Notes - is it just a Ponzi scheme?

I’ve been on Substack for the past month as a reader. A colleague of mine has their own newsletter and showed me around the app and I was impressed.

It felt like a full featured social network but where the creators are properly rewarded for their work.

I quickly became disillusioned with Notes. Which is a shame because it is the feature that has the potential for Substack to go mainstream.

I’ve found it to be utterly worthless as a consumer of content. Most of the content is simply writers telling other writers how to grow their audience.

Perhaps ponzi is the wrong term but Notes is too meta to be of any real value to a wider audience. It’s really bizarre. A bit cultish even. Imagine if every Facebook post was talking about Facebook.

Am I simply doing something wrong?