One-time “Twitter Files” journalist Matt Taibbi stepped up his feud with Elon Musk Thursday by sharing screenshots of a conversation they’d had in which the billionaire told him frankly: “You are dead to me.”
The former Rolling Stone reporter joined forces with Musk to release revelations about Twitter after Musk’s takeover of the platform, but the pair fell out last year over Taibbi’s loyalty to newsletter platform Substack. He’s since accused the Tesla mogul of deliberately restricting his X posts, alleging this week that Musk put “a hex on my account.”
Responding to an X user asking why his account was “so invisible” Thursday, Taibbi wrote: “Because @ElonMusk is uncomfortable around people who aren’t afraid of him, and wants to prove he can hurt my business instead of just talking to me, even if it means suppressing access to news he thinks is important.” He also accused the “supposed free speech champion” Musk of choosing to “suppress this account forever, instead of just talking to me.”
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Another user chimed in to ask if Taibbi had any proof that his visibility was being deliberately buried.
“Since @elonmusk published parts of these conversations, I might as well include others,” Taibbi replied. “I was under a ‘blanket search ban’ at one point and a lot of my 1.9 million followers still don’t see my content.” The post included screenshots appearing to show a text conversation between Taibbi and Musk dated April 2023.
“Elon, am I being shadowbanned?” the exchange begins. “We went on lockdown after discovering that Substack had stolen a massive amount of our data to prepopulate their Twitter rip-off,” Musk replied.
“Looks like there is still a blanket search ban. Should be fixed by tomorrow.” Musk added: “Going forward, tweets with Substack will not appear in For You unless it is paid advertising, just like FB/Insta/etc. They will appear in ‘Following.’”
Taibbi shot back with an exasperated response. “Elon, I’ve repeatedly declined to criticize you and have nothing to do with your beef with Substack,” he wrote. “Is there a reason why I’m being put in the middle of things? This really seems crazy.”
“You are dead to me,” Musk answered. “Please get off Twitter and just stay on Substack.”
Musk and Taibbi’s brief alliance, forged during the publication of the Twitter Files, unraveled after Substack’s announcement of its “Notes” feature—the “Twitter rip-off” that Musk referred to in the messages. Musk retaliated against the development by restricting tweets that contained Substack links, essentially killing off a main marketing channel for Substack writers who use Twitter to promote their work.
Taibbi told fans in April 2023 that the change would “likely make [Twitter] unusable for me” and that he would be “staying at Substack.” Despite the dramatic exit, he returned to posting on Musk’s platform within days—though he’s now critical of what it’s become.
While Taibbi insisted last year that Musk was “good for Twitter,” he posted Thursday: “This platform is worse than ever.”
