Twitter Is Blocking Likes and Retweets that Mention Substack
flipboard.social
flipboard.social
> Substack was trying to download a massive portion of the Twitter database to bootstrap their Twitter clone, so their IP address is obviously untrusted.
delirium
wget 8.8.8.8
How so?
https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/LinkedIn-Wins-Latest-C...
This is the kind of explanation that sounds good when you give it to a close circle of yes-men who won’t dare disagree with you, but falls flat when posted somewhere that anybody can think about critically.
Also, the pandering replies from the social media grifters trying hard to break into Elon’s inner circle are just sad:
> Got it. Please DM so we can take this private.
Billionaires buy media companies and politicians for a reason.
Its the same reason, totalitarian govs control their media and politicians.
The playbook is the same:
1. Make an individual decision against an individual, group or organization (ie. target)
2. Make your plea to the masses using your platform of choice to stoke fear, hatred or worst (complacency) with your policy
3. Act violently, disingenuously towards your target
We have not evolved beyond lynching in America. We just do it differently now.
This gives the appearance of a quasi-religious belief. How would you ever refute it empirically?
Death and destruction and suffering are all part of God's plan, right? We mere mortals cannot understand it, we just have to take it on faith.
> 1. Substack links were never blocked. Matt’s statement is false.
> 2. Substack was trying to download a massive portion of the Twitter database to bootstrap their Twitter clone, so their IP address is obviously untrusted.
> 3. Turns out Matt is/was an employee of Substack.
1) Substack links are blocked and restricted. I've personally confirmed this, as have countless others. In fact you can't even search for the word substack (or tweets made by Taibbi!) right now. Musk is either attempting some sort of deeply disenguous argument about the meaning of the word "blocked", or he's just mistaken. At best.
2) I can't even parse the nonsense about Substack scraping twitter. It makes no sense on multiple levels. There's no real way they're trying to download a "massive portion" of Twitter's content, there's no way they're "downloading the Twitter database", there's no way they only have a single IP address, and this block isn't about IP addresses, it's about domain names, or in the case of the search bans, actual words. And also, there's no reason why they'd want or need to do whatever he's accusing them of to start their Notes product. This is so garbled is hard to even call it wrong.
3) Taibbi isn't a Substack employee. Not that it'd particular matter if he was, but he's not.
I'm honestly at a loss. This is so goofy and obviously wrong it's hard to figure out if Musk just believes his target audience will happily swallow nonsense and so has no need to make up plausible lies, or if Musk actually believes this stuff.
Yes. See the replies/QTs/RTs from his fans, and see politics for other examples of this phenomenon.
Also, the news media will dutifully repeat and spread lies even while "debunking" them.
I found this hard to believe so I tested it, and it's true... if you search for "substack" on Twitter you find instances of the word "newsletter". It's both hilarious and sad.
Something very telling was his affectation when talking with Parag. Often with Parag he would use a line like "brb have to go work on rocket science", he wouldn't say any such thing with other people. Point is, the guy is being fake here and all of this hand-waving just betrays his insecurity and fear that he doesn't have a handle on twitter.
And thus the whirlygig of time brings in his revenges…
Pretty clearly though this is just a major Streisand effect in the making.
1) Doing that wouldn't be fairly described as "downloading Twitters database".
2) Given the scale of Twitter, there's no way that would be fairly described as downloading a "massive portion" of Twitter.
3) As you say, there's no reason they would be doing that. It's certainly not needed (or even helpful) for launching something like Substack Notes.
4) Just as a matter of how networking and modern cloud architectures work, it would be a bit surprising if the IP ranges that scraping requests were made from would be the same as the ones serving up content on Substack's frontend. It could happen I suppose, but...it'd be weird, even if you weren't trying to make the requests from unrelated IPs (which...you probably would try and do).
5) Elements of the block have nothing to do with IP addresses or domain names at all, eg, the block on results when even searching for the word "substack" (but hilariously, not when searching for common mispellings), or the block on searching for posts authored by Taibbi.
