\n<\/p>\n
Twitter has started marking links to Substack as unsafe. If you click on a link on Twitter with substack.com in the URL, Twitter will show a separate notice warning you that \u201cthe link you are trying to access has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially spammy or unsafe.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Don\u2019t be alarmed \u2014 the links we\u2019ve checked appear to be perfectly safe. This notice seems instead to be Twitter\u2019s latest hostile move toward Substack after the email newsletter platform announced its own Twitter-like \u201cNotes\u201d feature on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
On Thursday, Twitter blocked people who use Substack from embedding tweets into their stories. Then, late Thursday or early Friday, Twitter started blocking engagement on tweets containing links to Substack; users weren\u2019t able to like or retweet them<\/a>, but could<\/em> quote retweet them. Then, on Friday morning, Twitter applied those same restrictions to tweets from the official Substack account<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n While those moves are clearly unfriendly, I\u2019d classify the unsafe warning as downright aggressive. Twitter\u2019s URL policy<\/a> hasn\u2019t changed since 2020, according to the last updated note on the page, and Substack\u2019s site appears to be working as it always has, so it\u2019s hard to say what justification Twitter\u2019s using for the warning. CEO Elon Musk hasn\u2019t tweeted anything about Substack recently and, when reached for comment, Twitter\u2019s press email auto-replied with a poop emoji, which it has been doing since mid-March.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The elephant in the room is Substack\u2019s Notes feature<\/a>, which adds very Twitter-like elements to the newsletter platform. Matt Taibbi, a journalist who has history reporting stories for Musk<\/a>, said Friday<\/a> that he was told by an unspecified party that \u201cTwitter is upset about the new Substack Notes feature, which they see as a hostile rival.\u201d He also notes that he was \u201cgiven the option of posting my articles on Twitter instead of Substack.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In December, Musk said he considered \u201crelentless advertising of competitors\u201d to be a policy violation, and blocked sharing links to Instagram, Mastodon, Facebook, and others<\/a>. However, those restrictions were later removed. It\u2019s possible that he\u2019s decided to bring it back now that he feels like Substack is trying to compete with Twitter, though it is worth noting that, for now at least, you still are able to tweet a Substack link. Anyone trying to follow it will just have to click through the warning to get to the content.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Substack didn\u2019t immediately respond to The Verge<\/em>\u2019s request for comment on the warning. However, its founders have recently spoken out<\/a> about how Twitter is treating their platform.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n