Matt Taibbi and Elon Musk split. What is the Substack-Twitter rivalry?
Matt Taibbi and Elon Musk split. What is the Substack-Twitter rivalry?
'Twitter Files' journalist Matt Taibbi is calling it quits from the microblogging website and parting ways with CEO Elon Musk after the rivalry between Substack and the platform deepened. Musk chose Taibbi for "Twitter Files" to reveal the alleged conspiraciesbetween former Twitter management and the federal government to restrict conservatives.
Why is Matt Taibbi leaving Twitter now?
Matt Taibbi is one of the most well-known contributors on Substack, Twitter's social media rival platform.A couple of days ago, Substack announced the launch of Substack Notes, a new service that resembles Twitter in some ways.
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“It turns out Twitter is upset about the new Substack Notes feature, which they see as a hostile rival,” Taibbi wrote in a Substack post.
Titled “The Craziest Friday Ever,” Taibbi added in the post, “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.”
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How did the Twitter-Substack controversy start?
It all started when reports indicated that Twitter has blocked users to access Substack posts. Not just that, it was also reported that a warning message is shown by Twitter reading that links to Substack may be dangerous.
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Elon Musk breaks silence
In reaction to Matt Taibbi's announcement of leaving Twitter, Elon Musk put out a Tweet on Saturday. He called Taibbi a liar.
“Substack links were never blocked. Matt’s statement is false,” Musk tweeted.
The unveiling of Substack Notes, a short-form social media capability is seen as a potential rival to Musk, as per Forbes. Musk further claimed that Substack attempted to download data from Twitter in order to aid in the development of this new feature, Substack Notes.
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“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 added in a three-pointer tweet. “Turns out Matt is/was an employee of Substack,” he added.
In reality, Forbes reported that the warning is there and the substack post links are blocked too.Twitter shows a notice which reads, “Some actions on this Tweet have been disabled by Twitter.”
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