I wondered if the celebrity CEO and one of his favorite paid journalists had a falling out, but the “journalist” has been working overtime this past week licking the boots of his master.

Does the business publication that pays his “reporter” salary know about the extra income and perks he receive?

I am betting not.

Elon Musk

Matt Taibbi

Elon Musk tweets then deletes DMs from Matt Taibbi over his Substack snit

Elon Musk and one of his “Twitter Files” writers, Matt Taibbi, don’t seem to be on great terms right now, and that situation probably isn’t getting any better after Musk posted then deleted a DM conversation between the two of them.

Let me try to recap how we got to this point. I’m warning you now that it’s a bit of a mess.

Taibbi, given access to Twitter information from Musk, published the first of many editions of the so-called “Twitter Files” that Musk believed would be a shocking exposé of former leadership.

Taibbi also publishes Racket News, a Substack-based publication with more than 362,000 subscribers.

On Wednesday, Substack announced a Twitter-like product called “Notes.”

Late in the week, Twitter started restricting tweets with Substack URLs, severely limiting how many Substack writers can promote their work on Twitter.

Friday afternoon, Taibbi said he was told Twitter’s restrictions were due to “a dispute over the new Substack Notes platform.” He did not specify who gave him that information. He also said he planned to move to Notes.

On Saturday, Musk claimed that Taibbi “is / was an employee of Substack,” which isn’t true. (Musk also claimed that Substack was “trying to download a massive portion of the Twitter database to bootstrap their Twitter clone,” which Substack’s CEO says isn’t true.)

On Sunday, Substack said that “the suppression of Substack publications on Twitter appears to be over.”

Monday evening, in an entirely separate thread with another Twitter Files writer, Michael Shellenberger, Musk shared his DMs with Taibbi as evidence of information that needed to be corrected in an article by another author. The DMs appear to show Taibbi explaining his relationship with Substack.

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Musk, in what appears to be a Signal chat, asks Taibbi: “You are employed at Substack?” Taibbi explains that his subscribers pay him and that he was one of the first “Substack Pro” writers, who were given an upfront payment for a year in return for giving Substack 85 percent of subscription revenue. Taibbi also asks if Twitter will fix an issue where his Twitter Files threads were being deleted, and Musk says that will happen. – Source

Elon Musk says it was ‘not cool’ for Democrats to ask Twitter Files reporter Matt Taibbi to reveal his sources in a hearing

Elon Musk on Thursday said it was “not cool” for House Democrats to ask journalist Matt Taibbi to reveal his sources during a congressional hearing.

Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger, two of the journalists who released the Twitter Files, spoke at a hearing of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government to discuss the files, which made public some of Twitter’s internal content-moderation discussions and revealed communication between the FBI and Twitter executives before Musk took over the company.

Since Musk acquired the company in October, Taibbi and other journalists have posted long Twitter threads containing leaked internal emails, messages, and other information.

The files included internal discussions about the decision to ban Donald Trump from the platform and the moderation process around controversial topics such as Hunter Biden’s laptop and the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Republicans contend that the documents confirm what they believe was Twitter’s liberal bias. – Source

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