“When you build your audience entirely on someone else’s platform, you aren’t a homeowner. You are a tenant.”
Substack is a venture-funded company that needs an exit, and your mailing list is the asset it will sell. Writers went through this with Medium, then with Twitter, and are lining up to do it again because signup is easy. A domain costs about ten dollars a year. The reason this needs saying in 2026 is that the platforms got very good at making the rented apartment feel like a house.