Twitter won’t allow retweeting tweets linking to Substack
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Edit: tedunangst correctly points out that the tweet in question also contained a link to substack (though to documentation, not a newsletter)
https://twitter.com/paulgb/status/1644336599914651649
So is anyone around still willing to defend Elon Musk's “freedom of speech includes speech I don't like” promise, or has everyone admitted that that was all a farce?
But then as you get into it, you realize that you just can't do that if you want to make money.
Take reddit for example. Shaming fat people is legal. Being antisemitic is legal. Being a racist is legal. Most pornography is legal. But it turns out almost no one wants to spend money supporting that. So it makes sense to block things that hurt the bottom line if you are running a business.
To 4chan's credit, they never cared about money, and so they were probably the freest platform out there that somehow didn't devolve into nothing but racist hate, which is usually how absolute free speech social media go (although they certainly have their fair share of it).
Musk was like any other social media outsider looking in -- "Why can't they just allow all legal speech??" And then his pocketbook was on the line and he realized why.
It's amusing that Musk's incentive appears to be fear of what his viewers will see--namely, competitive services they might consider using instead of Twitter.
I do think that's fairly different than the incentives for Facebook and Reddit.
> you can totally delete things from the Internet – that works perfectly and doesn’t draw attention to whatever you were trying to hide
yeah, not "nothing but racist hate", just a lot of racist hate, good on 4chan for keeping it under 100%
Musk started new, though different, active moderation from very early on, and as he has escalated that it hasn’t been mostly in ways that contribute to Twitter profitability (it may be in his financial interest more indirectly, through currying favor with a particular political faction, but that’s not indicative of a discovery rather than his initial motivation for buying Twitter.)
Sure, but this doesn't seem to explain why he would want to shut out Substack entirely. Is it because he considers it competition? But Substack is for longform blogging (and authors being able to monetize that) so it doesn't seem to compete at all with Twitter - it seems completely orthogonal.
Twitter Blue allows posts up to 4000 characters, and a lot of people use Twitter to "blog" with very long threads. Substack competes with that, even if it's so much better that it doesn't really feel like a competition. And now Substack is adding a short-form feature almost identical to Twitter, as the article explains.
Anything good you could find on 4chan is available elsewhere, without the deluge of shitty behavior.
True but it's entirely reasonable for platforms to prevent themselves becoming a cesspool of hate and vile discussion.
It's very different to banning any and all discussion on things that may be commercially competitive.
Are they actually blocking speech like that though? I don't see much harassment of overweight people since FPH got banned but antisemitism and racism and similar bigotry (especially transphobia) is not uncommon at all and is a daily sight in any remotely politically bent discussion.
How do other networks survive? Gettr, Rumble, Truth.social? Locals? Is parler still around by the way? Arent these crowds sufficiently large to want to advertise to, or to monetize in some other way?
Gettr: https://gettr.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4833222621587-GE...
Rumble: https://corp.rumble.com/blog/rumble-proposes-an-open-source-...
Truth Social: https://help.truthsocial.com/moderation/moderation-faq
Locals: https://support.locals.com/en/article/how-to-moderate-posts-...
I've never heard of Locals before, but the other three networks remove far more content than just what is outlined in those policies. Also, they probably don't make money.
The smaller services could be: UI <protocol> Algorithm (Cpu, Gpu) <protocol> Disk Space. If the whole service was designed like this using well defined protocols, then we could use, the UI of facebook, the algorithm of twitter, and the disk space of instagram, or any combination.
The same could be applied to cars. It could be defined like Engine <protocol> Hood (car shell) <protocol> Peripherals (lights etc). That way we would be able to use one's car engine into another car's hood etc.
I think eventually that's the way everything is going to be designed, alongside with cars, buses etc, using protocols (ISO etc), and software as well. It is just that, it takes a while for the right economic incentives to get established.
Locals has more of a Patreon-like model and isn't affected much by advertising. Gettr and Truth.social seem to be declining (IMO those two should merge because their user demographic is the same.)
It's not about legality. It's more about responsibility that lacks in online conversations with anonymous avatars.
I mean responsibility that naturally come from social connection between people in dialogue. Mimics, body language, relationships, word expression... All of it is eliminated in online chatting.
