Musk explained his decision in a response this week by claiming that Substack was “trying to download a massive chunk of the Twitter database to start its Twitter clone,” which is a lot of fun. Imagine starting any kind of Twitter competitor and prepopulate it with the Twitter trash— and also a pretty big claim to make without any evidence.
Anyway, Substack CEO Chris Best responded to Elon with a post on Substack Notes, of course. The feature is in beta, so there’s no permalink yet, but he passed it on to us and we’re posting a screenshot so people can check it out.
Best says that Substack has used the Twitter API for years and believes that it complies with the terms of service; the implication is that Twitter never told the company about any alleged violations. And, of course, Best calls the whole situation “very frustrating,” with a nod to the fact that Substack’s writers are actually customers of your business software product; Playing around with Substack links has more of an impact on individual small business owners than it does on the platform company.
It’s worth noting here that Andreesen Horowitz is an investor in both Substack and neo-Twitter, so it’s doing very well. And if you’re reading this, you can probably react to the phrases “free speech,” “Twitter,” and “Elon Musk” in any way you can to start your Saturday night off right. I trust you. loud party.