6) Substack has denied doing any such thing, and frankly, their credibility is currently significantly higher than Musk's.
It's certainly possible Substack was doing something akin to scraping which via a game of telephone ended up as Musk's claim, but... I wouldn't bet money on it.
Occam’s razor would say he’s trying to stifle competition and picked basically the worst conceivable strategy to do that.
If I were Musk and wanted to stop Substack I’d try some kind of long-game embrace, extend, extinguish strategy and pretend to support them at this stage.
1) Musk has come out in favour of shadowbanning, or "freedom of speach, not freedom of reach", as he once put it. Twitter isn't stopping you from tweeting a link to Substack, it's just sharply limiting the ways people might see that tweet, and trying to scare people away from following it if they do see it. Which in the most technical sense is arguably not blocking links to Substack.
2) It's possible Substack was scraping Twitter. Or much more likely, they've said they were using the Twitter API to embed tweets into newsletters. That's a perfectly allowed and legitimate use of the API, but it's possible some bug on Substack's side may have made the requests look odd or happen at an unusually high rate. Or alternatively, Twitter has made major changes to how the API works recently, and we know they have a skeleton crew these days. Perhaps (due to bugs or lack of resources) they incorrectly flagged Substack's API usage as malicious. If Musk saw a report that (rightly or wrongly) suggested Substack was misuing the API to embed Tweets, he might have assumed that they were using the API to scrape Twitter.
3) Taibbi isn't an employee of Substack, but he has a Substack and paying subscribers, and thus has a very slight financial interest in the health of the Substack platform. (Only slight because Substack makes it quite easy to migrate off their platform, taking your paying subscribers with you.) But that's still more financial interest than people who aren't Musk have in the health of Twitter. So if you squint, Taibbi could almost be seen as biased against Twitter in any conflict with Substack?
So sure, I can almost find a way to imagine Musk's claims as "technically true but intentionally misleading", "almost certainly false but perhaps Musk wasn't intentionally lying", and "Musk had to know he was lying, but perhaps he was morally very slightly correct". But boy do you have to work hard to force his statements into even that ambiguously positive a frame. :)
> Occam’s razor would say he’s trying to stifle competition and picked basically the worst conceivable strategy to do that.
Totally agreed. There's been a flurry of Twitter competitors, but Musk's actions so far have catapulted Substack's Notes into the forefront, which is hilarious for a product from comparatively tiny company that hasn't even launched yet. Spoutible and Post.news have to consider this little spat an existential disaster for them.
Who involved in Substack is a billionaire? Their CEO seems to be a youngish guy, maybe a millionaire.
Not company is perfect of course but Substack seems less bad for society than Twitter. I mean Twitter also started out as non-evil, so maybe Substack will get there eventually…
[0]https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/jessi-slaughter-cyberb...
https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/18/twitter-wont-let-you-post-...
It sure looks like someone has hijacked Elon and Jack and run off with those operations.
Maybe you have to add the year to the search query to find search results from before when Donny got kicked out fairly for serial disrespect.
Become a more effective censorship apparatus.
I am entertained by how the "libertarians" on HN were shrieking "bloody murder censorship" at day-to-day moderation decisions, and now falling all over each other to defend this erratic, impulsive chaos as "Musk's right to make business decisions". Pick a lane.
> What is Twitter's mission statement?
> The mission we serve as Twitter, Inc. is to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly without barriers. Our business and revenue will always follow that mission in ways that improve – and do not detract from – a free and global conversation
"Defending and respecting the rights of people using our service" https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/defending-and...
The guy seemed pretty apolitical and rational at some point,or maybe it just wasn’t broadcasted, but it’s a pity he is going down this road.
He attempted to use Twitter to overthrow the government. I call that more than “serial disrespect.”
The moderation foibles of Elon Musk's Twitter were entirely predictable (and predicted!) before the takeover, and it's very clear that Elon is in the (very large) group of people who believe that only speech they agree with deserves protection.
This wasn't happening yesterday, but it started happening today.