Naturally. If you're a business, why would you pay for advertising that makes those things part of your brand? If you're a consumer, what would be the motivation to pay for those things, unless you happen to agree with those values, rather than paying for a site that doesn't have them?
you can totally start a social media company that doesn't require you to recoup 20,000 lifetimes worth of human labor and allow free speech.
> Shaming fat people is legal. Being antisemitic is legal. Being a racist is legal.
And not allowing a competitor and then claiming to be “pro free speech”.
There is no societal good that comes out of the topics you cited.
This really describes the entire American political climate right now.
People just want to fight. The ideas seem like a side show. Maybe it’s all just a pressure valve for rage over rapid change and socioeconomic uncertainty.
People mad certain people exist: We will directly violate your rights every chance we get!
People existing: You can't do that, we'll fight back.
People mad certain people exist: Help! We're being oppressed!
Some people want to fight, some people need to defend themselves from those people.
Once you realize that a keyword like "substack" is banned, you start using similar-sounding standin words. "Stacksub", "sub stack", "scooby snack", and so on. Keep the censors busy, and the blocklists full of nonsense.
I fear its a cat and mouse game. Once something goes viral enough the moderation team will notice it too.
If people insist on using it, they'd may as well be internet-y about it.
As someone who used to be a Musk fan, it's disheartening to see him become radicalized.
Some actions offer color for their current activities, most don't. Someone considered to be "bad" in whatever aspect still has good qualities, people that love them, and likely, kindness in their hearts. A good writer who is a bigot is still a good writer. Elon still has things he's smart about, and things he's dumb about.
But as it sits, if I'm a fan of the work Elon has done with SpaceX or Tesla, I have to qualify those things because the assumption is that I've just cosigned every dumb/negative thing he's ever said, when that isn't true.
This is why reputations are so important -- it doesn't matter if you solved world hunger -- when people find out you are a bully who takes credit for other people's work and refuses to acknowledge criticism and fires people because you are in a bad mood then they are going to associate you with that and doubt that you actually did all that much to solve hunger in the first place.
You can complain about human nature as much as you want, but a lot of the time there is a good reason for it. People who consistently lie probably didn't do all the good things you thought they did, for one.
There is no logical reason for doing this with celebrities who are not in our lives, perhaps other than to maintain the habit of gossip? If I were going to work for a Musk-owned company, perhaps I'd think better of it knowing what I do, but if he wakes up tomorrow and gives ten million dollars to a charity I support, I will support that action, without having to adopt anything more than that action in my praise.
And for what it's worth, I wasn't complaining about human nature in the previous post, just pointing out that I don't understand it.
I don't think we have figured out how to segregate these because psychology is what it is and technology brings people into our lives as if we know them even when we don't. There was never a way to hear about every thought someone had or what they said or did when you didn't know them until the advent of at least the printing press. Our feeble minds, which arguably don't even make most decisions consciously, haven't caught up yet.
Hard enough to fathom completely accurate information from items and people we have close access to, much less everyone and every thing.
In musk's case, he was probably always a bit unhinged/POS.. but I used to believe he cared about the world. Ever since pedo guy I dropped him from altruistic status to probably egomaniac status, though.
Incidentally, I started using Substack because of this. Talk about Streisand Effect.
Not that I want to defend Musk - I've heard of (not experienced directly; I am not a Twitter user) so many screw-ups and back-peddling that my opinion of him has dropped significantly - but presumably they regard Substack as a competitor, and they do not want to drive their traffic to the competitor (as before they tried to stop driving traffic to Mastodon). Is this really a free speech issue?
Musk pitched a $44 billion fit because Twitter wasn't "free speech enough" for a "free speech absolutist" like him. So he bought it and said he'd allow all legal speech on it.
All of these moves are directly counter to Musk's stated positions.
Furthermore, these moves are more capricious. You'll just never know what's not going to be allowed tomorrow. Or what decisions will be reversed the next day.
Before, who was making the moderation decisions at Twitter was opaque. But you knew their guidelines. Inciting an insurrection should be against Terms of Service in general.
Now, we know who is making the decisions, but we have no fucking clue as to why they're being made. Or, we know why. Because these entities have offended Musk in some way. But as to what will cause him offense on any given day, we have no idea.
Take a look at the politics leaderboard and tell me that's not controversial. https://substack.com/leaderboard/politics/paid
Does that still hold now?
We are "up in arms" about the hypocrisy and dishonesty, not the decision itself. It's Musk's company - no one cares. But let's not call it "moderation", ok? Taking away the NYT blue check is petty revenge, but whatever.
