Substack founders respond to Twitter restrictions, criticizes rules that 'change on a whim'

Is this Twitter-like Notes feature on Substack the reason for its restrictions on the social media site? (Image; Substack)

Substack's founders have criticized Twitter's new restrictions that prevent promoting tweets with links from its publishing platform. According to founders Chris Best, Hamish McKenzie, and Jairaj Sethi, this move reminds us why writers need a platform that "puts them in charge, that rewards great work with money, and that protects the free press and free speech." They added that 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."

Twitter users have noticed that they couldn't like, reply to, or retweet some tweets that had Substack links in them. The social media platform hasn't said anything about the change, but as The Verge pointed out, it comes at a time when Substack introduced a Twitter-esque feature called Notes. And this isn't the first time under Elon Musk's Twitter that it banned all links to competitors like Instagram and Mastodon. That change has been reversed since.

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Some of Twitter's source code was reportedly leaked on Github

Photo: Jorge Urosa/Pexels

Things continue to work against Twitter as a court filing published on Friday revealed portions of the social media site's source code (the programming that makes it possible) have been leaked online. According to the filings, Twitter claimed copyright infringement to have the offending code taken down from Github's collaborative programming network. The code was removed the same day. But it's unclear how long it was left up and the scope and depth of the leak.

Twitter is also asking the US District Court for the Northern District of California to order Github to reveal the identity of the user who posted the code and those who accessed and downloaded it. Based on the New York Times reports, Twitter executives strongly suspect it's the work of a disgruntled former employee who left "withing the last year." The executives who spoke to NYT primarily worry the stolen code could empower future hacking efforts.

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Twitter to kill off legacy verified checkmarks on April 1

Image: Twitter

We don't know if this is Twitter CEO Elon Musk's idea of a joke, but this was part of the social media account's plan anyway. Twitter announced it would "begin winding down [its] legacy verified program and removing legacy verified checkmarks" starting April 1. 

This announcement comes as Twitter makes its Blue subscription available worldwide. So, if you want to keep your checkmark/verification, you must pay for the subscription. It costs CAD 8.75 per month on an annual plan or CAD 10 per month. Meanwhile, organizations need to pay around USD 1,000 (around CAD 1,370). Other benefits include 4,000-character tweets, edit post options, and higher reply rankings. Now, we have to wait and see if people will be willing to pay monthly for these perks.

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Twitter delays API changes again

Photo: Edgar/Unsplash

Twitter is delaying the rollout of its paid API, with the company saying it needs more time to work on the redesign. It's not an indefinite delay, though, as Twitter mentioned "a few more days" delay. It was initially supposed to cut access to the free API on February 9. But that got pushed back to February 13 without warning. Twitter CEO Elon Musk hasn't said much about how the paid access to Twitter's API will work, but he suggested a charge of US$100 per month and an additional "ID verification" to limit bot abuse. The company later said it would allow "good bots" to tweet up to 1,500 times per month.

As Engadget pointed out, automated accounts and third-party clients aren't the only users affected by these changes. Researchers use the platform for different purposes. The recent one was around the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria. Members of the Turkish diaspora used tweets to create heatmaps of where survivors could be located to share their findings with aid organizations and rescue crews. Musk's cost-cutting measures will affect use cases like this. When the API changes take effect, it will likely further slow down the work of data scientists and those involved in rescue efforts.