We of course will follow him. But for him to reach more people and a wider audience the suppression is a problem. It’s a problem for us too as we’re limited in being reached by other writers committing WrongThink
You know, I’ve never bought into the hate that the left is supposed to feel for Elon Musk, but the way he treated you, Matt, was not cool. And he’s still deamplifying you on twitter? Some free speech platform
Musk is a hip shooter and obviously takes things VERY personally. IOW he is emotional. With the exception of his treatment of MT though I am pretty happy with his rapid-fire responses.
People often perceive shooting from the hip as a bad thing. It is not. In fact, MOST successful people, particularly those with the courage of their convictions and the information to support those convictions/opinions, shoot from the hip, hard and fast.
This is a stupid argument. Acting without thinking is good because it’s what q successful people do? It’s also what unsuccessful people do. Plus, if you are gathering enough information to make a reasoned decision, you’re not shooting from the hip. For example, in this very case, Elon didn’t really understand what substack was or what Matt’s relationship with them was, he just got feelings that Matt was betraying him and acted on instinct.
Yes, I agree. We have too many miles to travel, too many things to create, to be dilly-dallying around in our actions and speech. If we know what we think/believe, let's speak it. Honors to Matt Taibbi and Elon Musk!
Well said. Obviously we all love Matt, as he's one of a select few journalists out there who practice actual journalism versus social activism or politics or whatever you want to call it.
Regarding Musk, I recall Matt saying earlier he doesn't begrudge Musk's decision to deamplify (if that's the right word) Substack, since Substack Notes could be considered competition to X/Twitter. In other words, Musk has had no personal issue with Matt, Bari, Shellenberger, etc. He just doesn't want to promote a competitor.
Personally, I think Musk made a huge contribution to the public welfare when he opened up Twitter's logs and allowed independent journalists to report on the government's unconstitutional attempts to regular protected political speech.
“as he's one of a select few journalists out there who practice actual journalism versus social activism or politics or whatever you want to call it.”
I am always floored at the number of people posting here who put so much stock in being independent, critical thinkers, but are still somehow naïve enough to believe something like this?
Look, I read Taibbi too—he’s a good writer, and his attempts at ‘objectivity’ are indeed admirable, but he’s got his blind spots, and he’s playing politics and engaging in social activism like everyone else. Every journalist is, whether they realize it or not; it’s just part of being a journalist. And so is every billionaire. The minute you lose sight of that is the minute you stop thinking critically.
Well, yes, of course Taibbi has biases of his own. Even the best journalists do. But isn't it also a matter of degree?
In my mind -- and I was in the news business for 15 years -- "actual journalism" means your overriding goal is to find and report all the facts you can, and leave it to readers to do their own interpretation and draw their own conclusions.
Unfortunately, and James Bennet, the former NYT editorial page editor who was ousted after running an op-ed that non-thinkers considered "dangerous," did a great deep dive on the topic recently in The Economist, most of today's journalists were specifically trained NOT to do this. Instead, they essentially pick a side in what they cover, and their overriding goal is social activism.
This is why, for example, the MSM generally ignored the Twitter Files, because it made the Biden Administration look bad, which might help Trump. So a story that is essentially the Pentagon Papers of the 2020s has gone largely unnoticed, other than MSM hit jobs whose main intent was to discredit Taibbi & Co along with Musk.
As a reader, I don't care if you have and share political opinions, especially if you express them in an op-ed or other commentary. But I care deeply if you omit relevant facts from a news account simply because you're afraid they could cause me to arrive at a different opinion than the one you are pushing. At that point, you've departed from "actual journalism" and instead have crossed the threshold into social activism, or politicking, or whatever you want to call it.
And this, in turn, is why the MSM's credibility, as measured by Gallup and others, is at an all-time low. And still sinking! I challenge you to find an instance where Taibbi or Bari Weiss has omitted from a news article a key fact that might have changed your opinion. The NYTs and Washington Posts and CNNs do it in more stories than not that have political ramifications. (Hell, they even do it in the sports pages.)
I know few people if anyone more devoted to critical thought than myself and many who comment in these pages. The thrust of my comment is that if I read a news account from Taibbi or Weiss and maybe a half dozen others, I don't have to go re-read five other versions to see what they deliberately chose to omit.
To function properly, Democracy depends on a healthy, skeptical, and professionally detached Fourth Estate. And unfortunately, with few exceptions (Smerconish comes to mind), we aren't getting that now from MSM. Instead, the press has made itself a subservient division of the First and Second estates, and we are all worse off for it.
I don't think I said people should trust Matt (or anyone) 100%, but I do believe he's head and shoulders above the MSM in this regard.
