For writers who've been burned before
Your words. Your readers.
Your platform, guaranteed.
plebos is the publishing platform that cannot hold your audience hostage — your own domain, your full subscriber list, one-click export, and federation built in. The only platform that gets better because you're free to leave it.
You already know how this story goes.
Medium
Four pivots, an algorithmic paywall lottery, and your readers were never yours — they belonged to the feed.
Substack
10% of your income, forever, plus the processor's cut. And in late 2025, native ads entered pilot.
The former bird site
A decade of audience-building, repriced overnight when ownership changed. Reach you rent can be revoked.
None of these platforms set out to do this. They enshittified — Doctorow's word — because their structure demanded it: lock-in made the squeeze affordable, and captured ownership had to squeeze. plebos is built so neither force can ever apply.
Two promises, structural by design.
I.
The Exit — credible, free, built-in
Your publication lives on your domain. Your subscriber list is yours to download, always. Every word exports losslessly. Federation (ActivityPub) means your readers follow you, not our app. If we ever give you a reason to go — you walk, audience intact, in an afternoon. A platform you can leave for free is one you'll never need to.
II.
The Constitution — betrayal, structurally banned
A public charter commits plebos to no advertising, no sale of your data, and no sale of the company to an owner who would reverse any of it — and to making those promises permanent. We take no venture-capital equity, ever, and we are placing the company under steward-ownership, so there can be no future owner who is forced to squeeze you. The core is open source, so if we ever disappeared the platform would not. “No ads, ever” is credible here because we are binding it into the structure of the company, not just our good intentions. The charter is a public draft today, and it says plainly what is already a commitment and what we are still in the process of locking down.
The honest table.
| plebos | Substack | Medium | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cut of your paid subscriptions | 4%, declining | 10%, forever | opaque pool |
| Your own domain | Yes | Yes | Members only |
| Own your subscriber list | Yes, always | Yes | Restricted |
| Readers can follow you across the open web (federation) | Built in | No | No |
| Ads on your work | Banned by charter | In pilot (2025–) | No |
| Can be acquired / change owners | No — becoming steward-owned | Yes (VC-backed) | Yes (VC-backed) |
| Engagement algorithm deciding your reach | Never | Increasingly | Entirely |
plebos is building the commons between publications — one reader identity, a civil discussion layer — and binds no-ads / no-sale / no-VC into a public charter written to hold against whoever runs plebos next.
The long versions: vs Substack · vs Medium · vs Ghost
Simple on purpose.
- 1
Write
A clean, fast editor that autosaves and stays out of your way. Markdown under the hood — portable forever.
- 2
Publish once, reach everywhere
Your site, your newsletter, and the fediverse — one publish. Chronological, follower-based reach. No lottery.
- 3
Get paid, keep it
Readers become patrons. 96%+ of every subscription is yours, and the rake declines as you grow.
When the patricians pushed too far, the plebs walked out of Rome — and the standing, credible threat of leaving is what kept the Republic honest for centuries. We built that threat into the architecture. That's the whole idea.— why it's called plebos
The city you secede to.
Bring your writing. Bring your readers. Neither will ever be ours.