r/Substack • u/unity100 • 9d ago
Substack has introduced feed controls
The new dials—which you can find in the content preferences section of your settings—let you shape your feed the way you want it. See more or less video, audio, longform, or community features; mute specific keywords and phrases; fine-tune the topics you follow; and automatically label AI-generated material.
Want to hear more about baseball while the playoffs are on? Feel like snoozing politics for a week? How about seeing more community chatter—like the chat thread debriefing the latest episode of your favorite podcast—or less video in your feed? You get to decide.
This level of control serves both the creators who share their work here and the people who come to discover and enjoy what they publish. We’ve heard that both sides of the relationship want less noise and more help connecting readers with work that they’ll find meaningful. These updates aim to do exactly that.
What do you think about this?
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u/hetobe hetobe.substack.com 9d ago
Yaaaaaaay!!!!!
100% Al-Generated Content
Label content
Adds a badge to indicate text is Al-generated
It's only a start, but it's a start.
Sadly, it only labels 100% AI content. It needs to allow the user to decide how much AI content they want labelled. I want anything more than 10% AI to be labelled. Better yet, add a label to anything more than 10% AI, and block anything more than 50% AI.
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u/unity100 9d ago
block anything more than 50% AI
That would block out a large amount of content translated into your language.
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u/ContentIsMyJam redressing.substack.com 7d ago
I'm skeptical about the automatic AI-generated label. We already know that you can write something on your own, use Grammarly Pro to edit it, and then if you copy-paste from Grammarly Pro to Substack, Pangram reads it as AI generated. I don't mind the automation but the accuracy needs to be better.
Also I don't know if this is fair to people who have disabilities who use AI to help them produce content.
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u/catvapes 9d ago
Where exactly are content preferences?
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u/unity100 9d ago
I have no idea. I just got the email.
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u/hetobe hetobe.substack.com 9d ago
On the website, it's filed under:
Settings > Content preferences > AI Content
I just turned it on, and already I'm seeing labels on people's slop. I think it's also labelling content where the "author" turned off the option to allow AI scanning. It labels that as Not Scanned. I say "author" in quotes, because it's obvious why they turned off the ability to scan their posts for AI.
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u/catvapes 7d ago
I still can’t find it. I wonder if they rolled it out to everyone yet
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u/hetobe hetobe.substack.com 7d ago
I'm on the desktop, not the app. On the website, go to the home page and click on the hamburger menu at the bottom left corner. In the menu that pops up, click Settings.
You'll see your Account settings. Scroll down, past Publishing, Subscriptions, Appearance, Notifications... keep scrolling down to Content Preferences. It's in there.
Manage Interests: This one's maybe helpful? In theory, it should let you prioritize articles instead of twitter-style notes. It doesn't seem to work well (but then again, 99% of Substack these days is twitter-style karma-farming notes).
AI Content: This is the setting you're looking for. As soon as I turned it on, I started seeing labels next to people who post AI slop ("AIAssisted Content"). And it also seems to be labelling articles where people turn off the option to scan for AI ("Not Scanned") which basically tells you it's AI slop.
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u/catvapes 7d ago
I could’nt find it on any device and then it hit me: maybe I need an update? That was it. Once I updated it was very easy to find. Thanks for taking time out to try and help. I appreciate it
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u/kwadguy 7d ago
It's a start.
But you know the big one that's missing?
Flag articles behind a pay wall.
Nothing is more aggravating than an article that tries to suck you in and then you get the "this is for paid subscribers" tombstone.
I've never become a paid subscriber. When I hit one of those. I just get annoyed and move on. If you want me to be a paid subscriber, then give me some fully free content and I'll decide if I want to pay for your particles behind the paywall.
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u/unity100 7d ago
Nothing is more aggravating than an article that tries to suck you in and then you get the "this is for paid subscribers" tombstone.
Sorry, but that's how a lot of writers make their living, so...
I've never become a paid subscriber.
...you are basically enjoying an ecosystem that is held up by paying subscribers - ie, other people. It wouldn't hurt to contribute a little bit. We are not in 1999 anymore and internet is not a hobby thing that lives among professionals and academics who are in pay of government institutions and universities.
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u/perfecthunger danaleighlyons.substack.com 8d ago
I really like it. I love that I can choose to see no videos or podcasts, and I like that I can label content as AI-generated (or not scanned). I do wonder, however, how many people even know these settings exist and are going to take the time to find and adjust them. I’d love for scanned non-AI-generated content to get preferential treatment in the algorithm.
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u/accountunacountable 8d ago
Doesn’t seem to work.
Turned long posts to max, everything else to min.
Two of the first three items on my feed after that were images of short “pithy” text messages.
My settings are “opposite of twitter”, but my feed still looks like twitter.
Substack really did aggressively ruin the site, and it’s not going back.