➿ The Tension of Platforms & Why I Haven’t Left Substack (Yet)
Hello, and welcome to Off The Grid, a podcast about leaving social media without losing all your clients, and also a podcast about questioning, critiquing, stepping away from the big tech platforms that we know surveil and exploit us. And today's episode is all about that latter bit, my friends. How to think about platforms, which ones we use, which ones we don't use, which ones we have to use, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Before we dive into that, I'm your host, Amelia Hruby. And on this show, I share my own journey in creative small business.
Amelia Hruby:And I talk to amazing people who are figuring out how to make all of this work without social media. So we are currently in season nine of the show. And this week on the podcast, I talked to Harry Doull who runs a very cool company called Keap Candles. As I was reflecting on my conversation with Harry, all about values alignment in our business, I thought about another question that I had gotten from a listener recently that was very nicely trying to ask me like, how do you think about being on Substack when it pretty clearly goes against some of your stated values? I'm gonna read you that question in a moment, but I laugh because this is truly attention I have just been stewing in for well over a year now.
Amelia Hruby:It is something I get asked all the time, not so much about my Substack, but just for other people. Should I be on Substack? Should I go to Substack? Should I care that there are Nazis on their platform? Should I care that it's becoming social media?
Amelia Hruby:What do you think? And so today's episode is not just about Substack, but I am going to be talking about Substack. I'm gonna talk about how I decide which platforms I use, and I'm gonna share more about some changes coming up for the clubhouse, which is the publication I host on Substack later this year. So if you wanna hear all of that, stay tuned to this episode. And let's dive in, shall we?
Amelia Hruby:We're gonna begin with the question that I got from a listener that really was the seed of this whole episode. Here we go. Hi, Amelia. I really love what you've been doing to support people and getting off social media. And I recently listened to one of your podcast episodes, and it was very clear that we share a lot of the same values around human beings existing in the world and the systems that try to prevent them from that.
Amelia Hruby:I've been thinking about keeping presences in places that are part of systems of oppression that we don't wanna be a part of. Things like having podcasts roll out to Spotify even though Daniel Ek is invested in AI military, or being on Substack even though they promote Nazi and white supremacist content. And well, I was just wondering. One, how do you navigate this and choose where to be? I'm not judging.
Amelia Hruby:I'm still on Instagram and Facebook. I just wanna figure out how to make these decisions. And two, do you think there's a way to run your business off the grid without being in any of those places? Thank you so much to the listener who wrote in with that question. I do always welcome folks in my inbox.
Amelia Hruby:I don't respond to every email, but I think about them a lot. Like, this episode is happening because I got this question. And so I wanted to offer a few ways that I think about platforms and some, like, reframes of ways that I navigate running an online business. So the first framework I have for thinking through this is distinguishing between a platform versus a tool. A tool has a specific utility.
Amelia Hruby:It solves a problem for an individual user or a small group. That's what a tool is. And that tool may be a software, it may be an app, it may be a platform sometimes, but the tool has utility. Now a platform gathers people together and connects businesses or creators with their customers or end users. Like what many of the platforms that we use do is really create a sort of marketplace.
Amelia Hruby:They bring people together so you can meet your customers or clients there. One way I think of this is like the platform is kind of the mall itself, and each store is a sort of tool. Right? Because maybe you need a new brown belt, and so you can just go to a store that you know sells belts and buy the belts. There's like a utility.
Amelia Hruby:It solves a specific problem for you. Or you can just go to the mall and see what's up. You can just go to the mall and hang out even if you don't need a belt. You can go to the mall to be convinced that you need a belt. That's like one way we can think about this.
Amelia Hruby:Perhaps a better example of this in the, like, online software space of tool versus platform would be the difference between something like Shopify versus Etsy. So Shopify is a tool that helps individuals or small brands or big brands have a shop online. It's a series of softwares and algorithms and emails, like all the things that go there's a lot involved in Shopify, but it's a tool. It solves a specific problem for a specific person. That problem is you wanna sell stuff online, and Shopify solves that problem for you by providing the shop itself, the website, the shipping, the tax stuff, all of that.
