possible wake up call, or opens the door for the AFD?

load of Russian bot accounts being decommissioned. Their work is done.

The discovery engine and efforts of substack put it ahead of medium I feel

The chat associated with each article/newsletter in substack is like a little social site of its own, and stays on the topic (generally) of the post.

Also they are essentially a podcast platform now

And have integrated paid subs, arguably better than Patreon

To clarify: the effort they are putting into discoverability is really bearing fruit

Substack