For one, it’s the kind of thing likely to get you sued for anti-competitive practices.
People are pointing out he promised not to, and that that makes him an enormous hypocrite.
This is absolutely consistent with what he's said over and over before the twitter takeover. He said he has no problem with limiting the exposure of distasteful tweets, but he doesn't want to ban people or PREVENT people from posting.
His answer to "can people post hateful things" has always been "up to a point yes, we'll let them but we will also take measures to prevent it from being amplified in any way".
He has absolutely no problem silencing people.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/15/23460729/elon-musk-fire-...
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/technology/elon-musk-twit...
That's fine, but you can't do that and claim to be a free speech warrior at the same time.
Do you have any evidence he silenced it or are you changing the definition mid conversation?
I'm unsure of the promise you refer to.
I approve of Twitter's recent improvements on free speech. I don't approve of shadowbanning a competitor, though I understand why.
Best of luck!
Jesus Christ. It's a literal shit-show.
The growth has been steady and the user experience fun. The two things twitter still excelled at are speed of news during something like a mass shooting in a school, and the quick wit. People are kinder on mastodon, as I think I am, but it makes for less chuckles. But more interactions. I post a lot, and have interacted with more famous people on Mastodon than in 10 years or whatever or twitter.
It will never hit wide spread adoption. You’ll have niches sure but your average John or Jane Doe don’t give 2 shits.
> the best of the social networks
That has nothing to do with MAU.
> You’ll have niches sure but your average John or Jane Doe don’t give 2 shits.
Twitter itself is niche, as only 23% of people in the US use it: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/05/05/10-facts-ab... and even of those, most are occasional users with few tweets. Your average John or Jane Doe doesn't give 2 shits about Twitter.
Oh look! This looks great! But I won't use it because I don't think others will use it (but I also won't tell others about it because it's so unfortunate that no one will use it)
Like what? If only some of the energy spent on saying a migration is impossible was spent on actually.... Migrating, the world would be a better place.
Mastodon simply can't reach the heights that Twitter can currently, its userbase is unlikely to be helpful to that end, as are its anti-indexing/search policies, which also make it a haven for many deeply unsavory activities.
People always present this like it's a failing. But it doesn't actually matter if the specific communities you want there are present in sufficient number. Eugen might be all about competing with Twitter, but he only speaks for the non-profit, not for the entirety of Mastodon, and certainly not for the popular forks or compatible AP platforms.
If you can't find your people, you have two options: convince them to come, or accept it's not for you. Or if you've found the wrong people, that's on you to fix or move on from. It's not trying to splash, or be big. No more than Fidonet was. You're looking at it like it's a Compuserv or AOL with a profit motive or need to grow. A handful of thousand-user furry instances is plenty for people who come there for that.
You are of course welcome to come in and try to build a branch of the fediverse that has growth as its aim, but you have to understand that isn't universally shared and will likely see your realm muted or blocked by people who just want to browse #FursuitFriday without the trolling and spam that happens on Twitter.
Mastodon, the community as it is, not the project, is not looking for a to-the-moon growth chart in the lead up to a liquidity event. It doesn't care that corbulo on Hacker News can't find their people without doing the work to bring them. It's happy, stable, and self-sustaining as it is.
>> "as are its anti-indexing/search policies, which also make it a haven for many deeply unsavory activities."
I don't see those instances because they're muted and blocked in my spaces just like your Twitter replacement would be.
There's always value to niche forums, but that was my point from the beginning. The value is driven down by its audience, which is seemingly mostly obsessivists, contrarians, and creeps with genuine interesting content silo'd off somewhere.
it's literally crypto spam and neo-nazis on that site now... how is this the "best"
I'll be (stuck) here as long as the interesting people stick around.
Edit: No, it was doge. I was misremembering.
"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes."
"Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community."
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."
To be fair, some of Elon's other stuff has good PR even without a PR department - Tesla and SpaceX have a bunch of die-hards who do free PR for them. But I don't consider that "no PR", just "unpaid PR". Nobody's out there doing that for Twitter.
I imagine those engineers, having dispensed with the telephone sanitizers, will die of an infected telephone
Didn't he promise to resign as CEO once he found a replacement? How's that going?
Edit: Yes, this is the right one [1]: "The acid test for any two competing socioeconomic systems is which side needs to build a wall to keep people from escaping? That’s the bad one!"
