Elon Musk Tweets, Then Deletes Private Texts With Matt Taibbi During Nasty Feud With Substackers
Elon Musk posted and quickly deleted a private text conversation between him and Matt Taibbi, a former ally the Twitter CEO has turned on amid his war with newsletter platform Substack.
Last week, Musk cracked down on Substack after the platform introduced a “Notes” service that is very similar to Twitter. It was a confounding swing at a service where many of Musk’s allies make their money, including those independent reporters that Musk handpicked to report the “Twitter Files” revelations, including Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger.
The sudden and unexplained throttling of Substack sparked an outcry from many of Musk’s former defenders, including Taibbi, who said he was leaving Twitter. Musk replied by claiming Twitter never blocked Substack links — a bizarre claim that was contested by the CEO of Substack — and unfollowing Taibbi on the platform. He also accused Taibbi of being an “employee” of Substack, which isn’t quite true either (Taibbi is paid by his subscribers on Substack.)
Musk later reversed course, making Substack links functional on Twitter. But the platform still blocks searches for Substack links.
The Twitter CEO’s erratic behavior continued into Monday, when he replied to a tweet from Shellenberger linking to a Reason piece written by Robby Soave which criticized his handling of Twitter — though defending the Twitter Files reporting.
In a series of tweets that have since been deleted, Musk, apparently believing the piece was written by Shellenberger, demanded he correct the story. Musk also posted screenshots of his texts with Taibbi, and asked Shellenberger if he had also struck a deal with Substack, perhaps in an effort to impugn the motives of the two reporters he once propped up as champions of transparency under the new Twitter regime.
The texts with Taibbi on the messaging app Signal, which were preserved by Mediaite, show the journalist confronting Musk for removing his Twitter Files threads “because you’re mad at me personally for not leaving the company where I was already employed? Really?”
“No, this shouldn’t be happening. Will fix tomorrow,” Musk replied. He then asked if Taibbi is “employed by Substack.”
Taibbi replied that the “My subscribers there employ me,” Taibbi replied. “I also have loyalty to the company, which did originally hire me. And if I moved to Twitter it would have been a major optics issue for us both. But this isn’t related to the threads being removed?”
“I was never a Substack employee. I was one of the first Substack Pro contributors, which is a guaranteed return system for the first year,” Taibbi added.
“So this is going to be fixed?” Taibbi asked again.
“Yes,” Musk replied.
Musk deleted his tweets and has not tweeted further on the issue since Monday night. We would reach out for comment but Twitter no longer has a communications team, and the press email auto-replies with a poop emoji.
