I’m staying at Substack, and will be moving to Substack Notes next week

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1644431125463351298

by doener • 3 years ago

77 73 3 years ago

PaulHoule2• 3 years ago

It's like what they did to Robespierre, Danton, et al. in the French Revolution.

It is too bad that they brought back the tweety bird because I was about to make a sticker using the Doge and other symbolism intended to trigger the opsonization of macroscopic objects.

api4• 3 years ago

… or the Trotskyites in the Soviet revolution.

… or a whole bunch of very surprised fascists in the Nazi “Night of the Long Knives.”

… or almost everyone in Pol Pot’s Cambodia.

Yes, the leopards will eat your face too. The loyalty in totalitarian societies only goes up the chain of command. Everyone down the chain is expendable.

The leopards are going to eat Elon’s face in the end. Just wait. Someone should tell him his new friends hate EVs and renewable energy and don’t give a damn about space.

Same for Peter Thiel. He’s gay, which means they think he’s a degenerate subhuman. They’re happy to take his money but if they gain power he’s gonna be cat food.

pessimizer6• 3 years ago

He’s gay, which means they think he’s a degenerate subhuman.

In a thread about Taibbi and Musk, you're the one associating gay people that you disapprove of with the phrase "degenerate subhuman." I'm quoting you, and you're not quoting anyone.

paulpauper• 3 years ago

Just like the AI is not your friend, neither is Musk. Look how he did a reversal on Bitcoin, Doge. People who bought Doge coin a few days ago are down 13%. He pumped BTC in 2021 and Tesla dumped its position in 2022 at a small loss, but BTC investors who heeded Tesla were at one point down over 50%. You cannot trust that these people are looking out for your interests. It's all business in the end. You have to assume that these people are only looking after themselves, in the end.

watwut3• 3 years ago

Utterly confused about Robespiere reference. Like ... how, what?

PaulHoule2• 3 years ago

Taibbi was one of a few right-wing substackers that Musk tapped to publicize the "Twitter Files", now Musk is on a rampage against Substack.

In the French Revolution many of the early instigators like

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximilien_Robespierre

themselves became victims of the guillotine. (e.g. Movements turn on their own)

sega_sai• 3 years ago

And while blocking sharing the substack links, they removed all the restrictions on Russian official government accounts https://twitter.com/KevinRothrock/status/1644441340497784846 Good job Elon!

user3939382• 3 years ago

What’s wrong with the Russian government having a voice? They represent millions of people. The ease with which our media just duped our whole country into hating Russia and supporting this war is very scary.

davidw2• 3 years ago

represent millions of people

They represent one man.

singleshot_2• 3 years ago

“just duped our whole country into hating Russia”

Did you sleep through the Cold War? Haven’t these guys been the enemy since shortly after World War Two? Where did you get the idea that being opposed to Russia happened recently?

The real question is how the insurrectionists think that this line of logic isn’t ridiculous.

majormajor2• 3 years ago

Just off the top of my head: Russia invaded a country in 2008. Then in 2014. They have poisoned multiple people in England over the same time frame. Then, of course, a big invasion last year.

Is it being "duped" to not like that pattern?

[Someone will likely say "the US has invaded countries too" and... yes... would you say someone in those parts of the world who doesn't like the US was just duped by their media?]

anigbrowl3• 3 years ago

There is no war in Ba Sing Se.

partiallypro• 3 years ago

I was wondering why I had a sudden mass influx of Russian accounts into my For You.

blueridge• 3 years ago

Good time to move your Substack publication over to Ghost! Excellent product.

https://ghost.org/

api4• 3 years ago

“Not your server, not your site.”

jacooper• 3 years ago

As long as you have backups and you "own" (more like lease) the domain , you are fine.

tptacek• 3 years ago

Yeah, that's definitely the problem here: Substack's overreaching!

schnebbau• 3 years ago

Loremasters, what is happening here?

AbrahamParangi• 3 years ago

Twitter is suppressing posts containing links to substack as well as at least one text post by substack itself explaining what’s going on.

The suppression takes the form of likes and retweets being disabled and presumably reach limited.

To add my personal opinion, it’s deeply pathetic.

api4• 3 years ago

This is in response to substack launching a potential Twitter competitor.

They’ve done the same off and on to Mastodon, though after a while they backed off on that one a bit.

Free speech!

tehwebguy• 3 years ago

As of today (or yesterday?) if a tweet includes a link to a substack.com URL the tweet cannot be liked, retweeted or replied to. Likes will appear to work and then disappear. They can still be "quote tweeted".

It's pretty funny because the individuals that Musk hand picked to give the "Twitter files" to all use Substack. They all embarrassed themselves by stretching what was mostly nothing into a huge story seemingly on his behalf before he turned his back on them.

JumpCrisscross• 3 years ago

Adding context: this follows Substack launching a Twitter-like short-messaging product.

tick_tock_tick• 3 years ago

mostly nothing

Mostly is doing a lot of work there. Just the Federal government working with a private entity to censor speech in a clear abuse of power.

mustacheemperor• 3 years ago

Oh my god, anyone encountering this thread, for the sake of your mental health do not open that link and scroll the replies.

I got immediate flashbacks to 00s youtube comments and closed the tab, I feel like it's not enough, like I should shut down my computer and spend three days hiking the mountains to detox from that.

No clue if that's the norm across twitter these days but oh golly.

j_crick2• 3 years ago

Don’t know what’s that abnormal there aside from the overall cringe from the whole ordeal vOv

Ygg22• 3 years ago

- Other than people laughing at Matt for being a bootlicker (Elon provided sources, nothing more or less)?

- Other than people missing the point in comical fashion (haha you got punished for being loyal, which are two independent things)?

- Other than general toxicity?