Amelia Hruby:That's very different than Etsy, which originally, I think, was a tool for many crafters specifically. Right? Like, it gave them a shop online. But what Etsy has become is a marketplace. It has become a platform.
Amelia Hruby:So now Etsy is primarily a search engine where people go to find things, and maybe your shop will surface in there or not. But I would say that Etsy is a platform where Shopify is a tool. Another difference between them is that tools serve the users. Like, if it's a bad tool, people will quit using it. They will go elsewhere.
Amelia Hruby:And platforms theoretically serve the users as well. That's what a lot of us want to believe. We want to believe that, like, if Etsy was a bad tool, people would leave it. But the problem is that once they gather those people, if the platform becomes the place that you find all of your customers or clients, it's really hard to leave because now you have no mechanism to find customers or clients. Even if you set up your own separate shop, how are people going to come to you?
Amelia Hruby:So while tools serve the user first, platforms serve the owners first, at least after they've gathered enough people to become this sort of, like, marketplace that we're talking about. And sometimes that marketplace is literally selling goods like on Etsy. Sometimes it's just a marketplace of ideas or writing or images like Substack or Instagram. So I think it's really important when we're looking at different things that we're using online to decide, like, is this a tool or a platform? And like I said at the beginning, sometimes platforms start as tools and they contain tools.
Amelia Hruby:Right? So with the example of Substack, Substack has a lot of tools in that platform. And honestly, that's why I went there to begin with and why I've stayed there so long. Because with the tools on Substack, they offer a free newsletter tool, a free podcast tool. You can host a free private podcast there.
Amelia Hruby:They have all the video. Like, that's a lot of tools that they've wrapped into their platform. But what we have seen is that their goal is to emphasize the platform over the tools. So Substack published things last year that said that they explicitly wanted to prioritize the feed, that they wanted to prioritize discovery, they wanted to prioritize people using their app. All of that is platform behavior.
Amelia Hruby:All of that serves the owners, not the users of those tools. And the owners will say it serves the users. You know? They will always say that. Instagram will always tell us that it's inventing reels to help us get more visibility, but, like, does anybody really feel that way?
Amelia Hruby:I don't know. So I think it's important to be thinking through like, what am I actually doing in any space that I'm in online, or with any tool or platform that I'm using online? Am I using this as a tool for a specific utility, or am I there for the platform because I want to be connected with end users or clients? And the struggle with platforms, the reason I think people are so frustrated with them, the reason I get asked questions like this is, one, because of a lot of the values misalignment with the owners of platforms, and I'll speak to that more in a moment. But two, it's because of what happens when the platform start to prioritize serving the owners and becoming profitable.
Amelia Hruby:Because that's when it goes from the platform trying to provide a lot of value to users to get them to come there and stay there. And then once they have enough of them gathered there, they don't need to keep providing that value. Now they need to make money off the people that they have there. So this is a process that Cory Doctorow documents in his articles and books on incidification, the way that VC funding will pump a lot of money into a platform, will provide a lot of value for the early adopters, and then once there's a sort of critical mass, we'll then need to make money from the people it's gathered and start to serve ads to them, charge them more for things, make the search worse. You know, we can think of our experiences perhaps on Instagram or Twitter / x for that.
Amelia Hruby:We see it happening on Facebook. We see it happening on Substack. So this is a felt problem for so many of us who work or share our work online. And I think that it is a big difference between a tool and a platform. So what do we do with that?
Amelia Hruby:You know, I wanted to offer that distinction so that we can start to think through how do we choose different tools? How do we use different things? So here are some questions that I ask about all of the apps and software that I use in my business. The first one is, is it a tool or a platform? And if I'm not sure, I ask myself like, am I using this for a specific utility or because I want to connect with other people that are arriving there separate from me?
Amelia Hruby:Right? So is it a tool or a platform for me? Also important to ask, is it a tool or a platform for the people who own it? So a second question I ask is who owns this tool or platform, and what are their goals? Who profits from this tool or platform?
