Twitter has taken a lot of weird turns since Elon Musk bought it and became its CEO several months ago. Today, things have gotten even weirder as the social network has started blocking links to popular newsletter service Substack.
NBC News reports that, for the moment, people who try to like or retweet a Twitter post with a substack link now get this message: “Some actions on this tweet have been disabled by Twitter.” Substack links that have a short link or unique domain still work with Twitter posts.
Of all things: I learned earlier today that substack links are being blocked on this platform.
When I asked why, I was told it was a conflict over the new SubstackNotice platform…
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) April 7, 2023
While Twitter has yet to comment on the situation, Journalist Matt Tybee claimed he was told. The substack ban was due to the company launching a Twitter-like service called Substack Notes earlier this week. Ironically, Taibbi was personally recruited by Musk months earlier to write a series of posts revealing the inner workings of Twitter before Musk bought the company. Taibi also has a Substake account. He said on Twitter that “since sharing links to my articles is one of the main reasons I come to this platform” he will be leaving Twitter and joining SubstackNotes.
Substack founders Chris Best, Hamish McKenzie, and Jiraj Sethi sent a statement to NBC News saying:
Authors deserve the freedom to share links to the substack or elsewhere. This sudden shift is a reminder of why writers deserve a model that puts them in charge, that rewards great work with money, and that protects a free press and free speech.
It’s the latest in a series of strange moves by Twitter since Musk took over as CEO. It has ended its free API and forced anyone who wants to get a verified checkmark on their account to pay $8 a month for the privilege.