Musk has gotten VERY lucky a couple of times. I have no idea why he wasn't found guilty of defaming the Thai cave rescue advisor. But even if he wasn't, Musk looks terrible branding someone with an awful tag simply because he criticized Musk's impractical plan as unfeasible.
The other time is the SEC overstepping. I don't know how he's getting away with that. He made a deal and he broke the deal and he publicly says the SEC is ridiculous and he hates the deal. This is the equivalent of spitting in the face of a cop there to arrest you and I generally love Musk but for these actions he deserves punishment.
Musk is over the line too often. He's getting by, but playing with fire. If he doesn't curb himself, he will certainly get burned. It's not clear that he hasn't already gotten burned, in fact: he may not be able to keep Twitter solvent.
He is. But I don't think that means necessarily that he does not HAVE feelings just that he has trouble displaying them. ( I bought his memoir just to see how someone who appears so controlled could be the ogre his baby mama says he is but I have not read it yet.) It is also reported that he was pretty seriously bullied as a kid. Some people never get over that.
I was married to an Asperger's narcissist, so I know first hand! Yes, they do have feelings- they just cannot understand that anyone else does! Lack of empathy, and imho- they cannot learn it! So sorry about the bullying, but very few among us were not. He's a grown-ass man. Get over it buddy!!!
We have a female pilot renting the lower floor of our acreage home. She is indeed different, something we had to get used to. All the unfamiliar symptoms, but very dependable and trustworthy. The best renter we’ve ever had to look after the place when we head south for the winter.
I still think the Powers that Be are doing everything they can to harpoon X and probably Elon himself. This effort to get all of X's possible advertisers to boycott the platform is one example of this.
Elon needs to decide if he's playing for history or if he just wants to make some more money with X. Either he's going to get them first ... or they are going to get him first.
X actually allows the possibility we could "crowd source" the effort to expose THEM.
... But the Deep State is never going to allow an Elon-Musk-owned X to make money ... unless he decides to capitulate and play ball with "the club."
If the choice is between making money and making history, Elon will choose money. But if the other oligarchs piss him off enough, then all bets are off.
I've always thought he could lose 99 percent of his net worth and still be one of the richest people on the planet. Go for a prominent place in the history books!
The only one making an effort to get "X's possible advertisers to boycott the platform" is the owner of the platform himself, Elon Musk---by transforming a vibrant information cog into an echo chamber composed of the worst of the worst of the far-right diaspora.
And given the vast sums that the U.S. Government has tossed Musk's way over the years for his various science projects, it's beyond preposterous to "think the Powers that Be are doing everything they can to harpoon X and probably Elon himself."
As for "X" itself, the site is now a consistently far-right disinformation rat-hole orchestrated by the Electric Car Man himself---precisely the type of media beast to which advertisers give a wide berth, if not run screaming from. This is what he bought X for, the sole purpose of the transaction. This is what he wanted. It is what his partners (Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud and others) wanted. It's what he and they got.
I’ve seen leftists flee X — but it’s not because they’re being censored. It’s because people who disagree with them are _not_ being censored.
I’ve been engaged in these kinds of debates for half a century, since before there was an Internet. My own experience is 1) progressives demand that I be silenced; 2) they howl personal abuse; 3) they run away. Their political views are too important to their sense of self to permit them to be questioned.
You disagree that big advertisers are boycotting X? I read recently that Zuckerberg's net worth has increased more than any person in the world in recent years. Advertisers aren't boycotting Facebook. But, then again, Facebook is playing ball and promoting all the authorized narratives ... and still censoring people who try to challenge those narratives.
On the other hand, Tesla owners and others ARE organizing a boycott of Musk's automobile company that manufactures his super-electromagnetic death-star vehicle.
Apparently, according to Tesla drivers, the heat shield often fails when the car catches on fire for any number of reasons when reentering the earth's atmosphere.
Advertisers are not "boycotting" X. They're pulling ads, leaving X, and advertising elsewhere. Boycotts are mounted in an effort to change behavior. Businesses are not in the business of behavior management. They're in the money business.
Reputable businesses no long wish to be associated with Vatnik Musk nor have their ads viewed adjacent to fascist, authoritarian, neo-nazi, white supremacist, retrograde etc. etc. trash-bot tweets. Musk ain't changin.' But the advertisers are. X will be gone soon after the November election. Unless Musk can wrangle millions from the Saudi gunslingers a la Jared Kushner.
Not even you believe that, feldspar, you’re too smart. If anything he ended the echo chamber and allowed the voices which had been silenced by the tranny lovers or science-denying vax pushers post once more.
Yeah, but it's not because of Taibbi or anyone's content. He considers Substack Notes a competitor to X, and doesn't want his product used to promote a competitor. An analogy would be CBS not taking ads or otherwise promoting shows on NBC.