Amelia Hruby:Who is exploited by this tool or platform? What is the stated mission and values of this tool or platform? Those are all questions that require a little bit of research. We can look into who owns the things that we're using. This is one of my first stops before I sign up for an account with anything.
Amelia Hruby:I go to their website and try to find the about page. Who owns this? And I have to tell you, there are a lot of just general like SaaS tools out there that don't even have an about page. You can't find who owns it. And if I can't find it, I typically won't use it because I don't know who is running this, and I don't trust that they're necessarily just like chill and benevolent or won't steal, misuse, or like leave my data and information open to vulnerabilities.
Amelia Hruby:At this stage in the Internet, I want to know who owns all of the tools and platforms that I'm using. And so it's important to me to look into that as I get new tools. Now, of course, there are things I've been using for a long time that I recently learned about who owns them, and I have to think about that and reckon with that. But I think it's becoming more and more important to do that research from the beginning. And of course, those tools and platforms can be bought and sold, so those owners won't always stay the same.
Amelia Hruby:We have to keep paying attention in that way. But I think before you bring on a new big tool in your business, it might be a good idea to look into who owns it, what are their mission and values, how do they profit from it? Because how they profit will also be a clue to if it's a tool or a platform. If they make their money by charging a monthly or annual fee for you to use the thing, it's quite likely a tool. There's some utility there.
Amelia Hruby:If they provide it all to you for free because they are making money either when you make money or off of advertising and showing you ads, that's more platform behavior. And so thinking about, like, what is required for the business to make money can help you start to see who are they prioritizing here. Are they prioritizing you as the user? Are they gonna be prioritizing their paid advertisers over you? Are they gonna try to turn you into a paid advertiser to even show up there?
Amelia Hruby:You know, that's a big Etsy move. That's a big Google move. That's a big Facebook move. Like, we've seen that happen. So is it a tool or a platform?
Amelia Hruby:Who owns it? Who profits from it? What's their stated mission and values? All of that, I think, is important to consider upfront. The next question I always ask myself is, does this tool or platform solve a problem I meaningfully have?
Amelia Hruby:This is my personal beef with ChatGPT, and with many of the generative AI technologies. They may solve a lot of problems, but no problems that I was like meaningfully having before they appeared in the world. I don't want to just start using tools because somebody's like, this is cool. This is cool. This is helpful.
Amelia Hruby:This will solve problems. I wanna stay rooted in my own experience. I wanna identify my own problems and then go seek out tools to help solve them. I don't want tools arriving to me telling me I have a problem, and then I start using them to fix that problem I didn't realize I had. So I really try to keep close to this pulse of like, where is the friction in my work?
Amelia Hruby:Is this actually a problem? Is this a problem I meaningfully have? Is it something I really want to resolve? Then I might go find a tool for it. But I will not use a tool that especially a tool that I disagree with the owners or the way it works if it doesn't solve a problem I meaningfully have.
Amelia Hruby:And this again is really my struggle and frustration with so many generative AI tools is that the companies that own them are highly exploitative of the natural environment. They are very dominant, even colonial in their operating methods. And for me, they don't solve problems I meaningfully have. Now for every person listening to this, I think you may have problems that it meaningfully solves for you. That's why this is a question to pose to yourself.
Amelia Hruby:Like, does this tool or platform solve a problem I meaningfully have? I think that's a really important question to ask. Another question is, does it have the functionality I need with a user interface I can use? This question comes up a lot when I'm talking to people about choosing an email service provider. Right?
Amelia Hruby:They may have some really specific functionality they need around automations or tags, And they may have some really strong preferences around user interface, and it's sort of like intuitively making sense to them. And so this is something we need to look into. Like, does it solve a problem we meaningfully have? Does it have the functionality we need? And does it have a UI that we can use with relative ease?
Amelia Hruby:And then my last two questions I always ask are, am I spending money on this? Is it paid or free? That's always an important consideration. And then am I making other people money when I'm using this tool? I think that often when it's free, it's because somebody else is making money by us using it.