Yeah, it's completely normal for Twitter in same way high energy radiation is completely normal in Sun's corona. This sort of talk between people is however extremely abnormal and I doubt would happen that much in actual life.

suddenclarity2• 3 years ago

You'll find subsections of anything on any platform. This is a famous controversial person writing about a controversial topic. It will bring the worst of the worst. Even this site goes crazy whenever there's a thread on Twitter or Musk. Although more tame since here's an actual mod.

threeseed3• 3 years ago

You'll find subsections of anything on any platform

No you don't as HN clearly shows.

There are plenty of examples where when you have active moderation and the site sets the tone for discourse the quality of the discussions improves.

pessimizer6• 3 years ago

There are people paying bounties to farms to harass journalists and outspoken private citizens on twitter. They get paid if they can get the target to reply or block.

Additionally, David Brock moved from creating the vast right-wing conspiracies against the Clintons in the 90s to managing a huge budget for managing an organization of online trolls from 2016, to becoming an established part of the Democratic Party contractor pool also being used by the Biden admin. This involves a lot of fake accounts; most are silent retweeting accounts that exist to upvote any belligerent harassment of official enemies, usually slyly amplifying real accounts instead of leading from the front.

Lastly, intelligence agencies have invested billions and created entire new departments in order to monitor and manipulate social media by any means necessary. They have direct lines to all major social media companies, with the apparent current exception of twitter.

Introduced into the middle of all of this are LLMs, which are starting to make it very easy to fake accounts that reply in a vaguely relevant way (although they answer like LLMs, failing if the tweets they're replying to are too oblique and require context that everybody knows.) Still dominant are the endless fake replies from fake accounts that don't reference the tweets they're replying to at all, but just repeat from a list of four or five insults for years on end.

00s youtube comments were 1000x better. This is the actual rise of the Dead Internet.

This seems like the last straw for Taibbi. Musk hasn't had an effect on the harassment problem (and doesn't seem to have a plan) and now is making it harder for him to promote his own outlet. He doesn't need Twitter for visibility. I find it nuts that Musk didn't try to clear this decision with the journalists that he's been publicly associated with through the Twitter Files. Them turning on him would have an outsized effect on Musk's situation and none of them have any particular loyalty to him; they're not on his payroll.

edit: all that being said, I could see the Substack contingent turning on Musk, then him immediately announcing that he's hired a new twitter CEO, and eventually an announcement about one of Musk's business having very good luck with a regulation, a decision on the violation a regulation, and/or a new government contract/partnership.

benguillet2• 3 years ago

Substack must be thrilled with Twitter's decision to block their links (which will be reverted I'm sure), great publicity for Notes.

serial_dev• 3 years ago

So petty and counterproductive. I would have missed the whole Substack Notes announcement if it wasn't for Matt Taibbi (and for Twitter hostile approach).

Matt did a great job with the Twitter files, he has integrity and he's "incorruptible" whereas Elon is a petty tyrant who goes nuclear for the slightest disagreements, so I honestly wouldn't be surprised if this will end up with Matt's account removed.

benguillet2• 3 years ago

Yup, Musk already stopped following Matt Taibbi https://twitter.com/BigTechAlert/status/1644438910305464326

anigbrowl3• 3 years ago

he has integrity

He really doesn't. He's been a hack the entire time. I hated his writing when he was a liberal darling as well; he whips up readers emotions with sensation but holds back contextual information that would allow them to easily get up to speed on the issue in question. It's a commercially popular form of journalism, but not a good one.

mmcclure• 3 years ago

Were it not for Twitter blocking Substack links I likely never would have heard of Notes[1], and I'm even someone that knows about/likes Substack. This feels like another weird own goal by Elon/Twitter that's giving quite a bit more amplification to a competitive product than if they'd done nothing[2].

[1] https://on.substack.com/p/introducing-notes

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

zagrebian• 3 years ago

The Streisand-Musk effect

wnevets• 3 years ago

Is this the same guy who said twitter removing dick pics is government censorship?

paddw• 3 years ago

I don't see how Substack notes replaces the Twitter need, isn't the idea that you post on Twitter to drive traffic to your Substack? It seems like you already have to be subscribed to see someone's notes feed?

threeseed3• 3 years ago

A key Twitter Blue feature is the ability to post long-form content.

And Musk has been talking about using crypto to allow people to pay for premium long-form content within the app.

Substack Notes competes with this.

tric2• 3 years ago

What happens when Twitter starts hosting longer/higher-quality videos? Does he block links to Youtube as well?

tric2• 3 years ago

I wonder if Twitter is suppressing tweets about Tesla competitors. Honda, Toyota, Nissan, etc.

threeseed3• 3 years ago

No but it has been very supportive of the Chinese government.

Banning accounts of activists and increasing the reach of known propaganda accounts.

HopenHeyHi• 3 years ago

Blocking SubStack - Bad Elon!

Unblocking Trump/Shitty-right-winger-apps - Bad Elon!

Exposing covert US Government manipulation of public Discourse - Bad Elon!

Allowing Taliban/Aytollahs on twitter pre-Elon - ?

Are we pro blocking things or against guys? What should the criteria be? Personally, I am chaotic neutral. Don't know the answer.

I've always made the point when the canceling and blocking craze started that eventually the shoe will be on the other foot and history strongly suggests that regardless of your politics and end goals you will inevitably regret setting such precedents. If blocking Substack is bad it must mean blocking anything is bad regardless if it is left/right. Please convince me otherwise without resorting to kindergarten insults and shade throwing.

d23• 3 years ago

Musk’s strong free speech values strike again.

jpwerty• 3 years ago

Pathological liar reorganizing his blog layout, check.

I’m staying at Substack, and will be moving to Substack Notes next week

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