Matt has said he does not begrudge Musk for this. It's not like Musk is targeting Taibbi or others over content.
In the very article we’re commenting on, Matt says that since his incident with Elon, his twitter account has obviously been manually deamplified. Matt went through everything that happened in earlier articles you can go back and read. Matt says he doesn’t begrudge him because he’s a good reporter and wants to leave open the possibility that a former source might give him new information, but if you think he isn’t at least a little miffed that he did all this work to publicize twitter and was summarily dismissed for reasons that seem irrational in Matt’s telling, and is still apparently being retaliated against, you’re kidding yourself.
Did you hear he and Walter discuss it on America this week? My comments track what he said.
It wasn't like he and Musk were chummy. Musk let them in for a reason, and Taibbi took the opportunity.
Then, when Substack launched Notes, Musk acted to prevent X from being used to promote what he considered a competing product.
If you haven't listened to Taibbi speaking about it, you should. In both cases, it was "just business." I don't remember which episode it was, or I would provide it here.
Had he been treated differently than every other substack author, that would be cause to be miffed. But I didn't detect any anger or resentment. And I don't think he was masking anything, he just recognized that Musk was targeting Substack, not Racket.
Uh, did you see the texts Matt just posted where Elon said “you’re dead to me”? There’s a difference between treating him like every other substack author (not allowing links to substack) and what Elon is doing to Matt (shadow banning). I did hear the podcast, and Matt is not complaining about Elon because he’s an adult and knows how to speak about a matter in public. Elon was a source and he’s treating him fairly, aka being the bigger man. By publishing Elon’s texts, Matt is letting the facts themselves expose Elon, rather than whining about it himself.
Why? I can't remember the reason. Did Matt go after Elon? That really stinks because I think Musk seems to have done a good job with X, but if he's de-amplifying Matt, clearly he needs two reverse course immediately.
He hired Matt as one of the main reporters doing the Twitter files. Then when he found out Matt used substack and substack has threads, he decided they were a twitter competitor, and immediately fired Matt and shadow-banned his account as punishment for Matt not doing all his publishing on twitter. Completely petty and stupid. I generally enjoy Elon because I like a little chaos thrown into the mix, but he’s not a principled free-speech absolutist, he’s just another billionaire narcissist
Matt was never “hired” by Musk to do anything. Musk, rather, gave him and a couple other journalists access to Twitter’s files for purposes of research and news. Matt is self employed.
No, he knew all along that Matt was on Substack. The only condition attached to Matt (and others') Twitter Files reporting was that it had to be published first on Substack.
Nor did he "fire" or directly target Matt. He considers Substack's Notes feature a competitor, and does not want to X used to promote Notes. As Don Corleone said, "it's just business."
If I recall, Debbie Wassermann Schultz (AKA the Florida Sea Monster) said since Taibbi upped his traffic considerably via TwitterFiles, and those files were given by Elon Musk to him, that Taibbi worked for Elon Musk.
I really like Matt's work!! I can still "sort of" understand Elon being upset that Matt et al used the files he supplied them to amplify traffic to competitor sites. He paid an exorbitant amount for X (Twitter). The government and power elites have used all their might to destroy X. I do hope that Matt and Elon can get together and "talk it out". They have both done so much to save our right of free speech, etc. It is imperative that they are both successful. ..... it would be wonderful if it could be "together".
I generally like Musk, and understand the man must have no time-sinking habits to be able to achieve all that he has - I respect him. But, I’m with you, the way he treated “his hand-picked journalist” when the Substack notes drama began was like a petulant child. Definitely do not appreciate the way things unfolded, but understand Musk’s position regarding notes.
Elon Musk is a businessman, not a social reformer. He rode the EV wave (and built a remarkably good product) even though he was fully aware of their limitations. Now he's riding the "free speech" wave on Twitter - not by being uncensored - but by being a little bit LESS censored than his competition, without driving away advertisers.
In reply to Matt's statement "...while it’s hard to censor an e-mail list, it’s not at all hard to suppress the marketing of one." I have often wondered when big tech will start monitoring our email and mysteriously not deliver what they consider to be dis/misinformation.
I seem to recall something about Republican (or maybe just Trump) fundraising emails not getting delivered. So yeah, I'm pretty sure we're already there.
Yeah, despite following you on X, I have to physically go to your timeline to see your posts. So much for Elon’s freedom of speech (and don’t even get me started on how hidden they have me).
I'm sorry, but I think we're misconstruing Musk's actions on Substack as a freedom of speech issue, when it's really not that. Musk isn't challenging anyone's right to publish protected speech. He's refusing to allow X to be used to promote Substack when he views Substack Notes as a competitor. Refusing to have your competitors' content promoted on your channel doesn't make you an opponent o,f or hypocrite on, free speech, any more than CBS is opposing free speech by not allowing declining ads or other actions on CBS's airwaves that promote NBC's programming.
