Substack rival Ghost federates its first newsletter

by with No Comment Tech

Ghost logo (edited)

Image Credits: Ghost (edited by Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch)

Newsletter platform and Substack rival Ghost announced earlier this year that it would join the fediverse, the open social network of interconnected servers that includes apps like Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, Flipboard and, more recently, Instagram Threads, among others. Now, it has made good on that promise — with its own newsletter as a start.

Over the past few days, Ghost says it has achieved two major milestones in its move to become a federated service. Of note, it has federated its own newsletter, making it the first federated Ghost instance on the internet.

Users can follow the newsletter through their preferred federated app at @[email protected], though the company warns there will be bugs and issues as it continues to work on the platform’s integration with ActivityPub, the protocol that powers Mastodon and other federated apps.

“Having multiple Ghost instances in production successfully running ActivityPub is a huge milestone for us because it means that for the first time, we’re interacting with the wider fediverse. Not just theoretical local implementations and tests, but the real world wide social web,” the company shared in its announcement of the news.

In addition, Ghost’s ActivityPub GitHub repository is now fully open source. That means those interested in tracking Ghost’s progress toward federation can follow its code changes in real time, and anyone else can learn from, modify, distribute or contribute to its work. Developers who want to collaborate with Ghost are also being invited to get involved following this move.

The company had earlier detailed the benefits of an ActivityPub integration as an alternative to closed platforms, like Substack and others.

By offering a federated version of the newsletter, readers will have more choices on how they want to subscribe. That is, instead of only being able to follow the newsletter via email or the web, they also can track it using RSS or ActivityPub-powered apps, like Mastodon and others. Ghost said it will also develop a way for sites with paid subscribers to manage access via ActivityPub, but that functionality hasn’t yet rolled out with this initial test.

ActivityPub integration is becoming more common in the media business, as writers and publishers grapple with reduced traffic from sources like Google and Facebook while AI technology summarizes their work, either through paid content deals or plagiarism. Several sites, including The Verge, MacRumors and MacStories (and soon TechCrunch) recently adopted a new feature that will add their reporters’ bylines to news articles when they appeared in the fediverse, for instance.

Ghost itself has also attracted several high-profile users to its platform, often because Substack’s lax moderation policies meant it was increasingly becoming a home for hate speech. Casey Newton, formerly of The Verge, left Substack this year due to moderation concerns and migrated to Ghost instead. Another newsletter, Garbage Day, also left Substack. Other popular Ghost-powered publishers include 404 Media, Buffer, Kickstarter, David Sirota’s The Lever and Tangle, to name a few.

Substack rival Ghost federates its first newsletter

by with No Comment Tech

Ghost logo (edited)

Image Credits: Ghost (edited by Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch)

Newsletter platform and Substack rival Ghost announced earlier this year that it would join the fediverse, the open social network of interconnected servers that includes apps like Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, Flipboard and, more recently, Instagram Threads, among others. Now, it has made good on that promise — with its own newsletter as a start.

Over the past few days, Ghost says it has achieved two major milestones in its move to become a federated service. Of note, it has federated its own newsletter, making it the first federated Ghost instance on the internet.

Users can follow the newsletter through their preferred federated app at @[email protected], though the company warns there will be bugs and issues as it continues to work on the platform’s integration with ActivityPub, the protocol that powers Mastodon and other federated apps.

“Having multiple Ghost instances in production successfully running ActivityPub is a huge milestone for us because it means that for the first time, we’re interacting with the wider fediverse. Not just theoretical local implementations and tests, but the real world wide social web,” the company shared in its announcement of the news.

In addition, Ghost’s ActivityPub GitHub repository is now fully open source. That means those interested in tracking Ghost’s progress toward federation can follow its code changes in real time, and anyone else can learn from, modify, distribute or contribute to its work. Developers who want to collaborate with Ghost are also being invited to get involved following this move.

The company had earlier detailed the benefits of an ActivityPub integration as an alternative to closed platforms, like Substack and others.

By offering a federated version of the newsletter, readers will have more choices on how they want to subscribe. That is, instead of only being able to follow the newsletter via email or the web, they also can track it using RSS or ActivityPub-powered apps, like Mastodon and others. Ghost said it will also develop a way for sites with paid subscribers to manage access via ActivityPub, but that functionality hasn’t yet rolled out with this initial test.

