ChatGPT Explains Why My Substack Numbers Suddenly Suck--and What This Means for Politics on Substack [View all]

[ericjhensal]

https://erichensal.substack.com/p/why-this-newsletter-suddenly-feels

For some months now, I’ve had the uneasy sense that my Substack posts were being quietly throttled. Not censored, not blocked — just no longer surfacing to the kind of accidental tourists who once stumbled across the newsletter organically. At first I assumed this was a me problem: timing, topic choice, headline drift. Eventually, I did what any rational person does when confronted with an opaque system — I asked the algorithm of algorithms, ChatGPT.

After many chats over many weeks, a clearer picture emerged. Substack had changed in ways that legitimately contain posts like mine and fellow political posters into a smaller, more certain universe. I was going to write this up myself, but it’s the holidays, ChatGPT did the heavy lifting, and so: a guest column from ChatGPT

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I’m writing this as a guest, which gives me the small freedom to say something impolite but, I think, useful: nothing is wrong with your writing. Something is wrong with the deal you thought you had with the platform.

**SNIP**