Amelia Hruby:And so I really wanna invite all of us to be thinking about that, to be following the money a bit more with these tools. As you follow the money, you'll also start to see, like, is this a tool or is it a platform? Is it a bunch of tools wrapped up in a platform? Is it a platform that offers actually no utility meaningfully to me and my life? You know?
Amelia Hruby:There are a lot of different ways to answer these questions. But just to recap them, is it a tool or a platform? Who owns it? Who profits from it? What are their stated mission and values?
Amelia Hruby:Does this tool or platform solve a problem I meaningfully have? Does it have the functionality I need with the UI I can use and a price that I'm willing to pay? Hear that price that you're willing to pay? Because even if it's free, there's probably still a price. So you gotta think about that.
Amelia Hruby:And then the final question actually I have when I think about the tools or platforms that I use is, am I making other people use this by being here? Especially if you are a content creator or if you're trying to grow an audience, is your use of a tool or platform making other people use that tool or platform. Now when we think about just email service providers, me using Flodesk to send emails doesn't make anybody else use Flodesk. Like, they get to use their email client and have it arrive in their inbox. And for a long time, that's how I felt about Substack.
Amelia Hruby:Was like, well, me sending things through Substack doesn't mean other people have to use it. But I think that Substack is really trying to, like, subsume everyone's individual email list into their platforms, and I've started to feel like I'm making other people use Substack by me being there. The more I've heard from subscribers that they're getting emails from Substack saying that I recommended people they should subscribe to or follow, saying that they should really use the app to get all my content, saying that they should upgrade to paid because of this reason. Like, I'm not sending out any of those emails. Substack is doing it to my own list without my knowledge, and I just I don't like that.
Amelia Hruby:That makes me feel like I'm making other people use Substack by deciding to use Substack. So after you answer those questions, what do you do? You sit with them. You reflect on them. You have a bunch of information and feelings, most likely.
Amelia Hruby:And from there, I wanna go back to the sort of political aspect of this. Because in the original question I got, you know, this person's asking about, you know, having podcast roll it to Spotify even though Daniel Ek is invested in AI military, being on Substack even though they promote Nazi and white supremacist content. Like, what do we do when we deeply disagree with the politics of the people who own a tool or what they let happen on a platform? In my opinion, if you don't like the politics of a tool, you can pick a different tool. Like, you can change the tools that you use to do something, and you get to decide your priorities.
Amelia Hruby:You get to decide, is this truly the only tool for this job? Or could I pick another one that does all of this even better or maybe a little worse, but where I'm more aligned with the people who created and use it? With a tool, it's so much about utility. So it's pretty clear to look at your priorities. Like, this is the functionality I need.
Amelia Hruby:This is the price that I can afford. What are the options out there? You can come up with a list of options and pick different options. I think the problem with a platform is that when you're using a platform, not just a tool, but a platform, you are more entrenched there because of the network effects. And sometimes, they don't even allow switching.
Amelia Hruby:Right? This is a big problem with Instagram. If you leave Instagram, you lose access to your audience. You cannot take them elsewhere. That is different than if you leave Substack.
Amelia Hruby:You can transfer your subscribers elsewhere. Of course, this isn't quite as simple as they claim because you can't transfer your followers elsewhere. And if you have paid subscribers, you have to go through a process to remove Substack's 10% paid cut, although that is still possible. So it's not quite as simple as just exporting your list as they say, but you can leave the platform with your list relatively intact. But if you're really entrenched there because you are taking advantage of the platform ness of it, because you are using that platform to find your customers, clients, readers, listeners, end users, etcetera, you're really caught in this double bind.
Amelia Hruby:Sometimes to do or have the thing that you want or need, you have to use a tool where you disagree with the founders. That's the double bind we get caught in. So what do we do from there? What do we do with all of these questions asked, all of these feelings raised, all of these sticky political moments we find ourselves in online. Well, I wanna offer a few different pathways.
