Substack’s CEO on AI slop, free speech, and taking on YouTube

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I think the kind of work you're doing, I think that deserves to be, like, a substantial share of culture. I would love to be in a world where we are paying creators, we're helping creators make more than YouTube is helping them make.

This week on the show, we've got Chris Best, CEO of Substack, who joined us for a recent Access live show and launch party in San Francisco.

Are you managing up to your boss right now?

I am... L- Can you tell that I'm glazing?

[laughs]

I'm, I'm going full GPT-4o right now.

[laughs]

[laughs]

Is it, is it working?

We get into Substack's growth, break some news about its AI plans, and get Chris' perspective on where media is headed.

To me, slop is not a thing that was made by AI. It was a thing that was made without intention. It's something that you're sort of tricked into consuming that nobody believes in.

We also press him on the hardest questions facing the company, from ads to moderation, and the charged free speech debate.

If you're the subject of kind of bogus defamation claims, we're gonna come and kind of, like, put a lot of legal weight behind that and make that very costly for the people who are bringing those things.

So if Elon sues me, you got me?

Yeah.

Sick. If you care about the future of media and where the internet is headed, this one is for you. Welcome to Access. [upbeat electronic music] We're 33 episodes in with this one today. We launched in September. Um, a lot of the faces down in the atrium, [clapping] uh, are previous guests. Um, and we feel really blessed to, uh, to be able to do this and have such great guests. Including, um, the star of the show today, uh, Chris Best, the CEO of Substack. Uh, he doesn't do a ton of these. Uh, really glad that he agreed to do it. When I was, uh, going independent, he and I had a conversation, and we were talking through the trade-offs of different platforms and what I was debating, and I was... We got to a point where I was like, "Okay, I'm gonna do Substack, but if I do it, will you please just do an interview with me at some point?" And he said yes.

[laughs]

So he's a man of his word as well. Um, but yeah, let's, uh, welcome Chris. Whoo. [clapping]

iPads at the ready.

[laughs] You don't have an iPad, Chris. It's all right.

You know, if I knew you were both bad cops, I never would've done this.

Well, but we, we give good cop, and then we l- we reel