ActivityPub integration is becoming more common in the media business, as writers and publishers grapple with reduced traffic from sources like Google and Facebook while AI technology summarizes their work, either through paid content deals or plagiarism. Several sites, including The Verge, MacRumors and MacStories (and soon TechCrunch) recently adopted a new feature that will add their reporters’ bylines to news articles when they appeared in the fediverse, for instance.

Ghost itself has also attracted several high-profile users to its platform, often because Substack’s lax moderation policies meant it was increasingly becoming a home for hate speech. Casey Newton, formerly of The Verge, left Substack this year due to moderation concerns and migrated to Ghost instead. Another newsletter, Garbage Day, also left Substack. Other popular Ghost-powered publishers include 404 Media, Buffer, Kickstarter, David Sirota’s The Lever and Tangle, to name a few.

Substack rival Ghost federates its first newsletter

by with No Comment Tech

Ghost logo (edited)

Image Credits: Ghost (edited by Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch)

Newsletter platform and Substack rival Ghost announced earlier this year that it would join the fediverse, the open social network of interconnected servers that includes apps like Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, Flipboard and, more recently, Instagram Threads, among others. Now, it has made good on that promise — with its own newsletter as a start.

Over the past few days, Ghost says it has achieved two major milestones in its move to become a federated service. Of note, it has federated its own newsletter, making it the first federated Ghost instance on the internet.

Users can follow the newsletter through their preferred federated app at @[email protected], though the company warns there will be bugs and issues as it continues to work on the platform’s integration with ActivityPub, the protocol that powers Mastodon and other federated apps.

“Having multiple Ghost instances in production successfully running ActivityPub is a huge milestone for us because it means that for the first time, we’re interacting with the wider fediverse. Not just theoretical local implementations and tests, but the real world wide social web,” the company shared in its announcement of the news.

In addition, Ghost’s ActivityPub GitHub repository is now fully open source. That means those interested in tracking Ghost’s progress toward federation can follow its code changes in real time, and anyone else can learn from, modify, distribute or contribute to its work. Developers who want to collaborate with Ghost are also being invited to get involved following this move.

The company had earlier detailed the benefits of an ActivityPub integration as an alternative to closed platforms, like Substack and others.

By offering a federated version of the newsletter, readers will have more choices on how they want to subscribe. That is, instead of only being able to follow the newsletter via email or the web, they also can track it using RSS or ActivityPub-powered apps, like Mastodon and others. Ghost said it will also develop a way for sites with paid subscribers to manage access via ActivityPub, but that functionality hasn’t yet rolled out with this initial test.

ActivityPub integration is becoming more common in the media business, as writers and publishers grapple with reduced traffic from sources like Google and Facebook while AI technology summarizes their work, either through paid content deals or plagiarism. Several sites, including The Verge, MacRumors and MacStories (and soon TechCrunch) recently adopted a new feature that will add their reporters’ bylines to news articles when they appeared in the fediverse, for instance.

Ghost itself has also attracted several high-profile users to its platform, often because Substack’s lax moderation policies meant it was increasingly becoming a home for hate speech. Casey Newton, formerly of The Verge, left Substack this year due to moderation concerns and migrated to Ghost instead. Another newsletter, Garbage Day, also left Substack. Other popular Ghost-powered publishers include 404 Media, Buffer, Kickstarter, David Sirota’s The Lever and Tangle, to name a few.

Substack introduces new payment methods for international markets

by with No Comment Tech

Substack local currency

Image Credits: Substack

Newsletter publishing company Substack is introducing new tools for international writers and audiences, including local payment methods, support for more currencies and the ability to set a default language for newsletters.

In a blog post, the company said that it’s rolling out support for payments in 13 currencies, including USD, CAD, GBP, AUD, EUR, BRL, MXN, NZD, CHF, DKK, NOK, SEK and PLN. If users are paying in any of these local currencies, they don’t have to worry about the dollar conversion rate every time their subscription money is due.

Substack writers still can’t set different prices for folks in different geographies. When a writer asked about that in comments, a company staff member said that geo-specific pricing is “very much on our radar.”

Additionally, Substack said that subscribers in Europe can use methods like direct debit or payment through a bank’s portal. Initially, the newsletter service supported iDEAL, Bancontact, Sofort and SEPA direct.

Image Credits: Substack

The company noted that in early tests it observed an 85% “relative lift” in paid conversions when a local method was available for payment.