I tried a custom search where "substack" is on the must include list, and "newsletter" is in the excluded words list, but it didn't work: it still showed me mostly tweets with "newsletter".
He just happens to own the social media platform he’s having an episode on.
(If I had absolutely had to guess I’d say Musk has a “mild” version of bipolar disorder. I say this because I have it too and this is overly familiar).
But "Tweeting" sounds so natural now. What are we going to call posting on Substack Notes? "Noting"? "Subbing"? "Stacking"?
For as long as it doesn't have ActivityPub integration, "Getting ignored".
https://twitter.com/LynAldenContact/status/16447089979817738...
https://twitter.com/search?q=substack&src=typed_query&f=live
Either this is a forced replacement of s/substack/newsletter or its a sign the term is banned or both.
?
On substack, it seems to me the quality of the content there is in part at least due to paying creators based on subscriptions, vs e.g. medium which I believe pays based on how many minutes people spend reading. It seems that business models that are subscription based, and models that promote low quality click bait like content are not mutually exclusive. I hope the short form of social media content doesn't lead to substack loosing what makes it great.
On a side note, I wonder how this post in particular made the front page, I have been expecting it for a few days but none of the posts so gained traction.
It's already been kicked off.
"We’re glad to see that the suppression of Substack publications on Twitter appears to be over. This is the right move for writers, who deserve the freedom to share their work.
We believe that Twitter and Substack can continue to coexist and complement each other.
We look forward to making Substack Notes available soon, but we expect it to be a new kind of place within a subscription network, not a replacement for existing social networks."
https://nitter.1d4.us/SubstackInc/status/1644897662255112192 https://twitter.com/SubstackInc/status/1644897662255112192
I encourage everyone else to do the same.
(Jk. Elon banned me)
Reminds me of Amazon banning the sale of Chromecast devices because they compete with FireTV.
(FWIW, Mastodons issues aren't inherent, but due to very bad design decisions wrt. federation, crippling it.)
The journalists/hollywood made a big stink about leaving Twitter but the majority slunk back and even got made fun of by the Elon stans. This network despite Twitters problems is still a huge risk preventing Substack's product from taking off.
"Hypopile"?
"ʂυβʂταƈκ"?
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2021/07/12/censor/
Specifically I prefer to get my news from RSS feeds from lots of independent websites, to avoid such damage from centralized platforms. Any one of the sites I follow could start censoring without much effect.
For this reason we need protocols for microblogging that allow for the same kind of positive fragmentation.
I’ve lately been a fan of hosting my own Beluga feed (https://beluga.social) since it’s much more lightweight than a full mastodon instance, and I still rely on RSS feeds.
But let’s be honest, very few people actually want fragmentation and ownership even if it’s better for the long-term health of the Internet. They prefer discoverability, reach, and usability, which will always be better on a centralized platform. It’s like asking people to eat boiled broccoli when there’s a pile of donuts next to it.
Can we make broccoli donuts? Mastodon is doing pretty well these days, but given that email went from a fully federated and open ecosystem to mostly centralized over the last 2 decades, I’m not super optimistic.
1. Substack can be trying to mine the follower graph from Twitter in order to bootstrap its upcoming twitter-clone, and Twitter can object to this and try to block Substack from doing it whether by API or direct crawler
2. Twitter can be blocking people trying to link to content on Substack, to punish Substack for making a competitor and trying to port Twitter users over
The first is reasonable enough, outside of maybe some anti-competitive law questions that I think probably(?) don't actually apply (but I'm not a lawyer). The second point isn't inherently unreasonable in other circumstances... but it does fly completely in the face of all Musk's rhetoric about free speech, and things that have been said criticizing Twitter's former actions blocking discussion of e.g. the Hunter Biden laptop story. Particularly since the people it's directly hurting are the people publishing newsletters on Substack.
Seems particularly like an own-goal given that the immediate effect is driving off the people like Taibbi who've been giving Musk cover for his claims with the whole "Twitter files" thing.
