The CEOs of both platforms have publicly reacted to the debate, which has been growing between Twitter and the subscription-based blogging website Substack over the past few days.

After learning that links to Substack were being removed from Twitter, the company’s CEO, Chris Best, wrote to Twitter founder Elon Musk, calling the situation “very frustrating” and refuting several of Musk’s statements about the business.

According to one of these allegations, Substack attempted to “download a massive portion of the Twitter database” in order to assist its recently unveiled Twitter rival, Substack Notes, Musk said on Twitter on Saturday.

In December, Twitter already blocked links to the rival social networking site Mastodon.

The warning labels were gone as of Saturday night, but queries were still being rerouted, Insider discovered.

Here’s a brief till last Saturday:

Substack published a blog post on Wednesday announcing the launch of Notes, a new feature with Twitter-like styling. Similar to Twitter, Notes would let users submit “short-form content and share ideas” that may receive likes and comments. These posts would appear on a scrolling stream, similar to Twitter.

When Twitter users attempted to connect with postings that featured Substack links, they would receive an error message. This was first noticed by Substack bloggers who use Twitter to promote their work on Thursday evening.

Additionally, Twitter started rerouting Substack searches to newsletters, and if someone clicked on a Substack link, they were met with a page informing them that the link was dangerous.

Additionally, Substack observed that blog authors on their platform were having difficulties attempting to embed Tweets into their entries.

The Substack blogger close to Musk, Matt Taibbi, stated on his blog that he would utilise the Substack Notes function rather than Twitter to promote his work. Taibbi helped make some of Twitter’s internal content moderation choices public through the “Twitter Files.”

Future “Twitter Files” reports, according to Taibbi, who has tens of thousands of paying customers and charges $5 a month to access his content.

When Taibbi queried “what was going on,” he was encouraged to post articles on Twitter instead, according to Taibbi, who particularly mentioned Twitter’s move to “block” Substack links on the network. Who Taibbi had spoken to was left unclear.

Musk unfollowed Taibbi shortly after, according to a bot that keeps tabs on the Twitter accounts of Big Tech CEOs. An insider attested to this.

Journalist Matt Binder noticed that Taibbi’s tweets were no longer searchable on Twitter on Saturday night.

Early on Saturday, Musk stated in a post that Substack URLs were never disabled on Twitter.

Twitter did forbid users from interacting with Tweets that contained Substack links, as users quickly pointed out on the platform’s Community Notes feature, which lets contributors give context to tweets.

Musk said in the same post that Substack was “trying to download a massive portion of the Twitter database to bootstrap” its new feature and termed Substack Notes a “Twitter clone.”

Additionally, he asserted that Taibbi had previously worked for Substack and continues to do so. Best disagreed.

Substack’s CEO says ‘none’ of Musk’s claims are true

In a Notes post retrieved by the Verge, Best responded to Musk’s tweets, saying “none of this is true.”

Substack links on Twitter have evidently been substantially throttled. Best responded to Musk’s claim that links to Substack were never banned on the platform, saying, “Anyone using the product can see this.

Additionally, Best disputed that Taibbi worked for Substack or ever did.

“This is quite annoying. To mistreat writers in this manner is one thing, but messing with Substack is quite another, Best wrote.

A poop emoji was automatically used in a Twitter press email response.