The algorithm doesn't have to destroy us

amish McKenzie is the co-founder of Substack. Here is our interview about how we can build better internet platforms.

Elle Griffin: Everyone is on Substack now. Politicians are here—like Pete Buttigieg. Celebrities are here, like Lizzo. People are moving from social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter and writing long-form posts and videos directly for the people who follow them. How does it change the world when we change our platform?

Hamish McKenzie: There’s a Charlie Munger quote, “show me the incentives, and I’ll show you the outcome.” And for at least 20 years, we’ve been stuck with media platforms that have bad incentives and warp our culture.

Substack, of course, is the only pure and perfect media platform, and that will lead to a cultural renaissance. That’s a tongue-in-cheek statement, but what I do believe is that Substack is an attempt to set up a media system that has better incentives, where the people participating in the in ecosystem—the publishers—are incentivized to win and hold on to the trust of their audiences, and then the audiences actively participate in helping the culture and the makers of that culture flourish.

The platform undergirding it all, in this case Substack, is forced by its business model to act in service of the publishers and the audiences. We only make money when publishers make money. And publishers own their audience relationships, and those audience relationships exist on a mailing list that they can take with them anytime they want, anywhere. They own all their content, which they can export with a click of a button.

As a result, the culture of the platform becomes something that’s much more about trust, relationships, and quality and depth. Which is not to say it’s going to be perfect, but it’s going to be completely different from the media platforms that have dominated for the last 20 years.

Elle: Being sold on the economic model already, what do you think changes when a politician doesn’t make their next announcement on Twitter, but on Substack instead?