Doesn't mean we have to like what Musk is doing, or that he hasn't done some other hypocritcal things on free speech, but it does mean it's not a free speech issue. The guy paid $44 billion for a company that many believe was worth barely half that, and he did it in large part to expose to the world the government-driven bullying and censorship of protected political speech. In my mind, he gets enough points for spending $20 billion to expose this issue that I'm not gonna get angry at him for not allowing X to be used to promote a "competing" product. ("Competing" is in quotes because I'm not sure Notes is a serious competitor to anything at this point. I've taken a glance at it but it doesn't seem at all comparable to X.)
Yeah. No. FB is still vitally important Even if we are all spending less time there, it matters in indie, because there are virtually no other open online ad platforms affordable and scalable for independent advertising that has facebook’s reach.
I think Substack's founders are hanging tough and haven't "gone wobbly." However, there are more ways to harm Substack writers than going after Substack proper. What our former CIA and FBI intelligence would do is probably go after the payment processors and/or work on the companies that control the email servers. They can also do some dirty tricks with the banks that process payments or accept (or don't accept payments).
In short, there's probably several ways the Censorship Industrial Complex could try to sabotage or frustrate Substack authors that have nothing to do with Substack itself.
I've been expecting this (payment processors refusing to pay Substack) for years now. My guess is the pressure of the presidential campaign will be what finally makes it happen. Expect every last stop to be pulled out to keep Biden in office.
My take is that "they" can't continue to allow Substack to have even more influence. This would jeopardize their continued control.
Some say our leaders wouldn't come up with some clandestine program to harpoon or damage Substack and its authors, but I don't know why people might think this. Of course they would if they perceived this platform as a threat. They'd HAVE to do this.
For example, I got this email about two hours after other Subscribers got this email. (I saw a Reader Comment from your first article saying, "Matt has posted a clarification" and I hadn't seen this post).
I know that the dispatches of about half of the Substack authors I pay for (and many more "free" subscribers) go directly to my Spam email file or I never get them.
I also wonder about my notifications to annual Subscribers telling people their annual subscription to my newsletter is about to renew. A bigger percentage than in the past do NOT renew. That is, my "retention" percentage has gone down significantly. I wonder if part of this might be a function of emails these people didn't receive or their bank not processing the payment?
I've had to go to my bank three times because my debit card was put on hold. Every time, the issue was a question about whether the bank should pay one of my monthly Substack renewals.
These are a few examples why I still think "something fishy" is going on here .... or something has changed.
You should write an article arguing that Trump is a grave danger to democracy and Biden is the right guy for the job and see if that reaches a wider audience.
Just wanted to jump in and say: if you're going to a new (paid) platform, maybe a coupon code for your subscribers here would be nice? I'm sure most of us would want to support you there as well.
The money I used to spend on the NYT and magazines now goes to independent journalists. I just bought Whitney Webb's 2 volumes "One Nation Under Blackmail". We need the 4th estate more than ever.
We are following YOU, Matt, regardless of where you can be found. Anybody courageous enough to rock a Wyoming flag hat needs support.
We are, for sure. Now, let's tell our friends, co-workers, relatives, and acquaintances that real journalism still exists.
We of course will follow him. But for him to reach more people and a wider audience the suppression is a problem. It’s a problem for us too as we’re limited in being reached by other writers committing WrongThink
100 dogbreakfasts please, and make 'em snappy! ; D
just teasing Matt, couldn't resist. You know we've got your back! and front and sideways.
You know, I’ve never bought into the hate that the left is supposed to feel for Elon Musk, but the way he treated you, Matt, was not cool. And he’s still deamplifying you on twitter? Some free speech platform
Musk is a hip shooter and obviously takes things VERY personally. IOW he is emotional. With the exception of his treatment of MT though I am pretty happy with his rapid-fire responses.
People often perceive shooting from the hip as a bad thing. It is not. In fact, MOST successful people, particularly those with the courage of their convictions and the information to support those convictions/opinions, shoot from the hip, hard and fast.
I personally see it as a fine quality.
This is a stupid argument. Acting without thinking is good because it’s what q successful people do? It’s also what unsuccessful people do. Plus, if you are gathering enough information to make a reasoned decision, you’re not shooting from the hip. For example, in this very case, Elon didn’t really understand what substack was or what Matt’s relationship with them was, he just got feelings that Matt was betraying him and acted on instinct.
OK.
Well, enjoy that opinion
Yes, I agree. We have too many miles to travel, too many things to create, to be dilly-dallying around in our actions and speech. If we know what we think/believe, let's speak it. Honors to Matt Taibbi and Elon Musk!
