Latest / The Newsletter Podcast with Fexingo: Substack, Beehiiv, and Email Newsletter Business / How Newsletter Creators Turned Off Their Comments
Transcript
- Lucas: So, here is a move that feels counterintuitive to almost every growth hack you will find on Twitter right now: turning off comments entirely. I have been tracking a handful of mid-sized business newsletters over the last six months, and three of them quietly disabled the comment thread below their posts. No announcement, no apology, just... gone. Luna: That sounds like a nightmare for community building. If people can’t talk back, aren’t they just losing the sense of connection that makes newsletters sticky? Lucas: On paper, yes. But when I dug into their internal metrics and read their creator notes, the data told a different story. One creator, who runs a daily macro-economics brief with about twenty thousand subscribers, said the comment section had become a 'second job' that paid zero dividends. She was spending four hours a day moderating trolls and answering basic questions that could have been answered with a FAQ doc. Luna: So she traded visibility for sanity. Did her open rates drop, or did the quality of the actual newsletter improve because she wasn’t distracted by the thread? Lucas: Her open rates stayed flat, but her production cycle shrank by two days per week. That is huge. By removing the expectation of immediate dialogue, she forced herself to write more complete, self-contained arguments. The feedback loop didn’t disappear; it just moved from a noisy public square to a slower, more deliberate channel like email replies or a private Discord server. Luna: I see that. It shifts the burden of conversation from the creator to the platform design. But what about the readers who actually want to debate? Don’t they feel silenced? Lucas: Some do, and they leave. But the ones who stay are usually the ones who want depth, not drama. The creator I mentioned saw a forty percent increase in direct email responses after disabling comments. Those emails were substantive—corrections, additional data points, genuine professional insights—rather than the reactive hot-takes that dominate comment sections. Luna: So you’re saying that by closing the door, you actually filtered for the kind of reader who adds real value to the work? Lucas: Exactly. It’s an exercise in ruthless prioritization. Most newsletter creators treat the comment section as a mandatory feature, but for many, it’s a liability. It creates a false sense of intimacy while consuming disproportionate energy. If your goal is high-quality output, not high-volume interaction, turning it off is a logical step. Luna: It reminds me of how some writers delete drafts rather than publish imperfect work. It’s a quality control mechanism disguised as a restriction. Lucas: Right. And it challenges the idea that engagement must be visible to count. Direct emails, LinkedIn shares, and private group discussions are all forms of engagement, but they don’t clutter the public face of the product. This is especially relevant as we move through late 2026, where audiences are becoming fatigued by performative outrage in digital spaces. Luna: Fatigue is a big word. Do we have evidence that readers are actively tired of comment sections, or is this just a creator-side efficiency play? Lucas: It’s mostly creator-side efficiency, but the reader behavior supports it. Analytics show that very few subscribers actually scroll to the bottom to comment. Usually less than one percent. So the creator is optimizing for a tiny minority of users at the expense of their own well-being and the majority’s reading experience. It’s an inefficient allocation of attention. Luna: One percent. That seems incredibly low. So the comment section is basically a vanity metric for most publishers? Lucas: For the vast majority, yes. It’s a vanity metric that masquerades as community. When you remove it, you stop performing community and start building it through better content and more intentional touchpoints. The creator I quoted said she felt 'lighter' within a month. Less defensive, more creative. Luna: That’s a powerful outcome. Mental health and creative output are directly linked. If the tool is breaking the user, maybe the tool should go. Lucas: Precisely. And platforms like Substack and Beehiiv are beginning to cater to this shift. They are adding better tools for managing direct subscriptions and private communities, acknowledging that the open web comment thread is dying for serious publishers. The infrastructure is moving toward gated, higher-signal interactions. Luna: So this isn’t just a personality quirk of individual writers. It’s a structural shift in how these platforms are designed to support sustainable businesses. Lucas: It is. The era of the 'open forum' newsletter is giving way to the 'curated broadcast' model. You send the signal, and those who want to respond do so through channels you control. It reduces toxicity, increases clarity, and protects the creator’s time. Luna: I’m curious about the transition period though. When you first turn off comments, don’t you get a spike in confused or angry emails asking why? Lucas: You do, but it’s short-lived. Most people are polite. A small percentage are hostile, but they are also the ones causing the most moderation headaches anyway. By letting them churn, you