This is Peak Featurecide

TechCrunch:

Substack continues to double down on video amid TikTok’s uncertain future in the U.S. The company announced on Monday that it’s rolling out a scrollable video feed in its app, making it the latest platform to introduce a TikTok-like feed.

Given the timing of the launch, Substack is likely aiming to capitalize on the potential void left by TikTok if it faces a ban in the United States.

The move comes a month after Substack announced that it would start allowing creators to monetize their videos on the platform and let them publish video posts directly from the Substack app.

Substack used to be about writing. Publishing. The kind of longform work that thrived because it dared to slow down. The pitch invited readers to sit with a thought, not swipe past it. But that Substack is vanishing in the eternal pivot to video - tiny, meaningless loops, endlessly scrolled and instantly forgotten.

Their new feature - a vertical scroll of bite-sized clips - isn't innovation. Please, for the love of all that's holy, don't call it that.

It’s Featurecide: the slow killing of a product’s soul in pursuit of every trend that moves the needle on engagement metrics, no matter how disconnected it is from the original mission.

Chasing TikTok users doesn’t build a better platform for writers. It builds a different platform entirely. The value proposition collapses when your infrastructure for thought becomes optimized for the attention economy. You can’t serve two masters. You either build a tool for writers or you build an app for dopamine hits. Once you choose the latter, you’ve already traded your audience.

We've heard it before: new formats, more discoverability, growth.

But what gets discovered when a platform devalues depth?

What grows when creators are nudged to repackage their ideas into 30-second loops?

It's the same noise. Over, and over again.

Sure, some writers use video. And some use podcasts. Multimedia isn’t the enemy. But when the interface tells users, constantly, that faster is better and shorter is smarter, you can’t pretend it's a neutral container for expression. Design is direction. And Substack is pointing away from writing.

Substack's success - for all my dislike of the platform - came from being different. From treating writers as more than just content creators, as something closer to public intellectuals, artists, craftspeople. But you can only hold that line if you're willing to say no to the algorithm. And it looks like they aren’t.

Substack was supposed to be a refuge from the noise. Now it wants to be the noise.

When you start designing for virality instead of value, the value bleeds out. Not overnight. Not right away. But inevitably...