Notes Are Getting More Attention Than Posts, And That Is A Not So Great Trend

an essay in favor of longer-form writing

Let me begin by making it clear that Substack is a remarkable medium for those of us who want to reach others who care about politics, public policy, economics, history, philosophy and other noble disciplines. It has given me access to readers beyond anything I could have imagined when I joined two years ago. It is worth nurturing and I hope it remains a forum for intelligent discourse.

But I have had concerns about the future of the forum for some months. When the main way to grow is through short notes rather than full posts, the nature of the platform changes. Instead of asking, “What substantive thing am I publishing this week?”, writers end up asking, “What can I throw into the feed today that will get a spike?” The work becomes secondary to the stream.

That shift pulls Substack closer to X and Instagram. The mechanics start to look the same: a fast-moving feed, real‑time reactions, and an environment where the algorithm prefers whatever grabs quick attention.

Short, punchy reactions travel farther and faster than careful arguments, so writers have an obvious incentive to produce more of those and fewer slower, more demanding pieces.

For longer-form creators, this is structurally bad. Deep essays, reported stories, and carefully constructed podcast episodes are highly time and energy intensive.

Notes are cheap and easy. When the cheap and easy content does the growth work and the expensive content does not, you are pushed into a model where you must constantly maintain a presence in the feed just to earn a chance for your best work to be seen.

Over time, that erodes the space for sustained thinking because attention and effort are constantly diverted to feeding the stream. Any given post of mine gets 40 likes and 30 restacks. My notes often get thousands of likes and hundreds of restacks. That is frustrating, especially because I don’t know what to do to change it.

Readers feel the consequences, too. Their experience becomes more fragmented. Instead of seeing a clear progression of ideas through posts, they see scattered hooks, teasers, and half‑formed takes in Notes. It gets harder to tell what a writer actually stands for beyond the vibe they project in the stream. The trust that comes from consistent, in‑depth work is replaced by a more shallow kind of familiarity: you recognize the voice, but you don’t necessarily get the full argument.

Politically and intellectually, the notes‑first pattern encourages shallow engagement with complex topics. Anything that needs context and structure is at a disadvantage compared to quick outrage or snark. That means more heat and less light, especially on contentious issues. Over time, the platform’s discourse starts to mirror the worst tendencies of other social feeds: fast, reactive and polarized.

In the end, making notes the primary engine of attention turns a writing platform into yet another attention platform that happens to host writing. It becomes harder for longer‑form work to set the tone, and easier for the feed to drag everything down to its level.

As I said earlier, I don’t know the solution. What I do know is that it concerns me. In these times, we need more thoughtful analysis and increasingly that gets shorter shrift. In the end, that is bad for Substack and bad for readers.

For my regular readers, a heartfelt thank you. You make it all worthwhile.