Well said. Obviously we all love Matt, as he's one of a select few journalists out there who practice actual journalism versus social activism or politics or whatever you want to call it.
Regarding Musk, I recall Matt saying earlier he doesn't begrudge Musk's decision to deamplify (if that's the right word) Substack, since Substack Notes could be considered competition to X/Twitter. In other words, Musk has had no personal issue with Matt, Bari, Shellenberger, etc. He just doesn't want to promote a competitor.
Personally, I think Musk made a huge contribution to the public welfare when he opened up Twitter's logs and allowed independent journalists to report on the government's unconstitutional attempts to regular protected political speech.
So yes, hat's off to Musk as well as Taibbi!
“as he's one of a select few journalists out there who practice actual journalism versus social activism or politics or whatever you want to call it.”
I am always floored at the number of people posting here who put so much stock in being independent, critical thinkers, but are still somehow naïve enough to believe something like this?
Look, I read Taibbi too—he’s a good writer, and his attempts at ‘objectivity’ are indeed admirable, but he’s got his blind spots, and he’s playing politics and engaging in social activism like everyone else. Every journalist is, whether they realize it or not; it’s just part of being a journalist. And so is every billionaire. The minute you lose sight of that is the minute you stop thinking critically.
Well, yes, of course Taibbi has biases of his own. Even the best journalists do. But isn't it also a matter of degree?
In my mind -- and I was in the news business for 15 years -- "actual journalism" means your overriding goal is to find and report all the facts you can, and leave it to readers to do their own interpretation and draw their own conclusions.
Unfortunately, and James Bennet, the former NYT editorial page editor who was ousted after running an op-ed that non-thinkers considered "dangerous," did a great deep dive on the topic recently in The Economist, most of today's journalists were specifically trained NOT to do this. Instead, they essentially pick a side in what they cover, and their overriding goal is social activism.
This is why, for example, the MSM generally ignored the Twitter Files, because it made the Biden Administration look bad, which might help Trump. So a story that is essentially the Pentagon Papers of the 2020s has gone largely unnoticed, other than MSM hit jobs whose main intent was to discredit Taibbi & Co along with Musk.
As a reader, I don't care if you have and share political opinions, especially if you express them in an op-ed or other commentary. But I care deeply if you omit relevant facts from a news account simply because you're afraid they could cause me to arrive at a different opinion than the one you are pushing. At that point, you've departed from "actual journalism" and instead have crossed the threshold into social activism, or politicking, or whatever you want to call it.
And this, in turn, is why the MSM's credibility, as measured by Gallup and others, is at an all-time low. And still sinking! I challenge you to find an instance where Taibbi or Bari Weiss has omitted from a news article a key fact that might have changed your opinion. The NYTs and Washington Posts and CNNs do it in more stories than not that have political ramifications. (Hell, they even do it in the sports pages.)
I know few people if anyone more devoted to critical thought than myself and many who comment in these pages. The thrust of my comment is that if I read a news account from Taibbi or Weiss and maybe a half dozen others, I don't have to go re-read five other versions to see what they deliberately chose to omit.
To function properly, Democracy depends on a healthy, skeptical, and professionally detached Fourth Estate. And unfortunately, with few exceptions (Smerconish comes to mind), we aren't getting that now from MSM. Instead, the press has made itself a subservient division of the First and Second estates, and we are all worse off for it.
I don't think I said people should trust Matt (or anyone) 100%, but I do believe he's head and shoulders above the MSM in this regard.
Agree? Disagree?
💯
I tend to agree. It can be an acquired skill.
Give me names....not ur opinion. Ur shooting from the hip. thks
Well, the richest man in the world - who has done more for the environment than any other single person in history, is a good start: Elon Musk.
From there, we can move on to Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, and Jack Welch.
While I could go on with an encyclopedic list, I'll just accept that you and I disagree and let you continue your trolling elsewhere.
Enjoy
Also "more for the environment than any other single person in history"... he's up there but I would submit for your consideration Rachel Carson.
Musk has gotten VERY lucky a couple of times. I have no idea why he wasn't found guilty of defaming the Thai cave rescue advisor. But even if he wasn't, Musk looks terrible branding someone with an awful tag simply because he criticized Musk's impractical plan as unfeasible.
The other time is the SEC overstepping. I don't know how he's getting away with that. He made a deal and he broke the deal and he publicly says the SEC is ridiculous and he hates the deal. This is the equivalent of spitting in the face of a cop there to arrest you and I generally love Musk but for these actions he deserves punishment.
