Matt Taibbi Picks Substack Over Twitter

A journalist once chosen by Elon Musk to help write the "Twitter Files" project has broken with the platform and its owner. Matt Taibbi said the issue is Twitter's new restrictions on links and tweets about Substack, Forbes reports. The rules were enacted after the announcement of the launch of Substack Notes, a short-form social network that appears it could compete with Twitter. "It turns out Twitter is upset about the new Substack Notes feature, which they see as a hostile rival," Taibbi wrote in a post on Substack, where he's a contributor. "I'm staying at Substack."

Under the restrictions, Twitter users trying to retweet a Substack post see the message, "some actions on this Tweet have been disabled by Twitter." Substack writers are no longer able to embed tweets in their Substack posts; that brings the notice, "Twitter has unexpectedly restricted access to embedding tweets in Substack posts," per the Washington Post. That lessens the appeal of Musk's site for Taibbi. "Being able to share my articles is a primary reason I use Twitter," he wrote Friday on Substack. Musk argued the points in a tweet, saying, "Substack links were never blocked." Neither Musk nor Taibbi responded to Post requests for comment. (More Twitter stories.)