Universities used to be the pioneers of online communication but they seem to have become a lot more conservative in recent years.
Mastodon can already be a drop-in replacement for Twitter for many use cases. The biggest hurdle are, as ever, network effects. Not infrastructure, not features.
For me personally most of the people I care about already are on Mastodon. It was a smooth transition for me personally and I don’t miss a thing. All that needs to happen is for that to be also true for you and Mastodon is a drop in replacement.
The biggest issue I can see developing is a Gmail-ification of Mastodon (with a lot of people being on a single instance).
That would be a pity – but in terms of freedom e-mail is still pretty great.
The fact that it's still useful makes it more important to switch, not less. You're putting career before your basic values (I'm guessing) and as an academic I would hope you know that's wrong and have the honor to correct it.
So, all told -- I don't think there's a lot of productive work (i.e., research) directly going on on twitter, but that doesn't mean that it isn't still making important contributions to the profession.
Also, yes, the water cooler is fun
I use it as a free news feed which has the quality of the paid Refinitiv subscription, and many activist investors publish their reports there. I get incredible value out of Twitter, as long as the network doesn't move elswhere.
I get almost no politics, outrage, etc. in my timeline.
Instead, I get people goofing around, or dissecting cultural norms, or sharing their project updates, or discussing what they've learned about an in-depth topic.
Most people didn’t really care. The only reason I carried the club soda was because I didn’t want to explain for the 100th time why I wasnt drinking. And there’s always that one guy pushing you to drink even if you don’t want it, in which case the club soda basically looks like a vodka soda.
Of course that’s not a valid strategy if you have a problem with alcohol, and cannot be around it. But it’s useful if you just don’t like drinking but would still like to participate socially.
The only problem is that once people get kind of drunk you have to be really drunk yourself to find them tolerable. Drunk people are extremely boring if you’re sober. And there’s an easy solution there too. Just leave early.
Follow Substack newsletters, YouTube channels, Spotify podcasts, and subreddits in a Twitter-style feed without all the Twitter junk.
Go to https://app.theapricot.io/, then the settings page.
https://on.substack.com/p/introducing-notes
Edit: Correcting to acknowledge this is in the first paragraph of the article. Doh!
I wonder what Musk thinks is valuable about Twitter, if not the ability to share one's work or to discuss what's going on in other parts of the internet?
[1] https://twitter.com/lulumeservey/status/1511376638487019524?...
I wouldn't totally rule out a bug, some overzealous filter from trying to block one specific Substack site, but I wouldn't call it the most likely possibility either.
So clearly he’s an exceptional leader & manager.
Doesn’t mean that all his decisions about the direction he’s leading to, are “correct” (a.k.a. I or you agree with them).
Enough. At this point its on every one of us for spreading this shit like a terrible chain email from the 90s.
Turns out: 1) They're literal addicts. 2) They're not as unhappy as they make themselves out to be, they just enjoy the social interaction through communal outrage. Hypocrites.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230404115255/https://help.twit...:
> State-financed media organizations with editorial independence, like the BBC in the UK or NPR in the US for example, are not defined as state-affiliated media for the purposes of this policy.
The only argument for NPR is that it has received government funding, which means Tesla's account (and thousands of other businesses) should also have the state-affiliated label.
The only explanations are severe incompetence (the Twitter team in charge of identifying state-affiliated media has never heard of the BBC) or malice (there is no such team anymore, NPR was directly targeted by someone who doesn't like them and falsely assumed they are government-funded). I think it's obvious this was malice, but you're entitled to your opinion.
Consider though that your explanation accuses them of incredible negligence. If you don't have time to evaluate the biggest media organizations in the world, then you don't roll out a state-affiliated media label to your global platform.
If only 5% of the energy used to complain about Twitter was used to improve the FOSS options in the market.
Also, there's something quite nice about being able to start fresh on a new platform. You can shape it to the experience you want it to be, without all the inertia of your past usage.
what are Twitter's intentions here?
Now it seems substack has no option than to launch a twitter competitor.
And ther is no better advertisement than this. When can i join?
One could now argue that any illegal or illicit content is now a tacit endorsement by Twitter because it is not removing likes from that content.
> I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law.
> If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect.
> Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.
Elon Musk one year ago.
https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/15190369831375093...
Twitter is not even close and it is no where near an ‘anti-trust’ case since its entire existence, both before and after the takeover.