Elon Musk Denies Substack Links Are Blocked On Twitter, A Claim That’s Very Misleading

Elon Musk broke his silence about the Twitter CEO’s conflict with the online publishing site Substack and one of its biggest writers Matt Taibbi on Saturday. Taibbi, who worked on the so-called Twitter Files, announced he was quitting Twitter on Friday after the social media platform severely hampered the sharing of Substack content. And Musk is calling Taibbi a liar.

“Substack links were never blocked. Matt’s statement is false,” Musk tweeted on Saturday.

Musk insists Twitter never blocked links to Substack posts, which might be technically true in some sense, but doesn’t tell the whole story. In reality, Twitter has put up numerous roadblocks for anyone trying to visit Substack posts, even displaying a warning that links to Substack may be unsafe.

As you can see below, the warning says Substack may contain malicious links that try to steal your personal information or may even have violent or misleading content.

Also, anyone trying to like or retweet any tweet with a Substack link is unable to do so. Twitter shows a notice that reads, “Some actions on this Tweet have been disabled by Twitter.”

Again, you can see the warning at the bottom of the image below, which I captured while trying to retweet a post from my Substack blog, Paleofuture.

Why is Twitter doing this? Apparently the company is upset that Substack is launching a short form content social media capability called Substack Notes, which Musk sees as a potential competitor. And Musk alleges Substack was trying to download information from Twitter to help build this new feature.

“Substack was trying to download a massive portion of the Twitter database to bootstrap their Twitter clone, so their IP address is obviously untrusted,” Musk tweeted on Saturday.

That claim couldn’t be independently verified and Substack co-founder Chris Best denied Musk’s version of events on Saturday, writing that while Substack has used Twitter’s API for years, he doesn’t believe they were doing anything that was prohibited.

“We believe we're in compliance with the terms, but if they have any specific concerns we would love to know about them! We'd be happy to address any issues,” Best wrote.

But Musk made one final claim on Twitter that was, again, very misleading.

“Turns out Matt is/was an employee of Substack,” Musk wrote.

Substack denies Taibbi has ever been an employee of the platform but acknowledges he gets paid from readers on the platform, which is the entire business model of the site. Writers can charge monthly fees to readers for some content, something that Taibbi does, along with thousands of other people on Substack.

“That writers making money seems to be such a strange concept is telling,” Best wrote on Saturday, an apparent dig at Musk trying to charge famous people on Twitter $8 per month rather than paying them for creating value on the site.

To top it all off, it appears the Substack crew is being punished on Twitter in other ways. If you try to search co-founder Chris Best on Twitter, his profile doesn’t show up.

Musk has created plenty of controversy ever since he purchased the company in October 2022. Musk recently added a “state-affiliated media” warning to Twitter posts from NPR, he defended Dilbert creator Scott Adams after the cartoonist advocated for racial segregation and he had to apologize after suggesting a Twitter employee was faking his disability. Major advertisers are even nervous about appearing with the billionaire in public.

Twitter responded to emailed questions on Saturday morning with a poop emoji, an automated response set up by Musk. The billionaire is notoriously hostile to media outlets and shut down Twitter’s PR department after he bought the company. I’ll update this article if Twitter ever responds to questions from journalists again. But I’m not holding my breath on that one.