Substack launches Twitter lookalike Notes after Musk clampdown

Days after Twitter restricted links posted by online newsletter publishing platform Substack, the latter has made its Notes feature public. Much like Twitter, Notes is a new space on Substack where users can publish short-form posts with images, links and gifs.

Notes, which has been in testing with a small group of writers in recent weeks, was made public on April 11.

A Twitter alternative?


“Notes helps writers’ and creators’ work travel through the Substack network for new readers to discover. You can share links, images, quick thoughts, and snippets from Substack posts. As well as being lightweight and fun, we hope that Notes will help writers grow their audience and revenue,” the platform said in a blog post.

Admitting that the product “looks like familiar social media feeds” it said the key difference is that the “Substack network runs on paid subscriptions, not ads. This changes everything”.

Also read | Why journalist Matt Taibbi, Substack and Elon Musk’s Twitter are at loggerheads

Taking to Twitter, Substack founder and CEO Chris Best said, “What you’ll see today on Notes is just the beginning. This release is an early version of the product that we have been testing with a small group of writers in recent weeks.”


Twitter has restricted promotion and visibility of tweets with links to Substack posts after the company announced that it is working on Notes.

Musk, Taibbi fall out over Notes

In protest, Matt Taibbi, an independent journalist and author famous for releasing the Twitter Files, quit the microblogging platform.

“It turns out Twitter is upset about the new Substack Notes feature, which they see as a hostile rival,” Taibbi wrote in a Substack post he titled “The Craziest Friday Ever,” adding: “I’m staying at Substack.”

However, Twitter owner Elon Musk denied Taibbi’s claims and said that the latter was an employee of Substack.

"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,” Musk tweeted.

He added that it turns out that “Matt is/was an employee of Substack.”


Best reaction

Substack CEO Chris Best called the whole situation “very frustrating” and refuted Musk via his Substack Notes post.

“Substack links have been obviously severely throttled on Twitter. Anyone using the product can see this. We have used the Twitter API, for years, to help writers. We believe we’re in compliance with the terms, but if they have any specific concerns we would love to know about them. We’d be happy to address any issues,” Best wrote in the post.