Musk is over the line too often. He's getting by, but playing with fire. If he doesn't curb himself, he will certainly get burned. It's not clear that he hasn't already gotten burned, in fact: he may not be able to keep Twitter solvent.
Aren’t you the one, trolling?
But he's supposedly Asperger's. Such a thin skin!
He is. But I don't think that means necessarily that he does not HAVE feelings just that he has trouble displaying them. ( I bought his memoir just to see how someone who appears so controlled could be the ogre his baby mama says he is but I have not read it yet.) It is also reported that he was pretty seriously bullied as a kid. Some people never get over that.
I was married to an Asperger's narcissist, so I know first hand! Yes, they do have feelings- they just cannot understand that anyone else does! Lack of empathy, and imho- they cannot learn it! So sorry about the bullying, but very few among us were not. He's a grown-ass man. Get over it buddy!!!
We have a female pilot renting the lower floor of our acreage home. She is indeed different, something we had to get used to. All the unfamiliar symptoms, but very dependable and trustworthy. The best renter we’ve ever had to look after the place when we head south for the winter.
I still think the Powers that Be are doing everything they can to harpoon X and probably Elon himself. This effort to get all of X's possible advertisers to boycott the platform is one example of this.
Elon needs to decide if he's playing for history or if he just wants to make some more money with X. Either he's going to get them first ... or they are going to get him first.
X actually allows the possibility we could "crowd source" the effort to expose THEM.
... But the Deep State is never going to allow an Elon-Musk-owned X to make money ... unless he decides to capitulate and play ball with "the club."
If the choice is between making money and making history, Elon will choose money. But if the other oligarchs piss him off enough, then all bets are off.
I've always thought he could lose 99 percent of his net worth and still be one of the richest people on the planet. Go for a prominent place in the history books!
The only one making an effort to get "X's possible advertisers to boycott the platform" is the owner of the platform himself, Elon Musk---by transforming a vibrant information cog into an echo chamber composed of the worst of the worst of the far-right diaspora.
And given the vast sums that the U.S. Government has tossed Musk's way over the years for his various science projects, it's beyond preposterous to "think the Powers that Be are doing everything they can to harpoon X and probably Elon himself."
As for "X" itself, the site is now a consistently far-right disinformation rat-hole orchestrated by the Electric Car Man himself---precisely the type of media beast to which advertisers give a wide berth, if not run screaming from. This is what he bought X for, the sole purpose of the transaction. This is what he wanted. It is what his partners (Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud and others) wanted. It's what he and they got.
I’ve seen leftists flee X — but it’s not because they’re being censored. It’s because people who disagree with them are _not_ being censored.
I’ve been engaged in these kinds of debates for half a century, since before there was an Internet. My own experience is 1) progressives demand that I be silenced; 2) they howl personal abuse; 3) they run away. Their political views are too important to their sense of self to permit them to be questioned.
Most civilized people disagree with fascist, authoritarian, neo-nazi, white supremacist, retrograde chuds.
You disagree that big advertisers are boycotting X? I read recently that Zuckerberg's net worth has increased more than any person in the world in recent years. Advertisers aren't boycotting Facebook. But, then again, Facebook is playing ball and promoting all the authorized narratives ... and still censoring people who try to challenge those narratives.
On the other hand, Tesla owners and others ARE organizing a boycott of Musk's automobile company that manufactures his super-electromagnetic death-star vehicle.
Apparently, according to Tesla drivers, the heat shield often fails when the car catches on fire for any number of reasons when reentering the earth's atmosphere.
Advertisers are not "boycotting" X. They're pulling ads, leaving X, and advertising elsewhere. Boycotts are mounted in an effort to change behavior. Businesses are not in the business of behavior management. They're in the money business.
Reputable businesses no long wish to be associated with Vatnik Musk nor have their ads viewed adjacent to fascist, authoritarian, neo-nazi, white supremacist, retrograde etc. etc. trash-bot tweets. Musk ain't changin.' But the advertisers are. X will be gone soon after the November election. Unless Musk can wrangle millions from the Saudi gunslingers a la Jared Kushner.
Not even you believe that, feldspar, you’re too smart. If anything he ended the echo chamber and allowed the voices which had been silenced by the tranny lovers or science-denying vax pushers post once more.
He's deamplifying all of Substack.
Yeah, but it's not because of Taibbi or anyone's content. He considers Substack Notes a competitor to X, and doesn't want his product used to promote a competitor. An analogy would be CBS not taking ads or otherwise promoting shows on NBC.
Matt has said he does not begrudge Musk for this. It's not like Musk is targeting Taibbi or others over content.
