Substack’s new ‘Reply Rules’ feature lets creators control how people respond

Substack announced connected Wednesday a caller diagnostic called “Reply Rules,” designed to springiness creators greater power implicit however their audiences are capable to respond. 

With the feature, creators tin found circumstantial guidelines for comments connected their posts, successful Notes, oregon successful Chat. These guidelines mightiness see requests to destruct AI slop oregon profanity, oregon thing silly similar lone requiring replies successful haiku form.

Substack explains that the strategy learns from users’ actions, specified arsenic erstwhile they fell replies, and volition automatically filter retired comments that don’t lucifer the creator’s preferences. Creators support visibility implicit these hidden replies and person the enactment to unhide them if they alteration their minds. 

Currently, Reply Rules are disposable for each English-language publications. 

Substack has ever gone for a decentralized moderation approach, wherever writers are liable for policing their ain communities. Creators person entree to tools specified arsenic the enactment to fastener posts oregon threads to forestall further comments, remark deletion, and the quality to prohibition oregon suspend users erstwhile necessary. 

The caller diagnostic whitethorn trim the request for creators to sift done each remark manually.

Image Credits:Substack

However, it’s important to enactment that Substack has faced disapproval regarding its contented moderation practices, particularly regarding far-right newsletters. Critics reason that the platform’s much lenient attack allows harmful rhetoric to thrive. In today’s announcement, Substack seemed to code this and underscored its committedness to fostering divers online communities, contempt the challenges this entails.

As Substack puts it, “Since its founding, Substack has sought to make the champion imaginable conditions for cultures of galore varieties to flourish online. Achieving this often involves hard trade-offs, but alongside our halfway model—where we lone gain erstwhile writers, artists, journalists, musicians, and others earn—we’ve managed to carve retired a unsocial way comparative to different platforms.”

This year, Substack has rolled retired respective updates to its platform, including a built-in signaling studio for creators to pre-record and people videos. It besides launched a TV app for subscribers to ticker video posts and livestreams connected their surviving country screens.