Elon Musk’s famously temperamental persona was on full display this Good Friday weekend as a simmering covert war between Twitter and the newsletter publishing platform, Substack, came to a boil, replete with moves and countermoves worthy of a Mexican soap opera.
Over the past couple of days, a number of publishers declared that they could no longer share a Substack link on Twitter or interact with any tweet that included a link to a Substack article.
Given the fact that around 25 percent of Substack traffic comes from social media platforms, with Twitter accounting for 61 percent of this cohort, the referral degradation from Twitter is likely to have a significant impact on Substack’s traffic metric.
Apparently, the dispute centers on Substack Notes, a new Twitter-like feature that allows short-form posts akin to Tweets. It seems that the global town square is not pleased with Substack’s attempts to become a direct competitor.
Matt Taibbi and Elon Musk Enter the Fray
This brings us to the crux of the matter. The purported bonhomie between Matt Taibbi and Elon Musk was on full display a couple of months back as the independent journalist published a hard-hitting exposè on how Twitter suppressed free speech in the pre-Musk era. Dubbed the Twitter Files, the exposè leveraged thousands of internal files to publish a series of hard-hitting threads, which dealt with Hunter Biden’s laptop controversy, how Twitter arbitrarily lowered the visibility of certain accounts, and Trump’s de-platforming saga. These threads would be religiously retweeted by Elon Musk, who conferred his full blessing to the independent journalist in this endeavor.
Since sharing links to my articles is a primary reason I come to this platform, I was alarmed and asked what was going on. I was given the option of posting articles on Twitter instead.
I’m obviously staying at Substack, and will be moving to Substack Notes next week.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) April 7, 2023
Fast forward to the Good Friday weekend, when Matt Taibbi announced that he was quitting Twitter in retaliation for the global town square’s decision to degrade Substack links. Akin to rubbing salt on the proverbial wound, Taibbi also announced that he would be “moving to Substack Notes next week.”
1. Substack links were never blocked. Matt’s statement is false.
2. Substack was trying to download a massive portion of the Twitter database to bootstrap their Twitter clone, so their IP address is obviously untrusted.
3. Turns out Matt is/was an employee of Substack.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 8, 2023
Of course, Elon Musk did address this controversy in a cogent tweet, claiming that Substack links were never blocked but were being labeled as “unsafe.” The CEO of Tesla believes that Substack was trying to download “a massive portion of the Twitter database’ to provide an artificial boost to its upcoming Substack Notes offering.
Elon, Taibbi, and Bret Weinstein all fighting and Elon getting corrected by community notes. It’s a real clown party https://t.co/1DmNJvE6WP
— Adam Ozimek (@ModeledBehavior) April 8, 2023
However, in what signifies seemingly irreparable damage to the personal relationship between Elon Musk and Matt Taibbi, Twitter’s CEO asserted that the independent journalist was, in fact, an employee of Substack.
@ElonMusk (Account that mostly reposts old memes) is no longer following @mtaibbi
— Big Tech Alert (@BigTechAlert) April 7, 2023
Finally, in what stands as a testament to the ugliness of this saga, Elon Musk has now unfollowed the Twitter account of Matt Taibbi.
Who do you think is in the right in this fast-paced sage? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
Written by Rohail Saleem
Refference- https://wccftech.com
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