Amelia Hruby:And before I do that, I just want to insist that there is no purity here. Like, I just I don't believe in platform purity, especially because we are all on Jeff Bezos' internet. The majority of the internet, at least in The US, is run on Amazon Web Services servers. And so if you are running an online business, at some point, part of your business is touching Amazon, most likely. I have not figured out any way to even be entirely clear if certain platforms or tools are using AWS.
Amelia Hruby:It's so hard to track down and to know. And so I think that from the get go, I just accept that there is no purity in this sort of platform conversation. However, there are different strategies that I think we can take. So let me give you a few examples. So the first strategy is perhaps the most simple, but often least satisfying for people, which is just don't use it.
Amelia Hruby:Don't use the tool. Don't use the platform. Opt out. This is the strategy that I've chosen with Instagram and with ChatGPT. I do not use Instagram or any meta apps.
Amelia Hruby:I don't have a Facebook account at all. I haven't logged into my Instagram account in years. Similarly, I don't have a Twitter or X account. I'm not on Blue Sky. I pretty much just opt out of using social media.
Amelia Hruby:I also decided this year that I won't be using generative AI tools. So I deleted my Claude account. I don't use ChatGPT anymore. I am deciding to just not use these tools and platforms. Now with the case of ChatGPT, that feels like a tool that I'm just not using.
Amelia Hruby:I don't really notice that I'm not using it because it's not like I have to use it to do anything that I wanna do. It's a little different with a platform like Instagram. There is a lot of, you know, social networking opportunity that perhaps I miss out on by not being there. There is a cost to not being on a platform where so many people are active in a way that there's maybe like a less visible cost perhaps to not using a tool that a lot of people are using. I think that a lot of the arguments for generative AI are that if you don't use the tool, you will fall behind.
Amelia Hruby:You will not be able to work as fast as everybody else, not have the skills that everybody else has. So there is this sort of like social imperative to use those tools just like there's a social imperative to be on social media so people can find you, so you can see what's going on, so you're part of the community. Right? So I don't think that this choice is necessarily easy. Opting out or just not using a tool or a platform can come with a cost.
Amelia Hruby:But for many of us, that cost is worth it because we don't want to be in those spaces or using those tools. So again, our first strategy is just don't use it. And that's the one that I've chosen with Instagram and all GPTs. The second strategy is to opt out of a tool while recognizing that its platform function may still touch your work life business. So this is what I have chosen for Amazon and Spotify.
Amelia Hruby:And let me explain how I thought through that. So with the case of self publishing my book, I knew that I definitely didn't wanna use Amazon as a tool. KDP or Kindle Direct Publishing is an incredibly popular self publishing tool and platform. And when I decided to self publish, I didn't want to do it with Amazon. I did not want to use the tools Amazon was providing for self publishing, largely because I didn't wanna be locked into their platform and I didn't want them making money off of my ideas.
Amelia Hruby:I recorded a whole podcast episode about that if you wanna hear it. But what I discovered is that because of the ubiquity of Amazon as a platform, even if I didn't wanna use it as a tool, my book ended up on the platform anyway. So after going through the process of self publishing with IngramSpark, I learned that if you want to use IngramSpark's distribution network, you cannot opt your book out of Amazon, at least in the print versions. You can avoid Audible, their audiobook platform, and Kindle, their ebook platform, because those are separate agreements you have to sign to be included. So I didn't sign those agreements.
Amelia Hruby:So my ebook and audiobook are not on Amazon. But I was not willing to give up all distribution in order to keep my paperback book off of Amazon. That was a challenging decision, but what it came down to was I want people to be able to find this book, and I don't wanna be shipping out copies myself forever. And the choice that IngramSpark gave me was all or nothing. It is everywhere including Amazon or it is nowhere and you are on your own.
Amelia Hruby:And so that was a sacrifice I wasn't willing to make. I wasn't willing to pull the book entirely from distribution just to keep it off Amazon. And one of the reasons for that is even if I did that, people could put my book on Amazon anyway. They could use the used book market aspect of it to sell used copies on Amazon. And so this is where we get into the nuance of like, I cannot use Amazon as a tool, but because of the fact that it's a platform and it's such a ubiquitous platform, my books will likely end up there anyway.
