Musk sort-of defined his choice in a reply this week by claiming that Substack was “making an attempt to obtain a large portion of the Twitter database to bootstrap their Twitter clone” which could be very humorous — simply think about beginning any type of Twitter competitor and prepopulating it with the rubbish of Twitter — and likewise a reasonably large declare to make with none proof.
Anyhow, Substack CEO Chris Finest responded to Elon with a publish on Substack Notes, after all. The function in in beta so there’s no permalink as but, however he handed it alongside to us and we’re posting a screenshot so folks can check with it.
Finest says Substack has used the Twitter API for years and thinks they’re in compliance with the phrases of service; the implication is that Twitter by no means informed the corporate about any alleged violation. And naturally, Finest says the entire state of affairs is “very irritating,” with a nod to the truth that Substack writers are literally prospects of his enterprise software program product; messing with Substack hyperlinks has extra affect on particular person small enterprise homeowners than it does on the platform firm.
It’s value noting right here that Andreesen Horowitz is an investor in each Substack and neo-Twitter, in order that’s going nice. And if you happen to’re studying this you’ll be able to most likely simply react to the phrases “free speech,” “Twitter,” and “Elon Musk” in no matter approach kicks your Saturday night time off proper. I belief you. Occasion arduous.