The IT Nerd

Yesterday, I posted news that Twitter blocking links to competitor Substack. That’s a pretty dumb move by Elon. That led to Matt Taibbi who is best known for his reporting on the so called “Twitter Files” to dump Twitter:

“Of all things: I learned earlier today that Substack links were being blocked on this platform. When I asked why, I was told it’s a dispute over the new Substack Notes platform,” Taibbi tweeted Friday. 

He continued. “Since sharing links to my articles is a primary reason I come to this platform, I was alarmed and asked what was going on. I was given the option of posting articles on Twitter instead. I’m obviously staying at Substack, and will be moving to Substack Notes next week.”

That quickly got the attention of Elon. Who said this:

Well. Let’s go down the rabbit hole shall we? Let’s look at what you get when you go to a Tweet with a Substack link:

That sure looks like links to Substack are being blocked to me. Let’s take a look at the this message in full:

Okay, so this does have the option to “Ignore this warning and continue”. But the way this message is written, it sure looks like Elon is trying to make sure that you don’t click on the link by claiming that it is dangerous. That would be enough for a lot of users not to click on the link. So while he is technically correct that links aren’t being blocked as you can still click through, at best he’s being misleading. And it’s one of those stupid moves by Elon that will really come back to bite him.

This entry was posted on April 9, 2023 at 8:37 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.