Amelia Hruby:So with Amazon, I am opting out everywhere I can. This also goes back to the AWS, Amazon Web Services of it all. Right? Like, if I wanna have a Squarespace site, I can't opt out of AWS because Squarespace hosts stuff there. So with Amazon, I am opting out everywhere I can.
Amelia Hruby:I'm not using it as a tool, but I'm recognizing that there's a platform effect happening whether I like it or not. This is also how I think about Spotify. So I did not put my audiobook on Spotify. I had to go through a whole process actually after I published it to remove it from there. But this podcast is still available through Spotify.
Amelia Hruby:And about 30% of you tuning into this listened to it there. I decided that while I certainly don't agree with the ways that Spotify exploits musicians in their music or the fact that their CEO, Daniel Ek, supports AI military drones and other really horrific technologies, I decided not to pull my podcast from the platform because I didn't want to take it away from so many current and potential listeners. But I did stop listening to music on Spotify, and I moved all my listening to Apple Music last year, then to CoBuzz. Now I'm primarily just listening to music I own on Bandcamp, but I decided to change my personal decisions around Spotify use to better align with my values. But in the context of my business and my podcast, I chose not to totally pull the podcast from there.
Amelia Hruby:And one of the factors there for me is that I don't pay Spotify any money, and they don't pay me any money around the podcast. My understanding of how Spotify runs ads is that they don't put ads on podcasts. If you're hearing ads on Spotify podcasts, it's because the podcast creators have put the ads there. That's what I understand from coming through their, like, forums and tech documentation. And so that means that Spotify is not making money off of my podcast being there, and I'm not making money off of having my podcast on Spotify, at least not in a Spotify specific way.
Amelia Hruby:So at this point, not having that financial entanglement with Spotify feels sufficient to me. I don't feel like I need to pull it out of distribution to stay in alignment with my values. But I would never use Spotify's publishing tools to publish my podcast through them. I pay actually quite a bit of money every year to my podcast hosting platform Transistor because I want a lot of the different tools they offer, the functionality they have. I use that as a tool.
Amelia Hruby:And Spotify offers a totally free tool for publishing your podcast, but I don't use that because of this strategy. I'm opting out of Spotify as a tool even if I understand that I am engaging in the broader platform itself by having my podcast there. So again, it gets really nuanced, and there can be challenging decisions to make. But this is where I really think the tool platform distinction is helpful. Like, I can opt out of using the tools by these platforms even while reckoning with the broader ubiquity of them that sometimes puts my work on them or in relationship to them.
Amelia Hruby:That's been my strategy for Amazon and Spotify. And then the third strategy I want to offer, which is maybe kind of a version of these first two, is that in some cases, I leave behind a platform for a tool. This is what I'm doing with Substack. So I have decided that this year, I am going to move the clubhouse off of Substack and onto Ghost. Now the reason I haven't done this already is because I've been using Substack as a tool.
Amelia Hruby:If you listen back to the episode where I talked about Substack, like, over two years ago, I talked about all of the functionality they had and how that's what I really needed. I still love the Substack functionality that allows me to have a newsletter that publishes to direct links online, a private podcast that is very easy to manage with monetization and people canceling and such, as well as video functionality. Those three things I cannot find in any other tool. I have been looking because I have felt the values misalignment between Substack's founders and their platform policies versus, like, my personal values. I don't want my work in the same space where there are white supremacists and Nazis.
Amelia Hruby:I don't want my work on a platform that basically says, we're gonna let everybody be here. We don't really care what they're saying. I feel that discomfort, but I have not been able to find another tool that could replicate all the things I've been doing on Substack. And so I've stayed there from this logic of, like, I'm there for the tool, not for the platform. But as I've shared in this episode, it does feel like the platform effects, like I can't ignore them anymore.
Amelia Hruby:Substack is explicitly saying that it wants to be a platform. It wants to be like social media. And so I think that at this stage, to stay in my integrity, I can no longer just say I'm there for the tool and not for the platform. And that has to do with the other piece I mentioned earlier, which is that while I may just be using it as a tool, Substack is trying to get my readers, my subscribers, my Clubhouse members, all of you beautiful people in the Clubhouse. It's trying to turn you into Substack users, getting you on the Substack app, getting you into their ecosystem.
