Twitter has begun to mark Substack links as unsafe. Twitter will display a notice if you click on any link with substack.com as the URL.
Do not be alarmed, the links that we checked seem perfectly safe. Instead, this notice appears to be Twitter’s latest hostile step against Substack. Substack announced on Wednesday its own Twitter-like “Notes” feature.
Twitter stopped Substack users from embedding tweets in their stories on Thursday. Twitter then blocked engagement on Twitter tweets that contained links to Substack. Users were unable to like, retweet or retweet the tweets but could quote and retweet their tweets. Twitter then applied the same restrictions to tweets coming from , the official Substack account. You will get a warning when you try to follow a Substack Link from Twitter.
These actions are certainly unfriendly but I would classify the unsafe warnings as aggressive. According to the most recent update note on the page, Twitter’s URL policy for 2020 has not changed. Substack’s website appears to be functioning as it always has. It’s difficult to know what Twitter is using to justify the warning. Substack CEO Elon Musk has not tweeted about it recently. Twitter’s press mail auto-replied with a “poop” emoticon, which it has been doing continuously since mid-March.
Substack’s Notes feature is the elephant in the room. It adds very Twitter-like elements and features to the newsletter platform. Matt Taibbi is a journalist with history reporting stories on Musk . stated Friday that he was told Friday by an unknown party that Twitter was upset about Substack’s Notes feature. He also noted that he was offered the option to post his articles on Twitter rather than Substack.
Musk stated in December that he considers “relentless advertisement of competitors” to violate policy. also blocked links to Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. These restrictions were eventually removed. He may have decided to bring it back because he feels Substack is trying too much to be like Twitter. However, it is worth noting, that you can still tweet Substack links for the moment. To follow it, you will need to click through the warning in order to access the content.
The Substack but they didn’t respond immediately to our request for comment. But, Substack’s founders have recently expressed concern at how Twitter treats their platform.
