Tweet from Substrack cannot be retweeted

For a half billion dollars or so Elon could buy substack. It's a private company in the midst of a very painful and difficult fundraising cycle, they may not have much of a choice but to sell. Twitter would get a functioning monetization engine which favours creators, and apparently a functional product team.

Heck, he could keep the substack exec team under a heavy earn-out as the new Twitter exec team and declare victory, and go back to playing with rocketry and sports cars. Just returning his attention to Tesla would probably increase his net net worth with the acquisition.

Instead he's taking the pettiest of all paths. I genuinely feel sorry for him at this point, it's got to feel awful right now. I don't understand why one of the world's richest people would willingly subject themselves to his Twitter experience. He can afford to let go his ego this one time, he has nothing to gain and nothing to prove.

Another interesting detail: clicking on substack’s URL on their profile shows a page stating that:

Warning: this link may be unsafe https://substack.com/home

The link you are trying to access has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially spammy or unsafe, in accordance with Twitter’s URL Policy. This link could fall into any of the categories below:

- malicious links that could steal personal information or harm electronic devices

- spammy links that mislead people or disrupt their experience

- violent or misleading content that could lead to real-world harm

- certain categories of content that, if posted directly on Twitter, are a violation of the Twitter Rules

Well, I just tested if quoting the tweet that cannot be retweeted is quotable. The results are in: we can still quote the unquotable! Looks like the 'free speech absolutist' needs to go back to the drawing board. https://twitter.com/aiaaidan/status/1644493999061729280

Despite subscribing to dozens of substacks, I hadn't heard of notes until this controversy. I wonder if substack sees this as the best advertising they could have gotten for that platform, while also being terrified of the existential crisis that being banned from Twitter must mean to them.

Also, I am a drop in the ocean but all this makes me want to side with substack. I wonder if engagement happens like that, where you amplify your usage when a bully takes actions like Musk. Maybe thousands of drops like that move the needle significantly for substack.

The only thing that works is to link the tweet. Tweets that link to the tweet, however, cannot be retweeted, liked, or pinned.

https://twitter.com/doener/status/1644470093919731713

Private company doing private company things. Twitter did the same thing to Meerkat before the takeover.

What this means is that given Substack’s announcement of the Notes feature, Twitter is both reacting to reduce Substack’s reach on Twitter as they are still in the middle of relaunching a newsletter competitor.

Either way, it would just make sense for Twitter to just buy up Substack since Substack failed to raise money from VCs and is desperately raising money from crowdfunding at mounting losses and no release of their 2022 financials.

"Free speech" has always been a misnomer. When someone can't defend their point from criticism they pretend it's oppression. Elon cats shit defending ego, not speech.

I'm very confused by these actions.

Is twitter trying to get rid of journalists?

Afaik, Twitter doesn't have a competitor to substack

Substack=No. Putin=Yes. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2023/04/07/elon-musk-...

Perhaps Musk meant to call himself a Free Speech Authoritarianist.

Doesn’t this link to a retweet or what is it exactly that cannot be done?