Amelia Hruby:And so I feel this, like, complicity in a way that I didn't before, in a way that before I felt like I could say this is just a tool and Clubhouse members don't even have to use it to enjoy the Clubhouse. I feel like Substack is really pushing people into Substack itself. And I'm not comfortable with that in my integrity around off the grid and just my personal values. So I will be moving the Clubhouse to Ghost with the addition of Outpost to help me manage the private podcast side of it. And this is not a perfect solution.
Amelia Hruby:Honestly, that shift means I'm gonna get less functionality for more money. Like, it's gonna cost me money to move there. I will be paying them more than I currently pay Substack in their 10% cut of my earnings each year. I also won't be able to do video with the ease I've been able to. There's a lot more I have to deal with with the podcast side of things.
Amelia Hruby:It is inconvenient to me to make this switch, which is largely why I haven't made it yet. But at this point, I've decided I just have to. So what do you do if you feel that deep values misalignment, but you can't quite do any of the strategies I've mentioned here. Like, you can't just quit the tool or leave the platform. You can't just opt out of tool functionality while accepting the platforms happening.
Amelia Hruby:You don't feel comfortable leaving it behind or switching to something else. Well, if those three strategies feel impossible to you or they don't feel like options for your work and your business, then I'd like to offer one final approach. And that is taking a sort of harm reduction approach to the tools and platforms you use that you feel a deep disagreement or disalignment with their owners or other people on those platforms. So this is the case I've landed in with Riverside. Riverside is an online platform for recording audio and video, records really high quality audio and video so that you can use those recordings in podcasts or YouTube videos.
Amelia Hruby:It also offers a text based transcript editor so you can cut the videos together without needing video editing software. It's a great tool. And it's the tool I've been using for years and that I, like, embedded all of my Softer Sounds podcast clients in. And then at some point last year, I learned from a friend and interweb member that Riverside is actually owned by two Israeli brothers who are former IDF soldiers as far as I understand and are absolutely not in support of Palestinian liberation. So I have a huge disagreement with their politics.
Amelia Hruby:And I spent a while last year trying to figure out if I was gonna leave. But when I looked at other tools, I just couldn't find anything that worked the way I wanted it to, that it was a price that I could afford, or where I didn't have to make any other really big values misaligned sacrifices. I know that one of the common switches for this would be to use Descript, which I don't wanna use for other reasons. And so what I've decided with Riverside is I am going to stay there even though I don't wanna support these founders' ideology. But for now, for me, it's the best tool and I'm not going to switch.
Amelia Hruby:But what I did do is I left their affiliate program and I stopped recommending it to people, and I've put notes in a lot of places in my blog posts and courses that acknowledge that this is the case so that people can be aware. It's much easier to choose a different tool when you're starting out than to change tools later on. So if you find yourself embedded in a tool or a platform that it turns out you don't really wanna support, I think that a harm reduction approach can be to stop recommending the tool, to not make money off the tool, to use the lowest possible plan that you can so that you give them the least possible amount of money, and to keep an eye out so that if there is a new tool that provides that functionality you need or you do have more capacity to pay the switching costs, to move things over with your time, energy, and money, that you can do that. I think the most important thing with all of these strategies is to remember that you can change your mind any time. You can act differently any time.
Amelia Hruby:You can make a different choice any time. And so where does that leave us? Well, once again, there is no purity on the Internet, but I hope that these four strategies will help you make more intentional choices with the tools and platforms that you're using in your business. So to recap them very briefly, the first strategy was just don't use it. No one is saying you have to use ChatGPT or the people who are saying that, you don't have to listen to them.
Amelia Hruby:I'm here saying you don't have to use Instagram. So maybe you just don't. The second strategy was opting out as much as possible while recognizing that some platforms are so ubiquitous that your work is gonna touch them anyway. If you wanna sell books, Amazon's gonna touch your business. And I don't think that it is worth spending tons of time stressing and panicking over that.
