Row between Twitter and Substack ends with uneasy truce
A six-day row between Twitter and Substack has come to an uneasy truce after the social media site stopped censoring links and searches for the newsletter platform following the latter’s decision to launch a rival microblogging service.
However, the spat appears to have put an end to Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files” project, after he tweeted then deleted screenshots of a conversation between himself and one of its writers, Matt Taibbi, in which the pair sparred over the censorship.
The conflict started last Wednesday, when Substack announced a new feature, “Substack Notes”, which offers a Twitter-like experience for the company’s user base of newsletter authors and their readers, some of whom are paying subscribers.
“While Notes may look like familiar social media feeds, the key difference is in what you don’t see,” said the Substack cofounder Hamish McKenzie in a post announcing the feature.
“The Substack network runs on paid subscriptions, not ads. This changes everything.
“Here, people get rewarded for respecting the trust and attention of their audiences. The ultimate goal on this platform is to convert casual readers into paying subscribers.
“In this system, the vast majority of the financial rewards go to the creators of the content.”
Many Substack authors rely on Twitter for both reader acquisition and content to write about, leaving the newsletter platform particularly exposed to a potential collapse under Musk’s chaotic administration since his $44bn (£35bn) takeover last October.
Even before the Twitter sale, Substack had been struggling: the company’s 2021 revenues were negative, according to its financial statements, and it lost $25m in cash overall that year. Last year, it fired one in six staff members and last month it
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