Yesterday, I recommended Anil Dash’s episode of the Past Due podcast, and specifically called out the sections where he talks about platforms built on open technology versus closed technology.
Dash calls out technologies like email, blogs, and podcasts as great open tools. Both are platforms where you may rely on a piece of software to engage, but you aren’t beholden to that software. I may start my email newsletter on Mailchimp, but if I want to move it, I can.
On the flip side, the trend of social media is moving towards closed tools where the platform can be owned (and sold). Twitter is the case study here. We all gathered there and built streams and networks, and then it was sold to Elon Musk.
Who immediately used that network to highlight the content he wanted to highlight and hide the stuff he wanted to hide.
And we all quickly realised we couldn’t just port our Twitter followers to a new tool. We had to rebuild from scratch, posting links and hoping folks would follow us along.
The other platform du jour that gets a lot of interest is Substack. I make no bones about the fact that Substack is my personal bugbear in the writing space. I hate the fucking place and and have done for a while.
It enticed a bunch of writers I liked to migrate their newsletters over, then promptly ceased to make those newsletters accessible without engaging with their app. In fact, they’re quietly pointing out that Email is no longer the heart they do, and migrating people to the app is the preferred mode of engagement.
So increasingly, folks who moved there no longer have a newsletter. They just have a new Facebook. One with a greater tolerance for Nazis and folks in charge who make Mark Zuckerberg seem like a reasonable guy with everyone’s best interest at heart by comparison.
To Quip or Not To Quip
Two things happened in close succession last month.
First, I got a ton of creator-oriented emails from Patreon of late, hyping the changes they’re making to creator accounts and the introduction of new discovery tools like Quips. I’ve found myself engaging with the back-end tools with new eyes for the first time in a long while, figuring out what they mean for me as a writer.
Second, after kicking a lot of cans down the road under the guise of “I’ll deal with that when I’ve got more capacity” for the last year, I’m finally hitting the point where I have capacity.
Coming back to Patreon was a compromise when I started engaging here in July 2025. I’d spent the first half of last year getting kicked in the teeth financially, and I wanted a platform that could host GenrePunk Ninja when I had to changeup my newsletter and store systems as a publisher.
Things are not quite “back to normal” yet–there are still debts to pay off and tech that needs replacing, not least the ten-year-old MacBook I write on that is increasingly refusing to run software or share files on virtual drives.
But they’re stable enough that I can start looking ahead because I know how all the expenses will be covered, even if it’ll take around six months to finalise.
And so I’m thinking about Patreon and the compromises made during the pinch. I like Patreon. I actually like a lot of what they’ve set up while my attention was elsewhere. I have no immediate plans to leave.
But I find myself looking at the introduction of new tools like Quips and considering they’re obviously an attempt to match the discoverability benefits of Substack’s closed systems and retain Patreon’s market share.
Which reminds me that Patreon, for all the things I love about it and the respect I have for its founder (Pomplamoose’sPomplamoose’s Jack Conte), is still a closed system. It’s owned. It can be taken away. That it’s owned by someone who, at the very least, seems artist friendly and well-meaning now doesn’t actually mitigate the fact that it won’t ever be thus.
Nor does it prevent the platform from doing things that are…misguided (see Patreon, Tools, Tactics, & Strategy in You Don’t Want To Be Published for more).
Closed systems will change because capitalism demands they change, and venture capital needs to be repaid.
Which means I find myself ready to return to first principles: open systems I can control. Blogs and newsletters as the primary means of distribution, Patreon as the secondary spoke where content moves to instead of the central hub.
I’m not a quipper. So I’m slowly rebuilding newsletter systems and refining the website that’s sat dormant for the better part of the last nine months. Re-envisioning where the hub of my writing will lie.
Closes systems that can be taken away should never be a hub. They’re role is to serve as a spokes that extend the reach of the hub, giving it more juice.
It’s not a simple thing to do. It requires time and attention, and the pay-offs are long-term rather than quick fix. I certainly took my eye off that ball when I didn’t have capacity over the last year, but I’m with increased personal bandwidth comes a greater capacity.
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