The soap box gets lonelier

How Twitter’s new stance affects Substack

“What’s the point?”

I asked myself this week.

Of this.

Me, here on Substack.

As I watched my last post gather 8 likes, it felt like when you’re a kid and your mum tells your Aunty;

“She wants to put on a play for you.”

And your Aunty and your cousin clap…….because it’s you.

Until I realised, it wasn’t that.

Substack links are now being limited by Twitter.

Apparently, it started a few days ago, links are now unable to be liked or retweeted on the platform and show up as potential spam.

There are rumours this move was a result of a recent ADL article. Maybe you’ve not heard of them - ADL. I hadn’t, but they sound like an American version of ‘Hope Not Hate’.

It stands for ‘Anti Defamation League’, and on the 3rd April they published a piece calling Substack out as a place for spreading - you guessed it - ‘misinformation’.

Others speculate Twitter’s new stance is a response to a new tool called ‘Substack notes’ that Substack hope to roll out during the next few weeks allowing writers the chance to create short form offerings.

Not dissimilar to…….hmm……..Tweets.

Whatever ruffled Mr Musk’s bionic feathers, he continues to show his true colours on ‘free speech’.

I look in on Twitter from time to time - see how you’re all doing.

From my ‘read only’ spy hole.

Like a Dickensian waif salivating over a party scene, except of course, you aren’t all bollock deep in punch or plum pudding but rather, sniping, nit picking and tearing each other limb from limb as hounds do foxes.

And……oh….…how I miss the good old days……;)

Anyway, as I watched, the other day, nose pressed against glass, I noticed a popular ‘Truther’ account telling a friend of mine she now “needs to get a blue tick” and it sickened me how Musk has succeeded in turning free speech into a ‘pay to play’ sport.

And here lies the problem with free speech in theory and free speech in practise.

If I’m shouting from the equivalent of an upturned crate in the Black Hills of Dakota then how does that work in a digital world?

Monopolies are always fun at first, before they become so. They are all about ‘choice’ and networking with other brands and platforms.

Until they are big enough to go it alone and no longer need that.

Kind of;

“I’ll scratch your back, you scratch mine……until I’ve found a way of getting rid of YOUR pesky fleas”

It’s the same with politics.

Remember the time the Lib Dems were useful to the Tories?

Til they weren’t…..

So, back to Twitter and Substack. What to do?

Although it’s possible Substack will eventually become a credible rival to Twitter, having spent time on both GETTR and Truth Social, it’s difficult to believe this will happen any time soon.

So I guess I’ll carry on making my little old prose n poetry mud pies in the Black Hills of Dakota. Don’t know why I chose that, I just like the song. Maybe ‘Pennines’ is more apt.

I’ll teeter precariously on my faithful wooden box, hollering louder and louder into the ever thinning air…..

And it may get lonelier up here, what with the echo not carrying quite the same - it may eventually just be me, you, my Aunty and my red neck cousin after all.

But I will at least commit to voicing my own true thoughts.

Freely.

Acapella.