Taibbi leaves Twitter
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It’s always something.
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"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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@jon-nyc said in Taibbi leaves Twitter:
@George-K said in Taibbi leaves Twitter:
@jon-nyc said in Taibbi leaves Twitter:
it’s a lot easier to create substack than to create Twitter
Substack is basically this year's version of blogger or any other platform for long-term essays, right?
Exactly. No network effect, no social graph. They may have played with implementing these things but to no avail.
They're still experimenting with this. The numbers are gradually tipping to discovery rather than referrals.
They also have a podcasting and chat function that's getting interesting.
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Josh Barro brings up the Streisand effect of this move.
You may have heard that Substack will soon be launching a feature called Notes, which will be a place to “post short-form content and share ideas… including posts, quotes, comments, images, and links.” In other words, the feature will be very similar to Twitter. You will even be able to “restack” another writer’s note.
The reason you may have heard is probably not that you saw Substack’s Wednesday announcement that Notes is coming. I mean, maybe you did — maybe it came to your inbox because you’re a big fan of Substack qua Substack and so you subscribe to Substack’s substack about Substack, On Substack. But probably not. I’m guessing if you heard, it’s because Substack’s announcement made Elon Musk mad, and he used Twitter to retaliate.
I suspect that’s true for everyone here.
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Anybody have a subscription? I’m thinking about it.
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@jon-nyc said in Taibbi leaves Twitter:
Josh Barro brings up the Streisand effect of this move.
You may have heard that Substack will soon be launching a feature called Notes, which will be a place to “post short-form content and share ideas… including posts, quotes, comments, images, and links.” In other words, the feature will be very similar to Twitter. You will even be able to “restack” another writer’s note.
The reason you may have heard is probably not that you saw Substack’s Wednesday announcement that Notes is coming. I mean, maybe you did — maybe it came to your inbox because you’re a big fan of Substack qua Substack and so you subscribe to Substack’s substack about Substack, On Substack. But probably not. I’m guessing if you heard, it’s because Substack’s announcement made Elon Musk mad, and he used Twitter to retaliate.
I suspect that’s true for everyone here.
I had literally never heard of Substack until Elon did this.
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Musky seems to be thrashing around a bit here.
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It’s always something.
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Jesus...
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After Matt Taibbi Leaves Twitter, Elon Musk ‘Shadow Bans’ All Of Taibbi’s Tweets, Including The Twitter Files
from the a-show-in-three-acts deptMon, Apr 10th 2023 09:15am - Mike Masnick
The refrain to remember with Twitter under Elon Musk: it can always get dumber.Quick(ish) recap:
On Thursday, Musk’s original hand-picked Twitter Files scribe, Matt Taibbi, went on Mehdi Hasan’s show (which Taibbi explicitly demanded from Hasan, after Hasan asked about Taibbi’s opinions on Musk blocking accounts for Modi in India). The interview did not go well for Taibbi in the same manner that finding an iceberg did not go well for the Titanic.
One segment of the absolutely brutal interview involves Hasan asking Taibbi the very question that Taibbi had said he wanted to come on the show to answer: what was his opinion of Musk blocking Twitter accounts in India, including those of journalists and activists, that were critical of the Modi government? Hasan notes that Taibbi has talked up how he believes Musk is supporting free speech, and asked Taibbi if he’d like to criticize the blocking of journalists.
Taibbi refused to do so, and claimed he doesn’t really know about the story, even though it was the very story that Hasan initially tweeted about that resulted in Taibbi saying he’d tell Hasan his opinion on the story if he was invited on the show. It was, well, embarrassing to watch Taibbi squirm as he knew he couldn’t say anything critical about Musk. He already saw how the second Twitter Files scribe, Bari Weiss, was ex-communicated from the Church of Musk for criticizing Musk’s banning of journalists....
Again, this shouldn’t be a surprise, even though the irony is super thick. Early Twitter Files revealed that Twitter had long used visibility filtering to limit the spread of certain accounts. Musk screamed about how this was horrible shadowbanning… but then proceeded to use those tools to suppress speech of people he disliked. And now he’s using the tool, at max power, to hide Taibbi and the very files that we were (falsely) told “exposed” how old Twitter shadow banned people.
This is way more ironic than the Alanis song.
So, yes, we went from Taibbi praising Elon Musk for supporting free speech and supposedly helping to expose the evil shadowbanning of the old regime, and refusing to criticize Musk on anything, to Taibbi leaving Twitter, and Musk not just unfollowing him but shadowbanning him and all his Twitter Files.
In about 48 hours.
Absolutely incredible.
Just a stunning show of leopard face eating.
Not much happened then on Sunday, though Twitter first added a redirect on any searches for “substack” to “newsletters” (what?) and then quietly stopped throttling links to Substack, though no explanation was given. And as far as I can tell, Taibbi’s account is still “max deboosted.”
Anyway, again, to be clear: Elon Musk is perfectly within his rights to be as arbitrary and capricious as he wants to be with his own site. But can people please stop pretending his actions have literally anything to do with “free speech”?
