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Substack has handed readers direct control over video, longform, keywords and AI labels in their feeds. It's the latest platform to crack open the algorithm, and the implications run far beyond email newsletters.
Substack has launched a set of content preferences that let users adjust how much video, audio, longform or community content appears in their feed, mute specific keywords and phrases, fine-tune the topics they follow, and automatically label AI-generated material. The controls live in the content preferences section of user settings.
The move follows a wave of similar feed-customization tools rolled out this year by Meta and TikTok. But where those platforms started with topic sliders and interest tags, Substack's suite is broader and more granular from the start. Users can hide up to 50 words or phrases, each up to 100 characters, and they can dial format types up or down with sliders covering video, audio, chat and longer posts.
The timing matters. In the past six months, the Substack app has driven nearly 800,000 paid subscriptions and more than 80 million free subscriptions to writers and creators, with more than half of paid subscriptions from the app coming directly from the Notes feed. Feed controls arriving now signal that Substack sees its discovery surface as critical infrastructure, not just a nice-to-have.
800,000 paid subscriptions driven by the Substack app in six months Substack, October 2026
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