TWITTER BLOCKS SUBSTACK, CANCELS ATTACK
THE WEEK THAT WAS: More lost crypto money was found, Mobilecoin’s CEO Bob Lee’s murder may increase SF political activity, ChatGPT and Bing are getting good at making things up, Baidu is suing app developers over the Ernie bot, Google is ending support for Nest cams, Amazon banned ‘Flipper Zero’, Samsung is cutting chip production, ChaptGPTs success has made Microsoft and OpenAI take bigger risks, Tesla staff got in trouble for sharing sensitive footage, Meta is gutting its customer service, YouTube added a podcast channel, Scopely was bought by Saudi-backed Savvy Games Group for $4.9 Billion, Google and Amazon struggle to layoff workers in EU, and just 26,000 attended Decentraland’s Fashion Week (down from 108k yoy).
THE BIG NEWS: Substack (the company that hosts this newsletter) has created a new product called 'Notes' that is more than a little similar to Twitter. Before I go on, it's important to note that I am a beta tester for 'Notes'. as WDADTW is on Substack's bestseller leaderboard. Thursday saw Twitter get a little protective and switched off Substack links (likely partly retaliation for Musk's 'Twitter Files' buddy leaving Twitter for Substack). Yes, any link that contained the word 'substack' was either outright blocked or showed an 'unsafe link' page. Twitter then went one step further and blocked searches of the word 'Substack'. Writers were outraged, as were freedom of speech advocates. Regular Twitter users realised a block for them could happen at any time.
Things got worse when Elon put out a some have said libellous statement saying Substack was "...trying to download a massive portion of the Twitter database to bootstrap their Twitter clone". No evidence was cited, and the statement and the link ban have since been walked back.
The issue again highlights who is running platforms with hundreds of millions (if not billions) of users who rely on them for money, information and, well, truth matters. Intent and ability also factor into the equation. When labels like 'state-run media' or 'government funded' are applied to NPR and BBC, something is very wrong in Twitterville. Issues like the Substack ban don't make anyone love Twitter even more or make them want to buy Twitter Blue, which is the real issue at hand for Twitter.
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__ DO __ Build your castle on unstable sands that other people own when to can afford not to. Look at what you are getting from platforms and source other options that may yield better results with less risk. // __ DON’T __ Trust someone who sends poop emojis to requests for comment by the press while at the same time lifting restrictions on Kremlin accounts.
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