But I’m pretty sure Twitter under any ownership would take measures to stop what they consider “api abuse”. Twitter is notoriously horrible when it comes to being reasonable about it’s api. Let’s not pretend Elon did this…
Musk draws negative attention like no figure in the modern era. He is just too fun to hate. This story amounts to a mildly anticompetitive action by a middle tier social network. It's just not a big deal[1] in any reasonable context. It's a front page freakout on HN only because Musk was involved[2].
We're here for entertainment value, basically. For myself: the Taibbi angle here is absolutely hilarious, given the level of spin in the "Twitter Files" you really would have thought the guy would have bought some loyalty, but Musk's brain doesn't work that way.
[1] But, of course, bad.
[2] c.f. all the front page coverage here of Tesla foibles that would be 100% ignored on the cars of any other manufacturer.
Again, it's just too fun to pin this on the nutjob CEO with the bad takes. But step back and... it's just not that notable. Well, except for the employees laid off. I'm not saying I'd want to work for the guy, but even then "asshole tech bro CEOs" are a dime a dozen too.
However, I resist letting this turn into merely a spectacle. I don't think it's a good idea to stop criticizing bad practices (in this case, making unwitting members of the public skeptical of links posted by independent journalists) just because it's fairly mundane in the scope of social media company practices. It's important to hold leadership accountable, but you're right that we shouldn't let Elon become the pariah for bad leadership/practices in way that lets others off the hook.
What is being discussed here, however, is whether using Twitter‘a web client to post a tweet containing a link to content on Substack is “abuse of Twitter’s API.”
Elon absolutely did this, and there is no “pretending” going on.
That's an ad hominem tu quoque. If what you want to do is criticize the character of people criticizing Musk, carry on. But even if the person criticizing Elon is a serial murderer and leaves the toilet seat up, the truth or falsity of any statement they make is independent of their character.
If you have some argument to make about "Twitter" doing it and not "Elon," make that argument and we can discuss it. Speaking of which:
You can believe whatever you like about whether Twitter before Elon would or wouldn't have done things like ban Elon's Jet tracking account (they didn't), Bring white supremacists and Trump back (they didn't), ban journalists using a flimsy pretext of doxxing (they didn't), fire the trust and safety team (they didn't), &c. &c.
Point being, I am not giving you opinions, I am giving you facts about how Twitter under Musk is not like Twitter pre-Musk, and these are not trivial changes.
Then you add the fact that Musk himself brags to high heaven about how HE is changing things, and to boot, people talk to him on twitter and he says he will make changes.
All these things point to Musk personally taking responsibility for Twitter's actions. If he turns this around and the company ends up being worth $250 billion (his claim), do you think the world will say "That was Twitter, not Musk?"
So why when the company shits the bed shouldn't we say "That was Musk?"
That was my argument. I don't understand where this stuff about "criticizing the character of people criticizing Musk" comes from.
Do you use or advocate using an email service that automatically blocks spam and phishing attempts? An email is an email an email.
Same with phone calls.
If you don't then do you post your phone number and email publicly like on HN, Twitter etc.? If not, why not?
Both my email provider and I agree on what constitutes spam. It does not decide to block my emails containing a link to a competitor as “spam.”
It does not modify my emails to insert a “warning, this link is dangerous” page for my recipients.
If it does send an email of mine mentioning a competitor, it does not block my recipients from searching for my email.
If it did any of these things, no I would not use it, and yes I would lambaste such a company and its CEO.
———
Addendum:
But even if someone did use such an email service, and didn’t criticize the company or its CEO, that would have no bearing on whether their criticism of Musk was valid:
If a business launched a direct competitor to my product and engaged in obviously poor behavior (like scraping my entire site for content), this seems like very reasonable grounds to effectively ban that site from my platform.
I'm not really capturing why this is so controversial. Wasn't there a similar precedent a few years ago in a lawsuit involving third parties scraping LinkedIn profiles?
Seems unlikely. Anyone other than Elon saying this happened?