👋 Hi Reader,

Seems like Substack newsletter creators cannot catch a break. The Substack platform has been rapidly making changes in 2025, and not of the good kind. First came paid subscriptions through the iOS app cutting paid earnings dramatically (we covered the paid subscription math in this LetterStack issue)

Then came the shaky content moderation stance with a lot of questionable (absent?) decisions being made around moderating newsletters promoting hate speech. If you are curious about this one, Brittany Allen wrote a great piece on this topic for Literary Hub in Jul 2025.

Twisting the knife

And now it seems like Substack is pushing subscribers to open their email newsletter content in the Substack mobile app, instead of continuing to allow them to read in their email client of choice.

George Orosz, who writes ‘The Pragmatic Engineer’ newsletter with more than 1 million subscribers, dropped a Substack note this week that his email content was truncated by the Substack platform with a Call-to-Action button saying ‘Continue Reading’ which redirected to Substack’s mobile app.

Is the behavioral pattern to off-ramp from the email client new?

Hardly. Every ESP platform offers a choice to read the email content on a web browser as an off-ramp from the email.

But taking the liberty to truncate an author’s email content, introducing a pay-wall-ish CTA (even for paid subscribers) and forcing people to move to their mobile app is a forced dark pattern.

Naturally, all the bigger Substack authors lit up the comment thread under George’s original Substack note. Pawel Huryn, also a huge Substack newsletter creator with 127k+ subscribers, talked about his frustration on forced product patterns.

Keeping things objective for a minute:

Do dedicated mobile apps for consuming newsletters offer a superior reading experience?

If you can allow newsletters across ESPs like the Matter app does, yes. But installing apps per ESP is just juggling with more apps than needed. Let’s be honest, a majority of newsletters do not write long-form content beyond 2000 words, so reading it on your email client of choice works well for most readers.

The bone of contention though for the newsletter reader is this:

Let the reader decide their consumption platform of choice

Subscribing to an email newsletter signals that they do not want another social app, but a distraction-free reading experience with no forced patterns interrupting their flow.

Until that happens...

it looks like we might be looking at a tipping point for many Substack newsletter creators.

Are you one of them mulling your decision to move off the Substack platform? What if you need help hand-holding you throughout the migration?

Let us know by hitting ‘Reply’ on this email, or send a note to [email protected], and I would be happy to be a sounding board for your decision-making process.

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Cheers,

Renga from LetterStack

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