Amelia Hruby:If you truly don't want your business to touch Amazon, get it off the Internet and don't publish books. Right? So there are always compromises we're making, but you can still make informed choices. Like I said, I don't put my audio book on Spotify or Amazon. My ebook is not available on Amazon.
Amelia Hruby:I've opted out as much as I could without fully taking my book out of distribution. So it's a spectrum. Right? There's a spectrum between I'm just not doing it and I'm all in. My whole life is here.
Amelia Hruby:The third approach is to leave behind a platform for a tool. This is pretty similar to just don't use it, but I pulled it out separately because I wanted to talk about why I was leaving Substack. So with this one, I just wanna encourage you to trust your gut. If it's time for you to go, you might have to leave even if there's not a perfect other platform for you to go to. So have courage, be brave, we can do this.
Amelia Hruby:And if leaving or opting out in those forms isn't possible, then I encourage you to consider harm reduction. How can you use the tools that your business needs to survive without giving them a ton of money or bringing other people onto them? How can you limit the time, energy, and cash that you spend in those spaces that you disagree with or that you don't wanna be a part of. I think a lot of people are taking a harm reduction approach to social media. They're taking a harm reduction approach to Instagram.
Amelia Hruby:I'm taking a harm reduction approach to Riverside. Again, it's all part of this spectrum from I'm not on it at all, not even one bit, to I'm totally all in. And you get to decide. Are you opting out totally, not gonna be there? Are you opting out as much as you can while recognizing that some things are unavoidable?
Amelia Hruby:Are you in the process of deciding to opt out but still haven't changed your behavior yet? Or are you staying there but with a harm reduction approach? Those are kind of our spectrum of these four strategies that you can take. As always, I'm not here to judge what you do or don't do, use or don't use in your business. I think that these are all personal and nuanced decisions and that you get to decide your priorities.
Amelia Hruby:Sometimes your business surviving is a higher priority than you feeling good about the founders of every tool you use. Sometimes your personal integrity is a higher priority than making some more money on Substack. Right? Like, what I hope to provide in this episode was a series of questions and examples that could help you figure out your priorities and make decisions that you feel comfortable with and proud of. So I hope that that's what you got here today.
Amelia Hruby:Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm truly grateful that you listened to the show. I hope you might join me in the clubhouse. We are still on Substack. I will be making the move later this year, I think in the summer when I have the capacity and time to really do all of that switching, not making that move right now during my busy season, I will make it when I have some space for it.
Amelia Hruby:So I guess that's my final note. Remember that this doesn't have to be urgent. You don't have to make changes quickly. You can take your time. I don't like to rush anything I do in my business.
Amelia Hruby:Sometimes I'll rush a creative project because it feels good, but I definitely don't rush a big tech decision because I want to feel grounded and empowered in the choices I'm making. I hope that you can find that energetic sovereignty as well, and I'm cheering you on as you choose your tech and get more intentional about your platforms. Thanks once again for tuning in. I will be back next week with an episode all about feedback and a minisode where I share my privacy focused algorithm light tech stack. So if you listen to all this and you're like, Amelia, if you don't do any of that stuff, what do you do?
Amelia Hruby:That answer is coming next Friday. Until then, my friends, you know where to find me off the grid and on the interweb. If you read my Wikipedia, it'll say I kinda hate social media. Post a picture of myself, sacrifice my mental health. Use your product time to sell.
Amelia Hruby:I would rather go to Okay. That was an abridged version of Social Media by Surfer Boy and Wrecktangle. To hear the entire song, find Surfer Boy on Spotify or head to the link in the show notes. Thanks so much to them for sharing the song with us, as well as to Melissa Kaitlyn Carter, who sings our theme song that you hear at the start of every show. I'm your host, Amelia Hruby.
Amelia Hruby:And if you enjoyed this episode, I hope you will download the free leading social media toolkit at offthegrid.fun/toolkit. Until next time, I will see you off the grid.
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