On Friday, Twitter Files star Matt Taibbi said he’s leaving Twitter over the feud with Substack, where all his work is published. Twitter CEO Elon Musk said that Taibbi’s claims about the treatment of Substack links are false and that Taibbi is an employee of the rival company. But Substack CEO and co-founder Chris Best said that is simply not true.
After Musk called Taibbi’s claims false, his tweet was labeled with a community note, and Substack’s Best issued a statement.
Best fittingly published his comments on Substack Notes, which is the new feature being rolled out that started the battle royale in the first place
Musk said that Substack links had not been blocked, that Substack was massively downloading Twitter data for their “clone” service, and accused Taibbi of being an employee of the company.
Best responded that “none of this is true.”
“Substack links have been obviously severely throttled on Twitter. Anyone using the product can see this,” he said. The use of the word “blocked” for the actions taken against the links is murky, but it’s clear that links to Substack are being punished in search, are unable to be retweeted or liked, and have an interstitial safety warning before a user ultimately can reach the url from Twitter.
On Musk’s second point, that Substack was “trying to download a massive portion of the Twitter database to bootstrap their Twitter clone,” Best argued the company was complying with Twitter’s terms.
“We believe we’re in compliance with the terms, but if they have any specific concerns we would love to know about them!” he wrote. “We’d be happy to address any issues.”
On Taibbi being an employee, Best categorically stated that’s not true, and noted that the subscription model means Taibbi is paid by his readers.
“That writers making money seems to be such a strange concept is telling,” he said, a seeming dig at Twitter’s model in which writers pay the company for features that allow them to promote their work.
“This is very frustrating,” said Best. “It’s one thing to mess with Substack, but quite another to treat writers this way.”
Forbes reported Saturday that Best and other figures at Substack are being individually punished on Twitter now, too.
“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,” writes Matt Novak.
Musk’s claim that Taibbi is a paid employee was an obvious implication that he was shilling for his bosses rather than reporting honestly. An ironic line of attack, considering it’s the same charge leveled at Taibbi and the other Twitter Files journalists by Democrats during a House hearing.
Only in that case, the accusation was they were being compensated by Musk.
