I snagged an iconic sub-domain on substack in November, 2020 - "go.substack.com" - and found out a few weeks ago, it re-directs to a new program the substack team has launched for writers.

I always predicted this day would come, but even so, have contrasting emotions of violation and vindication by how it played out in real time.

Just recently, I found out my personal Substack has a new sub-domain, and better yet, that it was my fault as a writer for not being consistently on the platform.

When I thought about getting off Medium in 2020, I didn’t want to be just another one of those guys starting a Substack. At the time, it felt like everyone was starting one, yet I had just taken a leap of faith as an entrepreneur and wanted a way to keep people in touch and gather their emails in one place. Of course, it became clear why Substack was the perfect solution, and I grabbed what I knew at the time was a catch - a two letter subdomain, my initials, GO, and the topic of my early-stage writing.

Given my history with Web 3, this experience served as a reminder that we sacrifice true ownership at the sake of convenience.

Substack did end up getting in touch with me, stating that those who are not active on the platform for only six months can be reassigned a domain. It doesn’t matter that you may be going through a serious life event preventing you from sharing and writing publicly, which I was.

Whether I am to trust and dig up web archives that this was a part of the terms of service a year ago when I signed up doesn’t really matter. The truth is, I gave up any sense of “ownership” when I signed up. The “GO” subdomain is now theirs, forever, because it is Substacks creation and ecosystem - not mine. I’ve always accepted this, I’m just now on the wrong receiving end.

The best thing to do to move forward is to simply double down on Web 3. It’s not to go back and argue about where I might have felt I was wronged, but to use this experience as compelling proof that more equitable digital ecosystems, where contributors can have true ownership and share upside in the value they create, are not just the future, they are here today.

And this experience, for me, is a very rude nudge that we are in control of our own destiny and our own words, and we have to do everything to protect that.

I’m so grateful to the Mirror team (@rafathebuilder and @veronicasaron) for helping me laugh as I was getting rugged and look forward to seeing all the ways in which the protocol will evolve.