Strong disagree on Medium, Substack, etc. There are very famous and popular blogs on both with tons of followers. My sister asked for a blog, I steered her to substack. Zero effort, just works.
> Your readers deserve better. Don’t waste their time.
Nothing about substack wastes readers time.
Conversely, what wastes their time is your site being down or hacked and what wastes your time is maintaining your blog's infra, updating because vulnerabilities, and/or using bad UIs like blogging from github (maybe passable for nerds, not for non-nerds)
A blog isn't about the tech you use. It's about the writing. Worrying about tech is not going to add a single reader to your blog.
Substack is trash. VC-backed, full of tracking pixels and privacy-invading anti-features, constant push to monetize, cross-promote and increase engagement... Every blogger who has moved there has gotten less interesting than they were when they were independent. It's everything that is wrong about social media cynically branded as some kind of alternative media outlet.
Of course there is plenty of money to be made as a social media influencer who specializes in long form content, and if that's the career a person is interested in building then sure - Substack, Medium, whatever - great choice. But for people who are interested in blogging as it used to be, independent writers who want to write without the pressure of editors, without paywalls, without popups, without forcing their readers into signup funnels... It might be a bit more work to set up, but tools like WordPress, Ghost etc are better suited.
> Your readers deserve better. Don’t waste their time.
Nothing about substack wastes readers time.
Conversely, what wastes their time is your site being down or hacked and what wastes your time is maintaining your blog's infra, updating because vulnerabilities, and/or using bad UIs like blogging from github (maybe passable for nerds, not for non-nerds)
A blog isn't about the tech you use. It's about the writing. Worrying about tech is not going to add a single reader to your blog.