In the very article we’re commenting on, Matt says that since his incident with Elon, his twitter account has obviously been manually deamplified. Matt went through everything that happened in earlier articles you can go back and read. Matt says he doesn’t begrudge him because he’s a good reporter and wants to leave open the possibility that a former source might give him new information, but if you think he isn’t at least a little miffed that he did all this work to publicize twitter and was summarily dismissed for reasons that seem irrational in Matt’s telling, and is still apparently being retaliated against, you’re kidding yourself.
Did you hear he and Walter discuss it on America this week? My comments track what he said.
It wasn't like he and Musk were chummy. Musk let them in for a reason, and Taibbi took the opportunity.
Then, when Substack launched Notes, Musk acted to prevent X from being used to promote what he considered a competing product.
If you haven't listened to Taibbi speaking about it, you should. In both cases, it was "just business." I don't remember which episode it was, or I would provide it here.
Had he been treated differently than every other substack author, that would be cause to be miffed. But I didn't detect any anger or resentment. And I don't think he was masking anything, he just recognized that Musk was targeting Substack, not Racket.
Uh, did you see the texts Matt just posted where Elon said “you’re dead to me”? There’s a difference between treating him like every other substack author (not allowing links to substack) and what Elon is doing to Matt (shadow banning). I did hear the podcast, and Matt is not complaining about Elon because he’s an adult and knows how to speak about a matter in public. Elon was a source and he’s treating him fairly, aka being the bigger man. By publishing Elon’s texts, Matt is letting the facts themselves expose Elon, rather than whining about it himself.
No, but he talks a big game about being all about free speech while not throttling those links to CBS or NBC.
It seems like anti-trust activity to do that if he's going to claim he's a utility.
Musk could give a shit about Substack. It's not on his radar.
Yup. Can't even link to it. I've tried.
There's another Substack author I read who shares his articles daily... so, is this personal against MT?
Why? I can't remember the reason. Did Matt go after Elon? That really stinks because I think Musk seems to have done a good job with X, but if he's de-amplifying Matt, clearly he needs two reverse course immediately.
He hired Matt as one of the main reporters doing the Twitter files. Then when he found out Matt used substack and substack has threads, he decided they were a twitter competitor, and immediately fired Matt and shadow-banned his account as punishment for Matt not doing all his publishing on twitter. Completely petty and stupid. I generally enjoy Elon because I like a little chaos thrown into the mix, but he’s not a principled free-speech absolutist, he’s just another billionaire narcissist
Shouldn’t have said “hired” because as multiple people have pointed out, he didn’t pay Matt money or make him a Twitter employee as far as I know.
Matt was never “hired” by Musk to do anything. Musk, rather, gave him and a couple other journalists access to Twitter’s files for purposes of research and news. Matt is self employed.
No, Taibbi et al were hired. Hired guns.
But I don’t think Elon is a psychopath…. Like Gates.
Musk is very much the psychopath. Very much so.
No, he knew all along that Matt was on Substack. The only condition attached to Matt (and others') Twitter Files reporting was that it had to be published first on Substack.
Nor did he "fire" or directly target Matt. He considers Substack's Notes feature a competitor, and does not want to X used to promote Notes. As Don Corleone said, "it's just business."
Just for clarification: I don't believe Matt was ever an employee of Twitter/X, ergo, Elon did not "hire" him.
If I recall, Debbie Wassermann Schultz (AKA the Florida Sea Monster) said since Taibbi upped his traffic considerably via TwitterFiles, and those files were given by Elon Musk to him, that Taibbi worked for Elon Musk.
SZ- I love your description of DWS!!!
CR-sounds like it!
Elon sees Substack notes as a competitor. For some reason, he thought Matt had something to do with its development.
I really like Matt's work!! I can still "sort of" understand Elon being upset that Matt et al used the files he supplied them to amplify traffic to competitor sites. He paid an exorbitant amount for X (Twitter). The government and power elites have used all their might to destroy X. I do hope that Matt and Elon can get together and "talk it out". They have both done so much to save our right of free speech, etc. It is imperative that they are both successful. ..... it would be wonderful if it could be "together".
I generally like Musk, and understand the man must have no time-sinking habits to be able to achieve all that he has - I respect him. But, I’m with you, the way he treated “his hand-picked journalist” when the Substack notes drama began was like a petulant child. Definitely do not appreciate the way things unfolded, but understand Musk’s position regarding notes.
Elon Musk is a businessman, not a social reformer. He rode the EV wave (and built a remarkably good product) even though he was fully aware of their limitations. Now he's riding the "free speech" wave on Twitter - not by being uncensored - but by being a little bit LESS censored than his competition, without driving away advertisers.
lol, Danno.
It's the "free" part. It's missing.
In reply to Matt's statement "...while it’s hard to censor an e-mail list, it’s not at all hard to suppress the marketing of one." I have often wondered when big tech will start monitoring our email and mysteriously not deliver what they consider to be dis/misinformation.
