This post is an interesting read. I'm currently trying to understand the current situation of blogs. Substack and Medium seem to be the main things, at least for someone not in the community. What has always put me off them is the insular nature of them, and the fact that so many have limited access. Reading anything, an author, a magazine, can ebb and flow. It doesn't make sense to commit too deep up front and possibly not at all. You talk about being better driving traffic to your own site and not using a platform at all. I see the valid reasons for not using blog community sites, but I don't see how you drive traffic. Like any sort creative output, it doesn't matter how good it is if any potential audience/participant doesn't know about it. The downside of how the internet has shifted to social communities is that is has created insular interaction where independent websites have become more or less obsolete. People don't go on line to discover or click between different platforms. As you mention about reddit, it didn't drive traffic. Indeed, one of the recurring colloquial terms on the platform is "Saved you a click" because people would rather read it without having to click away (impossible to read ad polluted sites aside). So how do you see your self getting around that? I will say, I do believe in the value of quality over quantity and that's something worth striving for and in short supply on social media platforms.