Substack Feeds: How to Manage What You See?
On Customizations.
Want to tailor what you see in your feed including Notes?
Navigate to Profile Settings, accessible either under your image in the upper right-hand corner or from the sidebar
Two fields provide control. The first one is helpful if you know the name of the publication. The name of the text field is ‘Suggested publications,’ but the underlying message says that ‘These publications won’t be suggested in the feed.’ Go figure!
More surprises? When a user selects the right arrow for a double-click on the field, the below info message pops up. However, I couldn't find how a user is to enter the publication name, making it confusing. (I could not discover clarity on this matter in the Substack help section.) But when this field works, you will know what to do! ;-)
Control your content feed via 'Manage Interests.' Toggle interesting topics.
This should effectively show the feeds for the interested topics. I presume it works because I haven’t seen any sports-related notes which I have turned off! :-)
Be mindful that if you independently 'Follow' authors, their feeds may appear even if they post within topics you've turned off. In this case, simply unfollow them to stop their feed from showing up.
Bonus
While exploring the documentation for the first field, 'Suggested Publications,' I stumbled upon an interesting aspect regarding blocked users: This is what the documentation says:
This means that if a user is blocked because they have written what you consider offensive (after all it is your Note!), everyone else except the writer can still read their offensive message and presumably reply in support! I doubt users expect this!
This is now added to the growing list in the below post, with other feedback from some of the readers.
Author Caveat: Unfortunately, as of September 2024, this feature has been removed from Settings. Substack now uses an algorithm based on your recommendations, subscriptions, and possibly your follows to determine what appears in your feed. In addition, the categories you choose for your publication (e.g., Education, Culture) influence the leaderboards displayed in your feed.
See a related post where I discuss this and other arbitrary changes on Substack.
Blocking only works prospectively, not retrospectively, and only for the person doing the blocking. This is true for any platform.
Blocking means that neither the reader nor the writer will see each other's offerings in future, whether a newsletter, a Note, a comment, or a Chat. There's nothing peculiar or deceptive about that.
Substack must have changed all this since OP. I have neither option in my settings, thus continue only seeing a narrow topic list in my feed with seemingly no way to alter. Bummer.