Gmail already does this, which is why I switched to protonmail. No problems since.
Was about to say exactly this
what makes you think they dont
I seem to recall something about Republican (or maybe just Trump) fundraising emails not getting delivered. So yeah, I'm pretty sure we're already there.
Yeah, despite following you on X, I have to physically go to your timeline to see your posts. So much for Elon’s freedom of speech (and don’t even get me started on how hidden they have me).
I'm sorry, but I think we're misconstruing Musk's actions on Substack as a freedom of speech issue, when it's really not that. Musk isn't challenging anyone's right to publish protected speech. He's refusing to allow X to be used to promote Substack when he views Substack Notes as a competitor. Refusing to have your competitors' content promoted on your channel doesn't make you an opponent o,f or hypocrite on, free speech, any more than CBS is opposing free speech by not allowing declining ads or other actions on CBS's airwaves that promote NBC's programming.
Doesn't mean we have to like what Musk is doing, or that he hasn't done some other hypocritcal things on free speech, but it does mean it's not a free speech issue. The guy paid $44 billion for a company that many believe was worth barely half that, and he did it in large part to expose to the world the government-driven bullying and censorship of protected political speech. In my mind, he gets enough points for spending $20 billion to expose this issue that I'm not gonna get angry at him for not allowing X to be used to promote a "competing" product. ("Competing" is in quotes because I'm not sure Notes is a serious competitor to anything at this point. I've taken a glance at it but it doesn't seem at all comparable to X.)
Who still uses Facebook? Matt, I think there are other ways to get your message out.
A lot of older people still do. Take a look at their stock chart; they must be selling a lot of advertising.
Good point. I wonder if they use it out of habit, not practicality.
Yeah. No. FB is still vitally important Even if we are all spending less time there, it matters in indie, because there are virtually no other open online ad platforms affordable and scalable for independent advertising that has facebook’s reach.
this is what i figured you were getting at, and i think it’s a good idea to address these issues.
I think Substack's founders are hanging tough and haven't "gone wobbly." However, there are more ways to harm Substack writers than going after Substack proper. What our former CIA and FBI intelligence would do is probably go after the payment processors and/or work on the companies that control the email servers. They can also do some dirty tricks with the banks that process payments or accept (or don't accept payments).
In short, there's probably several ways the Censorship Industrial Complex could try to sabotage or frustrate Substack authors that have nothing to do with Substack itself.
I've been expecting this (payment processors refusing to pay Substack) for years now. My guess is the pressure of the presidential campaign will be what finally makes it happen. Expect every last stop to be pulled out to keep Biden in office.
My take is that "they" can't continue to allow Substack to have even more influence. This would jeopardize their continued control.
Some say our leaders wouldn't come up with some clandestine program to harpoon or damage Substack and its authors, but I don't know why people might think this. Of course they would if they perceived this platform as a threat. They'd HAVE to do this.
For example, I got this email about two hours after other Subscribers got this email. (I saw a Reader Comment from your first article saying, "Matt has posted a clarification" and I hadn't seen this post).
I know that the dispatches of about half of the Substack authors I pay for (and many more "free" subscribers) go directly to my Spam email file or I never get them.
I also wonder about my notifications to annual Subscribers telling people their annual subscription to my newsletter is about to renew. A bigger percentage than in the past do NOT renew. That is, my "retention" percentage has gone down significantly. I wonder if part of this might be a function of emails these people didn't receive or their bank not processing the payment?
I've had to go to my bank three times because my debit card was put on hold. Every time, the issue was a question about whether the bank should pay one of my monthly Substack renewals.
These are a few examples why I still think "something fishy" is going on here .... or something has changed.
You should write an article arguing that Trump is a grave danger to democracy and Biden is the right guy for the job and see if that reaches a wider audience.
I agree with Cary. We will follow where ever you go.
Lol! Thanks for the clarification, Matt. We all love Substack otherwise we wouldn't be voting with our wallets.
More Taibbi reporting is better than less. That said, don't burn yourself out - your are needed throughout this upcoming election season!
FB has been the worst one for a while.
Just wanted to jump in and say: if you're going to a new (paid) platform, maybe a coupon code for your subscribers here would be nice? I'm sure most of us would want to support you there as well.
I think it will be free content and Racket readers will be getting the EP versions of campaign reports…
Thanks Matt. We'll be reading, and sharing.
Roger that.
Did not know you had a Facebook presence. What's the handle? Simple search doesn't reveal
Neither did I. I’ll be looking for him.
The money I used to spend on the NYT and magazines now goes to independent journalists. I just bought Whitney Webb's 2 volumes "One Nation Under Blackmail". We need the 4th estate more than ever.