Substack links were never blocked: Elon Musk

New Delhi: Twitter CEO Elon Musk has denied that he blocked access to embedding tweets in posts on online publishing platform Substack.

Independent journalist and author Matt Taibbi, famous for releasing Twitter Files and belonging to the Musk camp, blamed Twitter for blocking sharing links to his articles on Substack.

"I was given the option of posting articles on Twitter instead. I'm obviously staying at Substack, and will be moving to Substack Notes next week," he posted.

Musk replied: "Matt's statement is false. Substack was trying to download a massive portion of the Twitter database to bootstrap their Twitter clone, so their IP address is obviously untrusted".

He further said that it turns out that "Matt is/was an employee of Substack".

Twitter has restricted promotion and visibility for tweets with links to Substack posts -- a move that has not gone well with people.

"We're disappointed that Twitter has chosen to restrict writers' ability to share their work. Writers deserve the freedom to share links to Substack or anywhere else," said Chris Best, Hamish McKenzie and Jairaj Seth, the founders of Substack.

"This abrupt change is a reminder of why writers deserve a model that puts them in charge, that rewards great work with money, and that protects the free press and free speech," they added.

The Twitter change has become a huge problem for Substack writers, who use the Musk-run platform to promote their newsletters.

According to Substack founders, "writers' livelihoods should not be tied to platforms where they don't own their relationship with their audience, and where the rules can change on a whim".