What’s more, Substack is introducing a default language option for international writers. This change will be reflected in their newsletters, emails, buttons on the post, the publication page and the personal dashboard. Currently, it supports Spanish, French, Italian, German and Portuguese (with an option to select Brazilian Portuguese) apart from English.

Image Credits: Substack

Substack has had a controversial start for the year, with the company saying that it will take a hands-off approach with Nazi newsletters and won’t explicitly ban them. CEO Hamish McKenzie said in a post that it will enforce rules to ban posts with “incitements to violence” but will stick to a “decentralized approach to content moderation.”

In response to this, publications including Casey Newton’s Platformer and Ryan Broderick’s Garbage Day decided to leave the platform.

Substack won’t commit to proactively removing Nazi content, ensuring further fallout

Open source Substack rival Ghost may join the fediverse

by with No Comment Tech

Image Credits: Ghost (edited by Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch)

Ghost, the open source alternative to Substack’s newsletter platform, is considering joining the fediverse, the social network of interconnected servers that includes apps like Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, Flipboard and, more recently, Instagram Threads, among others. According to a post from Ghost founder John O’Nolan, the company — which is structured as a nonprofit — is considering federating Ghost over ActivityPub, the social networking protocol that powers the fediverse.

O’Nolan said that the most requested feature over the past few years has been to federate his software. “It seems like there are many potential ways to do it. Curious to hear how you would want it to work?” he asked in a post on Threads, which was syndicated to Mastodon via Threads’ own integration with ActivityPub.

The survey asks users if they use any ActivityPub platforms like Mastodon or Threads, and how they would expect ActivityPub functionality to work in Ghost, if it were to be added. It also asks how federation would personally benefit Ghost users. It invites survey respondents to optionally provide an email address if they want to be contacted for more input in the future, as well.

Image Credits: Ghost

While the launch of a survey isn’t necessarily a commitment to federating Ghost, it is another signal pointing to the broader reshaping of the web that’s now underway.

Following Twitter’s acquisition by billionaire Elon Musk, online users have experienced the downsides of putting their trust in centralized platforms: With a shift in ownership, Twitter was overhauled to be a different type of platform called X, with revised ethics and long-term ambitions. (Musk wants X to be an “everything” app for transactions, creator content, video, shopping and more and takes a more hands-off role in terms of content moderation.)

For those unhappy with Musk’s changes, having a portable social networking identity suddenly seemed like an idea that had more value. That is, if you don’t like the way your Mastodon server (or other federated service) is run, you can pick up your profile and move it elsewhere, followers in tow.

With Ghost, however, the idea could be to federate the accounts of the writers who use Ghost to publish their content. Their posts, which would also be published on the web and to their newsletter subscribers, could also exist in the fediverse, where others could read, like and reply to the post from their preferred app. These replies could also potentially syndicate back to Ghost, where they could exist as comments.

Assuming Ghost went this route, it would be similar to how WordPress federated with ActivityPub after the acquisition of an ActivityPub blog plug-in. When enabled, WordPress blogs can be followed by people on apps like Mastodon and others in the fediverse and then receive replies as comments on their own sites.

After seeing O’Nolan’s post, Mastodon CTO Renaud Chaput reached out to help with the ActivityPub integration, which O’Nolan accepted.

Ghost has gained attention as a Substack rival in recent months for the same reason that some have fled X: People disagree about how platforms should be moderated. Substack has taken to promoting free speech, as Musk does on X, but that’s also led to the platform being used by pro-Nazi publications, as detailed by The Atlantic late last year.

As a result, one of Substack’s more high-profile writers, Casey Newton, formerly of The Verge, left Substack and migrated to Ghost instead.

“I’m not aware of any major U.S. consumer internet platform that does not explicitly ban praise for Nazi hate speech, much less one that welcomes them to set up shop and start selling subscriptions,” Newton wrote at the time.

In addition to Newton, other notable Ghost users include 404 Media, Buffer, Kickstarter, David Sirota’s The Lever and Tangle, to name a few.

Today, Ghost has been installed over 3 million times, which would make for a healthy addition to the wider fediverse and its roughly 13+ million total users, around 1.5 million of which are active monthly. (This figure doesn’t include Threads’ 130+ million monthly active users as it’s not fully integrated with ActivityPub as of yet.)

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