\n<\/p>\n
Musk sort-of explained his decision in a reply this week by claiming that Substack was \u201ctrying to download a massive portion of the Twitter database to bootstrap their Twitter clone\u201d which is very funny \u2014 just imagine starting any sort of Twitter competitor and prepopulating it<\/em> with the garbage of Twitter \u2014\u00a0<\/em>and also a pretty huge claim to make without any evidence.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Anyhow, Substack CEO Chris Best responded to Elon with a post on Substack Notes, of course. The feature in in beta so there\u2019s no permalink as yet, but he passed it along to us and we\u2019re posting a screenshot so people can refer to it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Best says Substack has used the Twitter API for years and thinks they\u2019re in compliance with the terms of service; the implication is that Twitter never told the company about any alleged violation. And of course, Best says the whole situation is \u201cvery frustrating,\u201d with a nod to the fact that Substack writers are actually customers<\/em> of his enterprise software product; messing with Substack links has more impact on individual small business owners than it does on the platform company.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It is worth noting here that Andreesen Horowitz is an investor in both Substack and neo-Twitter, so that\u2019s going great. And if you\u2019re reading this you can probably just react to the phrases \u201cfree speech,\u201d \u201cTwitter,\u201d and \u201cElon Musk\u201d in whatever way kicks your Saturday night off right. I trust you. Party hard.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n