actually strengthen the remaining cohort. It’s a filter. If someone cannot respect a boundary about how you run your publication, they were never going to be a loyal subscriber long-term. Luna: That’s a hard truth to accept, but logically sound. Loyalty is built on shared values and respect, not just access. Lucas: And let’s be clear, this doesn’t mean abandoning dialogue. It means moving it. The same creator moved her top fifty contributors to a weekly curated Q&A email. That is high-value interaction, focused and finite, instead of the endless scroll of random opinions. Luna: A curated Q&A sounds much more manageable than a live comment feed. It turns chaos into a structured asset. Lucas: It does. And it allows the creator to shape the narrative without being derailed by the loudest voice in the room. It’s about editorial control. In a world of infinite noise, curation is the only premium left. Luna: So, if you are running a newsletter and feeling overwhelmed by the comment section, this might be the solution you need. Just turn it off and see what happens. Lucas: It’s worth testing. Treat it like an experiment. Disable it for one month, measure your stress levels and your output quality, and see if the audience truly suffers. You might find that the silence is exactly what your business needed. Luna: Silence can be golden, especially when it buys you back your time. Before we dive deeper into the mechanics of this shift, I want to pause for a moment. If these conversations about sustainable creator economies have sparked something you've actually used in your own work, consider supporting the show directly. Your contributions help us keep producing ad-free analysis on topics like this. You can find us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Thanks for helping us stay independent. Lucas: Appreciate it. Now, back to the strategy. Let’s talk about the technical side of this. How do creators handle the 'reply-all' culture that often leaks out of comment sections into social media? Luna: That’s a good point. Without the comment section, negative sentiment has nowhere to vent internally, so it often escapes to Twitter or LinkedIn. How do you manage that external bleed? Lucas: By owning the narrative in the newsletter itself. You address common misconceptions proactively. You write the response before the question is asked. It’s about preemptive clarity. If you anticipate the pushback, you neutralize it in the main text, reducing the likelihood of it exploding elsewhere. Luna: So the newsletter becomes the single source of truth, rather than one node in a chaotic network of debates. Lucas: Exactly. It reinforces authority. Readers come to you for the definitive take, not the messy middle ground of public opinion. That is a stronger brand position. Luna: It feels more like a magazine than a blog. High authority, low friction. Lucas: That’s the goal. Low friction for the reader, high protection for the creator. It’s a win-win if executed with transparency. You just tell your audience, 'We are focusing on depth over breadth,' and most will agree. Luna: Most will, provided you still offer a way for the deeply interested to connect. Like that private Discord we mentioned earlier. Lucas: Right. The path remains open, just quieter. It rewards the serious readers and filters out the casual scrollers who were never going to convert anyway. Luna: It’s interesting how much of modern digital strategy is about subtraction. Removing features, removing noise, removing expectations. Lucas: Subtraction is the new addition. In a crowded market, simplicity wins. If your newsletter is easier to consume and safer to create, you have a competitive advantage. Luna: So, is the comment section dead, or just evolving into something smaller and more exclusive? Lucas: I think it’s evolving into a luxury good. Only the biggest brands with dedicated moderation teams will keep public comments alive. For everyone else, it’s a relic of the early web. Luna: A relic. That’s a strong word. But looking at the data on creator burnout, it’s probably accurate. Lucas: It is. And as we head into the end of the quarter, watching which creators make these bold cuts might be the best indicator of who survives the next wave of platform fatigue. Luna: Survival of the fittest, or survival of the quietest? Lucas: Probably both. The quiet ones are often the most focused. And focus is the only currency that matters now. Luna: So, what happens when the readers who loved the comments finally realize they are gone? Do they migrate en masse, or do they just adapt? Lucas: They adapt. Human beings are remarkably good at adjusting to new interfaces. Within a few weeks, the habit changes. They learn to read, reflect, and reply privately. The noise fades, and the signal remains. Luna: And that signal is what you pay for. Not the chatter, but the clarity. Lucas: Exactly. Clarity is the product. Everything else is just decoration. Luna: It’s a simple shift, but it changes everything about the relationship between writer and reader. Lucas: It does. And it forces us to ask: do we really need everyone to speak, or do we just need the right people to listen? Luna: Maybe the answer is that listening is harder work than talking, and that’s why it’s more valuable. Lucas: Or maybe it’s just quieter. Which, in this economy, is exactly what we’re looking for.