Elon Musk Blocks Likes And Replies To Tweets That Link To Substack In A Pique Of Pettiness

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the free-speech,-but-not-that-speech dept

Poor Matt Taibbi. He destroyed his credibility to take on the Twitter Files, and did so in part to raise the profile of his Substack site, Racket News. Indeed, Substack has become a home for nonsense peddlers of all kinds to create their own little bubbles of nonsense. In congressional testimony, Taibbi admitted that having Elon Musk hand pick him to deliver the “Twitter Files” has increased the number of paying subscribers to his Substack (though he defended it by claiming that the money has all gone towards journalism).

But… apparently Elon has decided that no one on Twitter is allowed to even like or reply to any tweet that links to a Substack site. Including to Taibbi’s. Oops.

Let’s back up, though. You may recall that back in December, as the number of people deserting Twitter became scary, Twitter instituted a new policy saying that you were not allowed to mention a somewhat arbitrary and random grab bag of other social media sites.

A day or so later, after many people yelled about it (and his Mom was the only one defending it), Elon rolled back that policy, admitting that it “was a mistake.”

Of course, since then, he’s systematically moved to make it more and more difficult to move to services like Mastodon, but at least people are still able to link to Mastodon and other social media.

But now, suddenly Substack is a problem? Twitter will still allow users to send a tweet with a link to a Substack page, but that tweet can no longer be liked, replied to, or retweeted. Basically, tweets with Substack links are dead in the water.

It seems that Substack’s “crime” is releasing a tool for more short form content that looks a bit like Twitter, called “Notes.”

And thus, the world’s pettiest man has decided to retaliate.

You could almost (but not really) understand banning links to Substack. But banning likes and replies? That’s just crazy. If you try to do any of those things with a tweet that links to Substack, you get an error message:

Amusingly, this is acting as a bit of a Streisand Effect for Notes. I had seen a headline fly by about it, but hadn’t looked at the details until now.

This move by Twitter impacts many people, amusingly including many in the Substack crowd who have been falsely going on and on about how Musk was a savior to their free speech. And now he’s blocking basically anyone promoting or interacting with their content.

And, among those impacted… Matt Taibbi, who threw all of his credibility eggs into the Musk basket. Just yesterday Taibbi literally refused to criticize Musk for anything during the Mehdi Hasan interview, saying he thought Musk was clearly good for free speech on Twitter. And today he’s saying that Twitter is now unusable:

Also, yesterday in the interview, I noted that it was funny that Taibbi claimed that the Biden campaign got special treatment from Twitter in that they could reach out to people there, but he couldn’t. So when someone asked him if he had reached out to Musk about the Substack blocks, Taibbi admitted that of course he had, though he hadn’t heard back yet:

Of course, maybe that explains why Taibbi refused to criticize Musk yesterday. Didn’t want to cut off that sweet, sweet, access.

Either way, considering just how frequently these capricious moves are being made by the “new” Twitter, it again raises questions why people are still relying on it as a key source of information and as a way to distribute their own content.

Update: This legitimately made me laugh outloud:

Update 2: So did this:

Filed Under: blocks, competition, elon musk, likes, pettiness, retweets
Companies: substack, twitter