Cancel your paid subscriptions right away

I'm not calling for a boycott. By all means, take out paid subscriptions, but also, cancel them. Do it right away, so they don't renew. Do it while the credit card is still warm.

I am frustrated with the fact that everything these days requires a subscription. No matter which aspect of your life, somebody wants you to commit to monthly recurring payments to provide you with a service that would make your life so much more comfortable.¹ Eight-sleep wants you to sign up for a subscription for a bed! If there’s one thing I don’t need a subscription for it’s my bed, thank you very much.

I realize the irony of writing this on a site that is all built on paid subscriptions. It frustrates me, because I want to support writers and I think Substack gets a lot of things right, such as giving writers control over their distribution lists or providing an easy platform for discovery and promotion.² But Substack is also full of dark patterns.³ Examples include trying to get you to subscribe before even reading a single article; trying to get you to subscribe to other publications as part of the standard onboarding process; not showing you the details of the paid options unless you click on the subscribe button; replacing articles with a subscribe button if you stop reading but don’t close the tab; the list goes on and on. One could teach a college course about dark patterns and exclusively use Substack examples for illustration.⁴

More importantly, however, I think subscription in itself is a dark pattern. Imagine you went to a store to buy bananas, and they said “sorry, we don’t do one-time sales; you have to sign up for monthly delivery; how many bananas do you need a month?” Or you went to a restaurant to have dinner, and they said “we only serve members; subscribe to the one, two, or four meals a month plan and we’ll seat you right away.” But of course these days all of these things exist as subscription services, because vendors have realized that if they can get you to subscribe you will generally buy more from them than you otherwise would have, and probably more than you needed. As a case in point, consider Amazon. If you try to order anything from them that you might need more than once, such as toilet paper or pet food or cooking oil, they try very hard to sell you a subscription service instead. On occasion I’ve found it quite confusing to figure out how to place a one-time order. I’m sure people have taken out subscriptions on Amazon just because they were tired of fighting over making a one-time purchase.

But Amazon at least gives you the option of a one-time sale. Substack does not. You either subscribe, or there’s nothing here for you to spend your money on. So, if you do like the platform in principle, and if you want to support some of the writers you encounter here, you will end up with an ever growing collection of paid subscriptions.

To counteract this trend, I recently went through all of my paid subscriptions on Substack and cancelled them one by one.⁵ As I did so, I discovered one I didn’t even know I had. This demonstrates the dark pattern at work. Had I not systematically checked, I would have continued paying for who knows how long.⁶

I’m not convinced that the dark pattern of trying to trick people into forgetting their subscriptions is worth it. I know that for myself, because I’m so aware of this pattern, I tend to be extremely reluctant to commit to a paid subscription. I’d be much less worried about making a one-time payment, as if I was buying an author’s book or attending a live event.

For this reason, I have decided that going forward, when I want to support an author on Substack, I take out an annual subscription, which I then cancel immediately. This is in effect a one-year non-renewing subscription, and it provides the author with a meaningful level of support. Once the year is up and the subscription ends, if I wish it had continued, I’ll just take out another one-year subscription.

After just a few days of trying this out, I have found that this mindset makes it much easier for me to take out a paid subscription for an author I like. I’m probably willing to do about one yearly subscription per month, given current Substack prices. The feeling of no longer having to worry about all these future recurring payments is rather freeing.

I realize that as I’m doing this and saying this I’m in a way validating Substack’s dark patterns. By developing strategies to work around their machinations, I’m removing pressure on Substack to enact any changes.⁷ However, I’m under no illusion that whatever I say could have any influence on what Substack does. I’m far too unimportant and invisible. So, what I offer here is akin to a lecture on defense against the dark arts, for the handful of people that may read this. If I can help even a few people feel better about paid subscriptions, that seems a worthwhile achievement to me.

I have seen people argue that Substack should offer one-time payments for specific articles. I understand why Substack doesn’t want to do this. People claim they would buy articles one-off but realistically the volume would be so low that the vast majority of writers would generate virtually no income from this option. However, I do think Substack should offer yearly non-recurring subscription payments.⁸ Give me the option of buying a one-year subscription without having to worry about renewal. Maybe even give me the option of buying multiple years at once.

But, I don’t have high hopes that Substack will implement non-recurring subscriptions. And therefore, for now, I encourage everybody to just cancel their (annual) subscriptions right after paying for it. There’s nothing wrong with doing this. Nothing bad will happen. You will have access to the paid content for a full year.⁹ And also, you’re not a bad person if you cancel the same day you subscribe. You paid for a year. Most people don’t do this. And you can pay again. If you continue to like an author chances are you will want to pay again. And if in a year’s time you don’t even remember why you ever paid a certain author, it’s probably for the best the subscription is cancelled. So go ahead, cancel your subscriptions today.

1. At least, so they claim.

2. I’m talking about Notes here, in case this wasn’t clear.

3. If the term dark pattern doesn’t mean anything to you, I suggest you start reading here.

4. Here is another great one: The recent unexpected disclosure of everybody’s paid subscriptions is a case of Privacy Zuckering.

5. As you have to do. Substack doesn’t make it easy to cancel multiple subscriptions.

6. Because, let’s face it, what usually happens is you forget about the subscription until you get the annual renewal notice—I’m assuming annual subscriptions here, as I believe most people take out annual subscriptions to get the discount—and then you go “I should cancel before it gets renewed next year,” and then you forget, and the same thing happens again the following year and so on.

7. I bet that if Substack noted an increase in immediate cancellations of paid subscription, their first response would not be “let’s offer non-renewing subscriptions.” Instead, more likely than not, they would think about additional dark patterns to discourage people from canceling.

8. Substack could leave it to the authors to decide whether to enable this option or not.

9. I even got the flowery badge that says “Claus Wilke subscribes” even though I cancelled all my subscriptions.