “Subscribe and watch.”1
I’ve seen several publishers ask for a video feature. Potential uses are many. Substack allows publishers to post text, images, GIFs, and audio – video is the logical next step.
As Axios noted this morning, video could lure new creators. And video could benefit many current creators and attract audiences.
Posts can do well without video, images, or audio. For example, Letters from an American has many posts with just text, maybe an embedded tweet, and people still read the posts. But online newsletters are really news media. I think many publishers and audiences will appreciate the inclusion of video along with other media such as text.
Those might be sufficient reasons for Substack to provide a video recorder and uploader. But are they the only reasons?
To put it another way, why aren’t embeds of videos from Twitter, YouTube, and Vimeo enough?2
Yesterday, Mashable asserted that publishers of COVID misinformation, as well as “conspiracy theorists, white nationalists, QAnon influencers,” and “anti-trans writers,” flourish on Substack. As the post notes, many such writers have been deplatformed elsewhere. Substack might be their best option for audience and income.
These publishers might not have a Twitter, YouTube, or Vimeo account. Or they might not trust those services with their videos. They might post a video on those services, only to see it taken down.3
They might be more confident that a controversial video would stay available on Substack.4
In other words, video might lure controversial creators to Substack.
If you are unhappy about this, consider that publishers could upload controversial videos to Substack for other reasons, such as to expose human rights abuses or environmental exploitation. They could even upload videos to challenge videos they dispute.
And they can alert Substack to videos they think violate content guidelines.5
In the end, I suppose the fundamental question about content on Substack isn’t whether publishers should be allowed to upload videos or other types of media, but how the Substack terms are written and enforced.
What do you think about the new video feature? Will you use it? Are you concerned – or pleased – that controversial publishers might use it?
I’m tempted to upload “Subscribe and watch” videos of my cats doing amazing things. Did you know one of my cats can imitate words in English? And the other oughta be in pictures…or the Olympics! But you can only view their videos with a paid subscription. 😉
I haven’t tested the Substack video recorder/uploader and don’t know how it compares to the video features on other services.
Or a publisher, controversial or otherwise, might be happy to have the option to post content on Substack or elsewhere.
If a publisher were concerned about making the video public, they might put it behind a paywall or email the post without publishing it on the web (or immediately remove it from the web).
Even the content of a paywalled or otherwise private video might become known if some viewers find it problematic.
I love how Substack is innovating and listening to what its writers want, but video troubles me. It's a huge resource hog and the copyright violations alone could lead to huge support headaches. But then there are all the issues you raise. Honestly, I thought video would be too messy for Substack to deal with (especially since it's a platform for writers first and foremost) but we'll have to see. Hopefully it doesn't become a 1st Amendment sh*t show.
I'm far more interested in embeddable mp3 files. Not podcasts but similar to Wordpress - upload 1 or more mp3 files and get a player for each. I recently wanted to show a song I'd written from the first phone demo (voice recorder), a 2nd version/iteration - also recorded on the voice recorder, and then finally a 3rd, more complete version recorded in my DAW half a year later.
I wanted 3 distinct players for each version. Instead I created a video for each, uploaded them unlisted to youtube, and then embedded them. Not really the solution I want.
As for video: I could see exclusive videos for paid subscribers only. I don't want to use an unlisted video on YouTube. I suppose I could use Vimeo's paid, embed on a domain feature. But that means one more platform to publish on a platform I'm already on.
That would be my use case.