On Friday, Twitter users began noticing that they couldn’t retweet or reply to tweets containing links to the Substack.com domain. This behavior appears to have started less than 48 hours after the popular newsletter platform announced a new product called Notes that will directly compete with Twitter.
For example, this tweet refers to my newsletter, Understandingai.substack.com. When I try to retweet it, an error message appears: “Some actions on this tweet have been disabled by Twitter”. If I try to reply to the same tweet, I get an error message saying, “Something went wrong, but don’t worry, let’s try again.” Even loving is not allowed.
This tweet is identical except that I linked to my custom domain, Understandingai.org. I have no trouble liking it, retweeting it, or replying to it.
In the past 24 hours, Twitter also appears to have started blocking the embedding of tweets in Substack posts.
“We are investigating reports that Twitter integrates and authentication no longer works on Substack”, Substack tweeted THURSDAY. “We are actively trying to resolve this issue and will share updates as additional information becomes available.”
I emailed Twitter’s official press email address, [email protected], for comment. Twitter automatically replies to all emails from this account with the message “💩”. I don’t expect any other response, as Twitter seems to have laid off most of its news store. Tesla disbanded its public relations department three years ago.
But it’s not hard to guess why Twitter started restricting tweets on Substack. On Wednesday, Substack announced its Notes feature, which looks a lot like Twitter.
“In Notes, editors will be able to post shorthand content and share ideas with each other and their readers,” Substack wrote in a blog post. “Like our recommendations feature, Notes is designed to drive discovery in Substack. But whereas Recommendations allows editors to promote posts, Notes will give them the ability to recommend almost anything, including posts, quotes, comments, images, and links.”
It wouldn’t be the first time that Twitter has restricted the reach of its rivals on its platform. Last December, Twitter banned several tech journalists after reporting on controversy over services that track Twitter owner Elon Musk’s private jet. This led to an exodus of users to Twitter rivals such as Mastodon. A few days later, Twitter began blocking links to Mastodon and other competing social media platforms.
As I write this, tweets linking to Mastodon accounts seems to work encore.
Substack has yet to respond to an email seeking comment. We will update the story if we have any news.
Tim Lee was on staff at Ars from 2017 to 2021. He recently launched a new Substack newsletter, Understanding AI. It explores how AI works and how it changes our world. You can subscribe to his newsletter here.
