Twitter seems to be at war with Substack

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By Webdesk


It seems that Twitter is currently in a feud with newsletter platform Substack.

Substack writers noticed yesterday that they could no longer embed tweets when creating a post on Substack. While this could just be a technical issue, perhaps related to Twitter’s move to its new but heavily criticized API plans, it now appears there’s something more going on here.

Twitter is now blocking likes, retweets, and comments on tweets that contain a link to a Substack newsletter. In addition, Twitter users cannot pin a tweet with a Substack link to their profile.

The timing of these issues, which only seem to affect Substack links, is peculiar. Just a day before these Twitter errors started appearing, Substack announced a new feature called Substack Notes. It basically brings a social media-like feed of tweet-like messages to the newsletter platform. It’s not exactly a Twitter competitor, as it exists within the newsletter platform ecosystem, but it certainly looks that way.

Yesterday, when Mashable contacted Substack about the issue with the embedded tweet, a spokesperson gave us the following statement.

“We are investigating reports that Twitter embeds and authentication are no longer working on Substack,” the Substack spokesperson said. “We are actively working to resolve this and will share updates as additional information becomes available.”

However, when Mashable reached out today regarding the blocked interactions on tweets containing Substack links, we received a statement from Substack founders Chris Best, Hamish McKenzie and Jairaj Sethi.

“We are disappointed that Twitter has chosen to limit writers’ ability to share their work,” Substack’s founders said in a statement to Mashable. “Writers deserve the freedom to share links to Substack or anywhere. This abrupt change reminds us why writers deserve a model that puts them in charge, rewards great work with money, and protects freedom of the press and free speech Their livelihoods shouldn’t be tied to platforms where they don’t own their relationship with their audience, and where the rules can change on a whim.”

Researcher Jane Manchun Wong, an expert in discovering upcoming and unreleased features hidden in the code in apps, noticed(Opens in a new tab) Twitter’s latest move last night.

“Server errors with either: Authorization: Engagements are restricted on tweet [id] or authorization: some actions on this [username] Tweet has been disabled by Twitter. (425),’ Wong tweeted from her @wongmjane account, describing what she could see in the inner workings of Twitter.

Twitter screenshot

Mashable’s own attempts to interact with tweets containing a Substack link all failed.
Credit: Mashable screenshot

Twitter users who try to like, retweet, or comment on a tweet will see a message that says “Some actions on this tweet have been disabled by Twitter.”

Twitter screenshot


Credit: Mashable screenshot

As readers can see in the above screenshot of the test tweet posted by Wong, users cannot like or retweet a tweet with a Substack link. As the recently publicly released source code of Twitter’s recommendation algorithm showed, these interactions greatly affect how far a tweet goes on a platform. As you can see, the lack of interactions on Wong’s tweet has greatly reduced the number of views on her post.

One of the first to notice the embed problem was Garbage Day newsletter creator Ryan Broderick, who screenshot(Opens in a new tab) on Thursday after the prompt he received on Substack.

Twitter’s move to block Substack links is certainly bizarre. Twitter itself once had a Substack alternative called Revue. However, the company shut down the newsletter platform shortly after Musk took over. Both Twitter and Substack share the same technical VCs as investors. Many of the Twitter users Musk interacts with regularly run Substack newsletters. The Musk-approved Twitter files were distributed primarily through writer Matt Taibbi’s own Subtack newsletter.

Elon Musk has repeatedly touted that his reasons for acquiring Twitter were to help level the playing field, making it a more “free speech” platform, in what he considering(Opens in a new tab) to be the “de facto town square”.

However, it seems that this is only the case if you do not happen to also offer Twitter users an alternative platform.





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