Matt Taibbi, one of Elon Musk’s handpicked disseminators of the so-called “Twitter Files,” informed his readers on Friday that he was ditching Twitter after the Chief Twit restricted links to Substack this week.
On Friday, Twitter began preventing users from engaging with tweets that contained links to Substack articles, blocking any likes, retweets and comments from these posts. Additionally, users were unable to pin any tweets to the top of their profile if they included a Substack link.
It had been widely speculated that Twitter disabled Substack from the site because the online publishing platform had recently launched a new feature called Substack Notes, which provides a Twitter-like feed to authors and subscribers of the newsletter site.
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“Writers deserve the freedom to share links to Substack or anywhere else. This abrupt change is a reminder of why writers deserve a model that puts them in charge, that rewards great work with money, and that protects the free press and free speech,” Substack founders Chris Best, Hamish McKenzie, and Jairaj Sethi said in a statement on Friday. “Their livelihoods should not be tied to platforms where they don’t own their relationship with their audience, and where the rules can change on a whim.”
Since Twitter has been a major platform for Substack writers to share their newsletters and articles, and Musk largely relied on Substack journalists to publish his Twitter Files, the move was met with widespread backlash across the social media site. Even from some of his fiercest defenders.
Taibbi, fresh off a brutal and contentious interview with MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan about some of his Twitter Files errors, was not too happy that he could not share his most recent Substack posts criticizing MSNBC and Hasan.
After posting in a Substack Chat that disabling Substack links on Twitter “will likely make the platform unusable for me,” Taibbi sent an email to his subscribers announcing he was saying goodbye to Twitter.
“Earlier this afternoon, I learned Substack links were being blocked on Twitter. Since being able to share my articles is a primary reason I use Twitter, I was alarmed and asked what was going on,” he wrote.
“It turns out Twitter is upset about the new Substack Notes feature, which they see as a hostile rival,” Taibbi continued. “When I asked how I was supposed to market my work, I was given the option of posting my articles on Twitter instead of Substack.”
He concluded: “Not much suspense there; I’m staying at Substack. You’ve all been great to me, as has the management of this company. Beginning early next week I’ll be using the new Substack Notes feature (to which you’ll all have access) instead of Twitter, a decision that apparently will come with a price as far as any future Twitter Files reports are concerned. It was absolutely worth it and I’ll always be grateful to those who gave me the chance to work on that story, but man is this a crazy planet.”
Shortly after Taibbi sent his goodbye email to Twitter, Musk unfollowed the Twitter Files reporter.
Somewhat ironically, Taibbi’s sudden exit from Twitter comes after the former Rolling Stone journalist repeatedly praised Musk as being “good for Twitter” while refusing to denounce the Twitter chief’s censorship of journalists.
“No, I don’t particularly want to,” Taibbi said Thursday, when asked if he was willing to criticize Musk for blocking access to Twitter accounts at the request of India’s government.
After Taibbi’s Twitter departure, Hasan couldn’t help but get in a parting shot.
“So hold on, literally the day after he told me that likes and admires Elon Musk, specially for Musk’s handling of Twitter, and refused point blank to criticize Elon Musk, Taibbi is quitting Musk’s Twitter? You literally can’t make this stuff up,” the MSNBC host tweeted.
